Hear Paul McCartney’s Experimental Christmas Mixtape: A Rare & Forgotten Recording from 1965

in Music | December 13th, 2017

If you hear some­one com­plain­ing about the scarci­ty of good Christ­mas music, you know they’re doing some­thing wrong. As we point­ed out a cou­ple years back, you can keep a Christ­mas par­ty going for hours upon hours with hol­i­day clas­sics and funky orig­i­nals from James Brown, John­ny Cash, The Jack­son 5, Dinah Wash­ing­ton, Willie Nel­son, Ella Fitzger­ald, The Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, Low, Bad Reli­gion, Christo­pher Lee, The Ven­tures, and so much more besides.

And then there’s the Bea­t­les, whom we wouldn’t ever think of as an acquired taste, but whose Christ­mas records may only appeal to a spe­cial kind of fan, one who appre­ci­ates, and per­haps remem­bers, the band’s aggres­sive­ly cheer­ful spir­it of mar­ket­ing. Through­out the 60s, they made short, whim­si­cal Christ­mas “flexi discs” for fan club mem­bers. These are amus­ing, but hard­ly essen­tial, though I’d rec­om­mend putting 1967’s “Christ­mas Time (Is Here Again)” on any playlist, hol­i­day or oth­er­wise.

While the band made their light and breezy 1965 Christ­mas record, Paul McCart­ney under­took a decid­ed­ly dif­fer­ent hol­i­day solo side project—recording exper­i­men­tal tape loops at home, includ­ing, writes author Richie Unter­berg­er, “singing, act­ing, and sketch­es.” Only “three copies were pressed, one each for John, George, and Ringo.” As McCart­ney him­self described the record­ing, “I put togeth­er some­thing crazy, some­thing left field, just for the oth­er Bea­t­les, a fun thing which they could play late in the evening.”

You can hear what sur­vives of the record­ing above. McCart­ney calls it “Unfor­get­table” and begins the disc in an Amer­i­can announcer’s voice, “a fast-talk­ing New York DJ,” Rolling Stone writes, fol­lowed by Nat King Cole, then “an inven­tive selec­tion of songs by the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys, and Martha and the Van­del­las.” McCart­ney described the project as “a mag­a­zine pro­gram: full of weird inter­views, exper­i­men­tal music, tape loops” and “some tracks I knew the oth­ers hadn’t heard.”

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, much of the exper­i­men­ta­tion has not sur­vived, or made it to a dig­i­tal for­mat. Nonethe­less, the tape “might be the ear­li­est evi­dence of the Bea­t­les using home record­ing equip­ment for specif­i­cal­ly exper­i­men­tal/a­vant-garde pur­pos­es,” Unter­berg­er notes, “some­thing that John and Paul did in the last half of the 1960s, though John’s ven­tures in this field are more wide­ly known than Paul’s.” It isn’t Christ­mas music, exact­ly, but when you put it on, you’ll know it began its life as a spe­cial mix­tape McCart­ney made just for his band­mates, not the fans. We might think of it as the hol­i­day album he real­ly want­ed to make.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds/Rolling Stone

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to the Bea­t­les’ Christ­mas Records: Sev­en Vin­tage Record­ings for Their Fans (1963 – 1969)

Stream 22 Hours of Funky, Rock­ing & Swing­ing Christ­mas Albums: From James Brown and John­ny Cash to Christo­pher Lee & The Ven­tures

David Bowie Sends a Christ­mas Greet­ing in the Voice of Elvis Pres­ley

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Academic Journal Devotes an Entire Issue to Prince’s Life & Music: Read and Download It for Free

in Music | December 12th, 2017

Image by Ann Alt­house, via Flickr Com­mons

For decades now, aca­d­e­mics have made pop­u­lar cul­ture a wor­thy area of study, from hip hop, com­ic books, and Hol­ly­wood film and tele­vi­sion to video games and inter­net cul­ture. And for just as long, there have been those who sneered at the dis­ci­plines emerg­ing around pop cul­ture stud­ies. But real­ly, what are we to do with some­one like Prince, some­one so clear­ly, pro­found­ly, a musi­cal genius, with such an out­sized impact on pop­u­lar cul­ture, that he can­not help being a major his­tor­i­cal fig­ure just a year and a half after his death?

