By now you’ve no doubt heard the sad news about Lou Reed.

I was actually all ready to go with my annual Halloween compilation this evening, but in honour of this, I’ll leave it a few days and post it mid-week.

Obviously it’s difficult to come up with a proper tribute to a figure as multi-faceted and divisive as Lou Reed at the drop of a hat, but during this week I’ll try to come up with some stuff to do him justice, maybe post next weekend.

Normally that would be a case of busting out an artists’ back catalogue and having a good ol’ session of remembrance, but there’s no point doing that this time, because very little time goes by when I’m not listening to, or thinking about, some aspect of The Velvet Underground’s work.

Just this morning, the original album version of ‘Waiting For The Man’ popped up on my mp3 player as I walked out to do some grocery shopping, reminding me for the first time in a while of how great and unusual the recoding and arrangement is on that track, making me wonder about the fuzzy edge on the guitar, and about how radical the relentless droniness of it still sounds, and about who was playing that one note piano bit when all sources say that track was probably a live take with no overdubs. Just under two weeks ago, I was riding back from the airport with ‘Live ‘69’ on my headphones, making me cry and then cheering me up again and making me cry in a happy way. Various times recently, I could have been found striding around the place lost in the incredible demo versions and ‘Sweet Jane’ and ‘Rock n’ Roll’, feeling right jubilant and nudging them up my “songs I’d probably like played at my funeral” list.

That’s the space of about a month. I’ve been listening to the VU since I was about eighteen. I’m not sick of hearing anything that they recorded yet. Hell, if they’d only ever recorded one song, I probably wouldn’t be sick of it yet. Some kindsa love, the possibilities are endless, and for me to miss one…. etc etc.

So there ya go.

We’ll return to all this later anyway. In the meantime, don’t let it spoil your Halloween.

Labels: deathblog, Lou Reed, The Velvet Underground