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Lou Reed has died


mosquito3

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I never was a real fan, but there was some decent material there.

 

As for age... yup, Reed was even older than I am.

 

As for the chord comment thing...

 

It's actually kind of how Pete Seeger described working with a lotta old time fiddlers (as I did.) They didn't care to do too many chord changes, although a lotta the pieces could do more than a few "extra" chords if desired. But even so, if you didn't know many chords, a lotta old time fiddlers would be perfectly happy with you just beating out an open G or A with no chord changes at all if you kept rhythm. Been there, done that.

 

As far as "more and you're into jazz," I think not. I've heard some folks do "st james infimary" with what amounts to just an Am chord... some adding an E and/or F/Dm or...

 

m

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"One chord is fine," he once said, alluding to his bare-bones guitar style. "Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you're into jazz."

 

Love that quote. I can't claim to be a big fan. I discovered him through NIN when he went backstage and hung out with the band in a documentary. I asked myself, "who's the old dude?" I found out, alright.

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Thing is, some 50 years later you're doggone nearly forgotten - or worse, judged by the standards of the era.

 

Reed's line in "Walk on the wild side" about "the colored girls" already has been hit for being racist which I'll wager was not exactly what had been in mind. It's unfair without knowing the linguistic ethos in which he was writing.

 

It's interesting too how basically the 3-minute miracle is expected in current "popular" music if it's to get much air or cable tv play. So... will Reed be judged by standards of the 1900s or 2100s? Against what other combination lyric and tune writers? I dunno.

 

And all of that will at best be in relatively "academic" circumstances.

 

What 25-year-old music pro or even weekend warrior today can tell you much about differences in arrangement concepts in the swing era and what that might have to do with current rock or country arranging? Or the poetry of material from the late 30s into the '50s in Swing that others might not get into?

 

Reed's dead; we all will be. Regardless he may have nudged a piece of the body musical (the musical version of "the body politic), in 50 years? Then what? No one might today claim to know, but I'll wager it'll be something of a footnote rather than a headline. He was too late to be on Sullivan's TV show or on radio or television's Hit Parade. ...Too late for general recognition of his material beyond some perspectives of cultural change that may or may not be seen as "progressive" for culture in 50 years.

 

It also was pretty much "urban" music in foundation, a different "genus" rather than "genre" when it comes to any sort of "pop" music or any other sort of art when compared to the entire stream across genre in all arts at a given period of time.

 

m

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Some people like to go out dancing

And some people, they got to work

And there's even some evil mothers

They're gonna tell ya that everything is just dirt...

That women never really faint

And that villains always blink their eyes

And that children are the only ones that blush

And that life is just to die...

 

"Sweet Jane"

 

I've spent my life avoiding those evil mothers...the best advice ever dispensed in a rock song.

Dammit I'll miss having him in the world...

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Never really a big fan, but I did like some of his stuff. I always thought his music was like real New York junkie street level music. Not meaning anything degrading by it, just that his music showed a slice of real life and it wasn't always real pretty. (If that makes any sense.)

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When I was a kid there was no MTV. When their finally was we didn't have it in my house. So a lot of my new music came to me through a few radio shows and TV shows like Radio 1990, Friday Night Videos and Saturday Night Live. I'll never forget this one. It was the first time I really paid attention to Lou Reed.

 

 

 

 

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