Devote an entire jour­nal issue to him, of course, as the Jour­nal of African Amer­i­can Stud­ies did this past Sep­tem­ber. This is not, by far, Prince’s first appear­ance in a schol­ar­ly pub­li­ca­tion. And a slew of aca­d­e­m­ic con­fer­ences devot­ed to the artist this past year has raised him to the aca­d­e­m­ic sta­tus achieved by oth­er megas­tars like Bruce Spring­steen and Pink Floyd. This spe­cial jour­nal issue, how­ev­er, may be one of the most com­pre­hen­sive col­lec­tions of Prince schol­ar­ship you’re like­ly to find online. And unlike the major­i­ty of aca­d­e­m­ic arti­cles, these are all free. Just click the “Down­load PDF” link under each title found on this page.

The issue was pub­lished to coin­cide with the 40th anniver­sary of Prince’s sign­ing with Warn­er Broth­ers in 1977, the day he “turned pro.” The fol­low­ing year, he released the debut album For You, to mod­est crit­i­cal suc­cess. While it didn’t make him a star overnight, For You announced him as a vir­tu­oso, “as Prince played every instru­ment and sang all the vocals, some­thing unheard of, then and now.” Prince’s musi­cal skill could be tak­en for grant­ed. It is easy to do with an artist who recon­fig­ured cul­ture in so many ways that had noth­ing to do with play­ing gui­tar or piano.

Prince’s rad­i­cal, if very com­pli­cat­ed, rede­f­i­n­i­tion of gen­der and cul­tur­al expres­sion pro­vides an exam­ple, writes Deirdre T. Guion Peo­ples, of “Opti­mal Dis­tinc­tive­ness,” in the way he “nego­ti­at­ed his social iden­ti­ty.” He lived an ardent, con­sis­tent­ly utopi­an vision in his music and also in his life; and his “sin­gu­lar vision of utopia cast women as essen­tial to its cre­ation,” notes H. Zahra Cald­well. And Prince’s “cre­ative prac­tices,” James Gor­don Williams argues, “were linked to his covert, but avid, sup­port of social jus­tice ini­tia­tives that sup­port black human­i­ty.”

These ten arti­cles elab­o­rate things we thought we knew about Prince, but maybe didn’t, and intro­duce us to aspects of his life and work we’ve nev­er con­sid­ered. They are joined by sev­en essays and per­son­al reflec­tions and two book reviews. Read online or down­load the spe­cial Prince issue here.

via @WFMU

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read Prince’s First Inter­view, Print­ed in His High School News­pa­per (1976)

The Life of Prince in a 24-Page Com­ic Book: A New Release

Bruce Spring­steen and Pink Floyd Get Their First Schol­ar­ly Jour­nals and Aca­d­e­m­ic Con­fer­ences

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 14 ) |

Brian Eno Presents a Crash Course on How the Recording Studio Radically Changed Music: Hear His Influential Lecture “The Recording Studio as a Compositional Tool” (1979)

in Music | December 12th, 2017

The rapid devel­op­ment of stu­dio tech­nol­o­gy in the 1960s could seem like some­thing of an avalanche, start­ed, say, by Phil Spec­tor, expand­ed by Bri­an Wil­son, who spurred the Bea­t­les and George Mar­tin, who inspired dozens of artists to exper­i­ment in the stu­dio, includ­ing Jimi Hen­drix. By the time we get to the 70s it begins to seem like one man dri­ves for­ward the progress of stu­dio as instru­ment, Bri­an Eno—from his work with Robert Fripp, to the refine­ment of almost ful­ly syn­thet­ic ambi­ent music, to his ground­break­ing work on David Bowie’s “Berlin Tril­o­gy” and Talk­ing Heads’ Remain in Light in 1980.

