Lou-less Youth

Greetings

You know it's not that I don't get it. I understand that there are all kinds of "movements" out there in the music scene. I know people want change and want to hear (and be) something different; they want to shout, "this is our generation, we are not like you idiots! We are newer, we are cooler and we are the future!" So the scene changes and slides and morphs, and music responds, constantly remolding itself, from rock and soul and pop to emo, screamo, bleemo, psychobilly, pyschopunk and psychotechno, from hip hop to rip hop, gangsta rap and diaper rap. . . I GET IT.

But there are some things that remain constant. Fixtures. Landmarks. Like Lou Reed. Back in the early and mid 60s, when the Beatles were Yeah-yeahing, and the Stones looked like Fischer Price figures and contraceptives were illegal, Lou Reed was writing songs about leather fetishes and shooting smack. He was the scene. It all started there. Yes, you can talk about Jazz and country and blues all colliding in the fifties to create rock, and the cool as hell (and mostly unheralded) artists who were part of that incredible transformation, but no one was more ahead of their time than Lou (possible exception: Kraftwerk, but we'll get into that later.) Lou didn't just add an electric guitar or scream a lyric instead of singing it with a backup group of harmonizers, he went completely beserk. Off the tracks. So far that it had to be on purpose, but unlike some of the obvious experimental stuff today, Lou's music held up because it was damn good even though it was totally freaky.

And he kept it up for years. He changed and kept everyone off balance in the 70s, producing some of the most original and memorable albums of that weird ass by-the-book musical decade (think "Boston I" versus "Berlin", or "Transformer" vs. "Rumours") then made three of the best albums of the 80s ("Blue Mask", "New Sensations" and "New York") and still kicked out some excellent/classic stuff in the 90s ("Set the Twilight Reeling.") And this was almost 30 years after "Sweet Jane" and "Sister Ray."

I don't know what the screamobilly crowd thinks of Lou. But I suggest you at least consider him and get to know a little of the past. He's the Godfather of the concert you're going to see next week- the band you're taking your friends to because they are so out there. Lou deserves your respect. So bow down, scenesters. And make a sacrifice to the alter of Loudom. Have a glass of whiskey and shoot some crank into your eyeball. Or if you don't want to go that far, just put on "Sweet Nothing" from "Loaded" and think about how good music makes you feel.

I can't wait to see where music goes in the future, but I have to give a nod to the past. To Lou Reed. What a freak.