Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells A Story
Rod the Mod finds his solo footing, headed for stardom, with the Faces in his wake.
6:00 AM GMT 22/06/2011
Features Disc of the day
The Velvet Underground
Loaded
(Warner Bros, 1970; reissued as Fully Loaded deluxe ed. on Rhino, 1997)
In praise of the fun-est Lou Reed album in existence!
In 1985, the NME compiled the first 100 Greatest Albums list I ever saw. Like a fool, I instantly adopted it as my canon and I carried the dogeared thing around for donkey’s, spending nearly as long trying desperately to like Pere Ubu’s The Modern Dance and Bowie’s Young Americans, the appeal of both remaining as obscure to me 23 years later. By contrast, the full cockeyedness of “canon”-based thinking was first revealed to me the moment I heard the decidedly “off-canon” Loaded, rated by the rock-hating ’80s as only the fifth best Velvets’ album (after VU even!) but by a safe margin the one I’ve played most often. It is, by and large, a record about love, perhaps the one truly uplifting platter in the Lou Reed discography (perhaps having blithe-voiced Doug Yule around was a tonic). Most of all, it’s about the healing power of rock’n’roll. Reed is grateful, for God’s sake, a gratitude encapsulated in Sweet Jane’s ecstatic yodel and Rock & Roll’s beatific choogle. It’s even in Held Held High, a reckless runaway train of a tune whose apparently cheerful expressions of defiance are all the more poignant for their dark allusions to a fucked-up parental agenda (“But, just like I figured, they're always disfigured”) and the way Reed’s vocal starts boiling over in a crypto-parricidal frenzy. Having spent time in shock treatment to cure his supposedly anti-social tendencies and his early rock career exploring the cold comforts of nihilism, it’s as if Reed has suddenly discovered self-worth, and a way to express how good it feels. That it proved such a fleeting glimpse of Reed’s warmth and vulnerability gives the whole thing a melancholy afterglow, a bittersweetness that stays with me longer than the dead-eyed artviolence of The Velvet Underground & Nico. But that was #16 in my ink-smudged NME list and Loaded was nowhere, so who’s correct? That’s right – no-one.
Danny Eccleston
Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 6:00 AM GMT 20/05/2008
Further Listening
The Velvet Underground – 1969: Velvet Underground Live, Vol. 1 (Mercury, 1974)
Modern Lovers – Modern Lovers (Beserkley, 1976)
Cornershop – Handcream For A Generation (V2, 2002)
SUGGEST YOUR OWN DISC OF THE DAY ON OUR MESSAGE BOARD HERE, OR, MORE PRIVATELY, HERE!
Previous Disc of the day
-
-
Earl Brutus - Larky
Last salvo of Ginsters Pasty-Warholism from Britpop ramraiders.
12:04 PM GMT 08/06/2011
-
Loudon Wainwright - T-Shirt
An overlooked small wonder from an unpredictable career.
6:00 AM GMT 03/06/2011
-
Landscape - From The Tea-rooms Of Mars… To The Hell-holes Of Uranus
Dry computer club Futurists, upon hitting implausible chart paydirt.
6:00 AM GMT 17/05/2011
-
-
Causa Sui - Summer Sessions Vol 1-3
Epic Danish jams, for when the neighbours get you down.
6:00 AM GMT 12/05/2011
end of body content back to top
Footer
Join us on:
© Copyright Bauer - all
rights reserved.
Reproduction of this
website, in whole or in
part, in any form or
medium without express
written permission from
Bauer is prohibited. All
use is subject to our
Terms of Use
|
|
Comments
Comment on this post
Comment on this post