Eno called him­self a “non-musi­cian” who val­ued the­o­ry over prac­tice. But we know this to be untrue. He’s a pro­found­ly hyp­not­ic, engag­ing com­pos­er, play­er, and even singer, as well as a vir­tu­oso prac­ti­tion­er of the stu­dio record­ing arts, which, by 1979, he had honed suf­fi­cient­ly to expound on in a lec­ture titled “The Record­ing Stu­dio as a Com­po­si­tion­al Tool.” By ’79, when Eno deliv­ered the talk cap­tured above at the Inau­gur­al New Music Amer­i­can Fes­ti­val in New York, he had already done so three times. In 1983, Down Beat mag­a­zine pub­lished the influ­en­tial lec­ture (read it here).

Eno dis­plays the crit­i­cal acu­men of Wal­ter Ben­jamin in dis­cussing the his­to­ry and cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance of his art form, with philo­soph­i­cal­ly punchy lines like his take on jazz: “the inter­est­ing thing about impro­vi­sa­tions is that they become more inter­est­ing as you lis­ten to them more times. What seemed like an almost arbi­trary col­li­sion of events comes to seem very mean­ing­ful on relis­ten­ing.” A very Eno-like obser­va­tion, under­lin­ing his cen­tral the­sis, which he deliv­ers in a mea­sured series of claus­es to con­struct a sen­tence as long as some of his com­po­si­tions, but one, nonethe­less, with per­fect clar­i­ty:

In this lec­ture, I want to indi­cate that record­ed music, in cer­tain of its aspects, is an entire­ly dif­fer­ent art form from tra­di­tion­al music, and that the con­tem­po­rary com­pos­er, peo­ple like me, those who work direct­ly in rela­tion to stu­dios and mul­ti-track­ing and in rela­tion to record­ing tape, are, in fact, engaged in a dif­fer­ent, a rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent, busi­ness, from tra­di­tion­al com­posers.

How does Eno make his case? Record­ed music sub­sti­tutes the “space dimen­sion” for the “time dimen­sion,” and thus has a “detach­able aspect,” it’s portable—and nev­er more so than now. Eno seems to antic­i­pate the cur­rent tech­no­log­i­cal moment in 1979 when he says, “not only is the whole his­to­ry of our music with us now, in some sense, on record, but the whole glob­al musi­cal cul­ture is also avail­able.” This results in a break with the Euro­pean clas­si­cal tra­di­tion as com­posers acquire “a cul­ture unbound­ed, both tem­po­ral­ly and geo­graph­i­cal­ly.”

Before the devel­op­ment of record­ing tech­nol­o­gy in the late 19th cen­tu­ry, lim­i­ta­tions of time and space ensured that every musi­cal per­for­mance was a one of a kind event, over for­ev­er when it end­ed. In the 20th cen­tu­ry, not only could record­ing engi­neers repro­duce a per­for­mance infi­nite­ly, but with the medi­um of tape, they could cut, splice, rearrange, manip­u­late, and oth­er­wise edit it togeth­er. With mul­ti-track­ing, they could cre­ate a uni­fied whole from sev­er­al dis­parate record­ings, often from dif­fer­ent times and places. And, as the audi­ence for record­ed music was a mass con­sumer mar­ket, pop­u­lar musi­cal tastes, to some extent, began to shift the kind of music that got made. (Eno has since expressed high­ly neg­a­tive crit­i­cism of con­tem­po­rary music that relies too heav­i­ly on stu­dio tech­nol­o­gy.)

