lou reed

i'm quick to admit that i'm not well versed on lou reed. when i was 16, i purchased a cd of velvet underground's greatest hits and that's probably as much play as lou reed ever got in my life. i did listen to that one cd a whole lot though. and at the impressionable age of 16, it meant something to me. they were something of a revelation at the time. from what i understood, they were from hippie times and yet they weren't hippies. they wrote dirty, daring, sometimes odd rock and roll. they weren't tough guys... they were more strange than tough but they were still cool. the sound of the velvet underground was honest and unpolished. they were more soul than science and that was something i could (and still can) get behind.

lou reed seemed to be the kinda famous i could possibly deal with. he wasn't overly famous but famous enough that if you approached him, chances are you were really a fan of his. the cliche about lou reed and the velvet underground is that they didn't sell a lot of albums, but a big percentage of their fan base went on to form bands of their own. a lot of other rock and roll legends have bigger legions of fans, but lou reed's fan base are the 300 spartans of the rock and roll universe. they will fuck some shit up and make a lot a whole lot of noise.

when someone like lou reed dies, i tend to feel bad that i didn't embrace his music more while he was here. it almost feels like cheating for me to consider going on a lou reed listening rampage now. so i can't say that there's a void in my life that now can't be filled. but i feel pretty confident in saying that there'd be a void in rock and roll without lou reed. his influence can be found in every low-fi, low production, any shade of punk, genre since his time. rock and roll's a lot grittier and more blunt because of lou reed. i can't imagine a much more important rock and roll legacy to leave behind.