Eno begins rather dri­ly, but once he gets going, the lec­ture becomes total­ly engross­ing. He cov­ers the mix­ing of Sly and the Fam­i­ly Stone’s Fresh, dis­cuss­es Sly Dun­bar and Lee “Scratch” Perry’s stu­dio inven­tions, and those of his own Anoth­er Green World and Music for Air­ports. He offers a crash course on basic stu­dio tech­nol­o­gy, and describes own­ing a record­ing of a record­ed tele­phone mes­sage from Ger­many that sought appre­hen­sion of the Baad­er Mein­hoff gang by play­ing a record­ing of one of their voic­es. He may be one of the most cool­ly dis­pas­sion­ate artists in mod­ern pop­u­lar music, but Bri­an Eno is nev­er bor­ing. Read a tran­script of the lec­ture here.

via Techcrunch

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bri­an Eno Explains the Loss of Human­i­ty in Mod­ern Music

Bri­an Eno Cre­ates a List of His 13 Favorite Records: From Gospel to Afrobeat, Shoegaze to Bul­gar­i­an Folk

Bri­an Eno on Why Do We Make Art & What’s It Good For?: Down­load His 2015 John Peel Lec­ture

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Stream 74 Sun Ra Albums Free Online: Decades of “Space Jazz” and Other Forms of Intergalactic, Afrofuturistic Musical Creativity

in Music | December 12th, 2017

He was born Her­man Poole Blount, but the many who appre­ci­ate his music and the oth­er­world­ly phi­los­o­phy behind it know him only as Sun Ra. Or rather, they don’t just appre­ci­ate it but find them­selves trans­port­ed to oth­er places by it, even places locat­ed far beyond this Earth. Often space, as the title of the 1975 Afro­fu­tur­ist sci­ence-fic­tion film that stars Sun Ra states, is the place, and if you seek to take such an inter­stel­lar jour­ney through jazz music your­self, doing so has become eas­i­er than ever: just steer your ship over to Band­camp, where you can stream the music of Sun Ra and his ever-shift­ing “Arkestra” for free.

Since you’ll have no few­er than 74 albums to choose from, you might con­sid­er chart­ing your voy­age with Band­camp Dai­ly’s guide to Sun Ra and his Arkestra’s pro­lif­ic and var­ied out­put.

It begins with his “Chica­go Space Jazz” years in the 1950s, many of the record­ings from which “sound a lot like jazz with tra­di­tion­al forms, rich ensem­ble writ­ing, and plen­ty of swing,” but which already show such char­ac­ter­is­tic choic­es and tools as “pecu­liar inter­vals and jux­ta­po­si­tions, the new­ly-devel­oped elec­tric piano, lots of per­cus­sion, extra bari­tone sax, group shouts, and so forth,” as well as the influ­ence of “exot­i­ca and mood music,” the Bible, “occult phi­los­o­phy,” and cos­mol­o­gy.

The guide con­tin­ues on to Sun Ra’s time in New York in the 1960s, where “the ‘space jazz’ or quirky hard-bop of the Arkestra’s Chica­go days starts to morph, reflect­ing the new ‘free jazz’ ideas being devel­oped lit­er­al­ly all around them by Albert Ayler, Ornette Cole­man, John Coltrane, and oth­ers.” This peri­od cul­mi­nates in The Mag­ic City, “a near­ly 28-minute tone poem, col­lec­tive­ly impro­vised under Ra’s cues and direc­tion, with­out pre­con­ceived themes; at times it is brood­ing and spare, at oth­ers it is full-on screech­ing sax­o­phones.” There­after came a time of solo and small-group work, and then of mind-bend­ing live per­for­mances that the Arkestra, under the direc­tion of long­time sax­o­phon­ist Mar­shall Allen, con­tin­ues to put on to this day.

Sun Ra him­self ascend­ed to anoth­er plane almost a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry ago, but if you believe the elab­o­rate mythol­o­gy that remains insep­a­ra­ble from his musi­cal work, he still exists, in some form and in some galaxy, no doubt imag­in­ing new kinds of jazz that the mere human mind may nev­er suf­fi­cient­ly evolve to com­pre­hend. Stream­ing these dozens of albums that Sun Ra left us on this Earth, you may not imme­di­ate­ly think to com­pare them with the music of David Bowie, but as far as 20th-cen­tu­ry out­er space-ori­ent­ed self-rein­ven­tors go, those two are in a class of their own. As Blount became Sun Ra in the 1940s, so David Jones trans­formed from Zig­gy Star­dust into the Thin White Duke into Aladdin Sane in the 1970s. Both remained musi­cal exper­i­menters all their lives, as their discogra­phies will always attest, but when Sun Ra rein­vent­ed him­self, he stayed rein­vent­ed.

Stream Sun Ra’s albums at Band­camp, and know that you can also pur­chase dig­i­tal down­loads of these albums (in MP3 and FLAC for­mats) for a rea­son­able price.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sun Ra’s Full Lec­ture & Read­ing List From His 1971 UC Berke­ley Course, “The Black Man in the Cos­mos”

Hear Sun Ra’s 1971 UC Berke­ley Lec­ture “The Pow­er of Words”

Sun Ra Plays a Music Ther­a­py Gig at a Men­tal Hos­pi­tal; Inspires Patient to Talk for the First Time in Years

Hear the One Night Sun Ra & John Cage Played Togeth­er in Con­cert (1986)

A Col­lec­tion of Sun Ra’s Busi­ness Cards from the 1950s: They’re Out of This World

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The Future of Blues Is in Good Hands: Watch 12-Year-Old Toby Lee Trade Riffs with Chicago Blues Guitarist Ronnie Baker Brooks

in Music | December 12th, 2017

 

Ear­li­er this year, we high­light­ed some footage from 1989, show­ing then 12-year-old Joe Bona­mas­sa wow­ing crowds and announc­ing his arrival on the blues scene. Years from now, we might look back in sim­i­lar fash­ion at this footage of 12-year-old blues prodi­gy Toby Lee. Record­ed last month at the Blues Heav­en Fes­ti­val in Den­mark, this video fea­tures Lee trad­ing riffs with Chica­go blues gui­tarist Ron­nie Bak­er Brooks. It runs a good five minutes–enough to con­vince you that the future of the blues is in good hands.

By the way, Toby has a Youtube chan­nel where you can watch him evolve as a musi­cian. Below, see one of his ear­li­er clips, where, as a 9 or 10-year-old, he pounds out some Ste­vie Ray Vaugh­an in a cow­boy hat and tiger suit.

via Twist­ed Sifter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 12-Year-Old Joe Bona­mas­sa Shred the Blues as He Opens for B.B. King in 1989

Ste­vie Ray Vaugh­an Plays the Acoustic Gui­tar in Rare Footage, Let­ting Us See His Gui­tar Vir­tu­os­i­ty in Its Purest Form

B.B. King Plays Live at Sing Sing Prison in One of His Great­est Per­for­mances (1972)

Ste­vie Ray Vaugh­an Plays the Acoustic Gui­tar in Rare Footage, Let­ting Us See His Gui­tar Vir­tu­os­i­ty in Its Purest Form

Hear Iso­lat­ed Gui­tar Tracks From Some of Rock’s Great­est: Slash, Eddie Van Halen, Eric Clap­ton & More

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Giant Clown Sings a Creepy Cover of Radiohead’s “Creep”

in Music | December 10th, 2017

You can’t unsee this. You can’t get it out of your head. Tonight, in your dreams, you’ll see Pud­dles Pity Par­ty, the 6′8″ clown, singing a creeped out ver­sion of Radio­head­’s “Creep.” He’s backed by Matthew Kamin­s­ki, organ­ist for the Atlanta Braves. You’ve been warned.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sad 7‑Foot Tall Clown Sings “Pin­ball Wiz­ard” in the Style of John­ny Cash, and Oth­er Hits by Roy Orbi­son, Cheap Trick & More

How Mar­cel Marceau Start­ed Mim­ing to Save Chil­dren from the Holo­caust

7‑Foot Tall Clown with a Gold­en Voice Sings Chris Cornell’s “When I’m Down:” A Trib­ute Filled with Raw Emo­tion

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Meet Mandy Harvey, the Deaf Singer Songwriter Who Performs Barefoot & Feels the Music Through Vibrations in the Ground

in Biology, Creativity, Music | December 8th, 2017

Attrac­tive young female singer-song­writ­ers who shuck their shoes onstage some­times find that this small attempt to pass them­selves off as folksy and “real” has the oppo­site effect.

Mandy Har­vey, how­ev­er, is above reproach. The deaf singer-song­writer per­forms bare­foot out of neces­si­ty, using her unclad soles to pick up on the vibra­tions of var­i­ous instru­ments through the floor­boards. It allows her to keep time and, in so doing, helps her to stay emo­tion­al­ly con­nect­ed to the oth­er musi­cians with whom she’s per­form­ing, as she told NPR ear­li­er this year, when she was one of 10 final­ists on Amer­i­ca’s Got Tal­ent.

“I’ll feel and con­cen­trate on the drums through the floor, through my feet and then the bass through your chest,” she said in an inter­view with Col­orado Pub­lic Radio. “And then if a sax­o­phone play­er is next to me then it will be on my arm. So you just des­ig­nate dif­fer­ent parts of your body so you can con­cen­trate on who’s play­ing what and when.”

Born with near per­fect pitch and a con­nec­tive tis­sue dis­or­der that impaired her hear­ing, she was able to pur­sue her love of music by rely­ing on hear­ing aids and lip read­ing until 18, when she final­ly lost her hear­ing for good, as a fresh­man Vocal Music Edu­ca­tion major at Col­orado State Uni­ver­si­ty.

While she has nev­er heard fel­low song­birds Adele or Tay­lor Swift, she has got­ten over the stage fright that plagued her when she still retained some hear­ing. Vocal­ly, she turns to mus­cle mem­o­ry and visu­al tuners to see her through.

Her tal­ent is such that some lis­ten­ers are con­vinced her deaf­ness is a pub­lic­i­ty stunt, a mis­per­cep­tion that eats at Wayne Con­nell, founder of the Invis­i­ble Dis­abil­i­ties Asso­ci­a­tion, a non-prof­it with whom Har­vey is active:

We’ve cre­at­ed an idea [of] how peo­ple are sup­posed to look when they’re bro­ken and so when you don’t fit that imag­i­nary mold, then it’s a trick, or you’re a liar — or you’re not real­ly bro­ken, so you should­n’t be doing cer­tain things.

See Har­vey per­form­ing bare­foot at the Kennedy Cen­ter on the 23rd anniver­sary of the Amer­i­cans with Dis­abil­i­ties Act, below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Eve­lyn Glen­nie (a Musi­cian Who Hap­pens to Be Deaf) Shows How We Can Lis­ten to Music with Our Entire Bod­ies

How Inge­nious Sign Lan­guage Inter­preters Are Bring­ing Music to Life for the Deaf: Visu­al­iz­ing the Sound of Rhythm, Har­mo­ny & Melody

How Did Beethoven Com­pose His 9th Sym­pho­ny After He Went Com­plete­ly Deaf?

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Meet the Characters Immortalized in Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side”: The Stars and Gay Rights Icons from Andy Warhol’s Factory Scene

in Art, Music | December 8th, 2017

Lou Reed weath­ered his share of bad press in the decades after leav­ing one of the most influ­en­tial bands in rock history—either for his famed iras­ci­bil­i­ty or his spells of lack­lus­ter song­writ­ing. Some­how, he always had a way of bounc­ing back, prov­ing again and again his cul­tur­al rel­e­vance. For exam­ple, when it seemed like he had cashed in all his cred­i­bil­i­ty with the godaw­ful “Orig­i­nal Rap­per” in the mid-eight­ies, he returned in 1989 with the grit­ty clas­sic rock and roll of New York (and played the White House at the request of his long­time fan and friend Vaclav Hav­el). Reed was a true sur­vivor of a down­town scene that claimed more casu­al­ties than it made stars, and he most­ly made sur­vival look pret­ty good.

When he released his first solo album after quit­ting the Vel­vet Under­ground in 1972, how­ev­er, it seemed like­ly Reed was head­ed for obscu­ri­ty. Lou Reed is most­ly a great col­lec­tion of (most­ly over­pro­duced) songs, “but it isn’t a ter­ri­bly inter­est­ing” record, writes Mark Dem­ing at All­mu­sic, “and it stands today more as a his­tor­i­cal curios­i­ty than any­thing else” for its ear­ly ver­sions of songs like “Berlin.” Not so the fol­low-up, Trans­former, an album boast­ing what may well be some of the best record­ings Reed ever made, like “Per­fect Day” and “Satel­lite of Love.” What made the dif­fer­ence? The influ­ence of David Bowie, who pro­duced with Mick Ron­son, didn’t hurt one bit.

Trans­former also hap­pens to con­tain the only song that broke Reed “through to the main­stream,” notes the Poly­phon­ic video above, the “rock clas­sic” hit, “Walk on the Wild Side.” The song draws its nar­ra­tive strength and its “incred­i­bly sub­ver­sive” nature from its sub­ject: the 60s Fac­to­ry scene sur­round­ing Andy Warhol, which, in effect, made Lou Reed, Lou Reed when Warhol took the Vel­vet Under­ground under his wing. The song reminds us that Reed was at his strongest when he told the tales of his milieu, whether that be the world of junkies, hus­tlers, and sex­u­al out­siders, or of fringe down­town artists unafraid to exper­i­ment with new iden­ti­ties and per­sonas.

These were shared worlds, and Reed knew them well enough to cap­ture them in a lit­er­ary frame pro­vid­ed by Nel­son Algren’s nov­el A Walk on the Wild Side (1956). Rather than cre­ate an adap­ta­tion of the book as he first intend­ed, Reed wrote about six com­pelling Fac­to­ry char­ac­ters, “Super­stars” in Warhol’s coterie, who embod­ied the edgy, coura­geous cool Reed made his theme. First up is Hol­ly Wood­lawn, a trans­gen­der woman who moved to New York from Mia­mi to escape dis­crim­i­na­tion. Warhol dis­cov­ered Wood­lawn work­ing the streets, and put her in films, “where she thrived,” the video notes, becom­ing “an impor­tant fig­ure in LGBTQ his­to­ry and, thanks to Lou Reed, in music his­to­ry, too.”

The next verse intro­duces us to anoth­er impor­tant mem­ber of Warhol’s inner cir­cle, Can­dy Dar­ling, who was also trans­gen­der and a star of Warhol’s films, and who inspired not only “Walk on the Wild Side” but “Can­dy Says” and, quite pos­si­bly, the Kinks’ “Lola.” Dar­ling is already famil­iar to those who know the Fac­to­ry scene, as is the sub­ject of the third vignette, Joe Dalle­san­dro, whom Warhol turned into a cult star in films like Flesh, and who—unlike most of the Fac­to­ry artists—actually achieved main­stream suc­cess, with roles in The Cot­ton Club and The Limey. (He also served as the crotch mod­el on the cov­er of the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fin­gers and the “top­less tor­so” on the cov­er of The Smiths’ debut album.)

As the video out­lines brief biogra­phies of each “Walk on the Wild Side” muse, we see that Reed wasn’t only pay­ing homage to his artis­tic com­mu­ni­ty of ori­gin, he also was also pre­serv­ing a pan­theon of cul­tur­al fig­ures who were impor­tant to the gay rights move­ment in one way or anoth­er, as well as to the 60s Warhol aes­thet­ic and the birth of glam rock in the 70s. “Walk on the Wild Side,” notes Poly­phon­ic, “gives us a great lit­tle glimpse into a his­tor­i­cal scene, and it helps us under­stand the peo­ple around Lou Reed that influ­enced the great artist he was.” With­out a doubt, Reed’s most endur­ing work comes from his sym­pa­thet­ic por­traits of the artists and hang­ers-on who made the world he wrote of so sexy, dan­ger­ous, com­plex, and intrigu­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lou Reed Cre­ates a List of the 10 Best Records of All Time

Lou Reed Sings “Sweet Jane” Live, Julian Schn­abel Films It (2006)

Lou Reed and Lau­rie Anderson’s Three Rules for Liv­ing Well: A Short and Suc­cinct Life Phi­los­o­phy

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.