Komedy Koven

Wednesday, May 14, 2003
 
GRAD'S KORNER
I've decided to reprint an essay I wrote when I was fourteen years old, for the benefit of interested archivists:

LOU REED, or: "I'll give you a tissue." compiled by Gradley Q. Wombish © 1992

Lou Reed was a powerful and glorious man. It can be said that he still is to this very day. He was born sometime before the late 1960's when his first album with a banana on the cover called the Velvet Underground and nico came out. A famous artist (who is quite possibly dead now) named Andy Warhol said that he liked it and had something to do with making it. It was a good album. My favorite song on that album was the one about leather. Lou Reed was an accountant after the band broke up and came out with his first album called Lou Reed. I have not heard it before but heard it wasn't very good. His next album had the walk on the wildside and that was a very good song that a lot of people liked. This made Lou Reed very famous for a short period of time. Lou Reed made some more records in the 1970's and their were two good ones. One of his good records was called Sally Can't Dance and the other one was called Street Hassle. Another one, Rock and Roll Heart had a good anthem called Rock and Roll Heart, but over all wasn't as good as the other two records - with good songs including I want to be black and Animal Language. Both of these songs address issues of human wants and desires, and something Lou Reed desired was control. One of his new songs is called What's Good and questioned these desires, making you wonder if he ever got control. I don't know. I do know that despite failures he had in getting popular he did manage to control himself long enough to make the record that was his greatest epic, it was called Growing Up in Public and could be considered to be a swan's song. Alcoholism, wants and desires, love, Cooking, Religion, smiles, poverty and oral gratification are just some of the important issues faced by Lou Reed in this record. From the spirit lifting triumph of How do you Speak to an Angel - (tackling questions of love + speech therapy as well as the subtle religious themes) to the lilting ballad of Teach the Gifted Children that proves the importance of youth and self-drowning what never ceases to amaze me is the honest, powerful, glorious, effervescent loquaciousness of Lou Reed. Very astonishing for me was So Alone which represented for me a truth about lonliness, love, neurosis (not eros), slumber, and of course anatomy. Once again Lou Reed proves how smart he is, and none more so that on this, his greatest of glorious triumphs. Not one other musician that I have heard of as impacted me so much as Lou Reed who has impacted and tried to control many other people also. The beautiful melodies of his keyboard players and the ever-transmogrifying effect of his vocal progressions have throughout the years been an inspiration to some or many people. His own wife was very moved by his very smart personality that she designed many incredible and outstanding album covers for him, obviously inspired by his geniusness. The continuing career that Lou Reed has had from the late 1960's into the future has been creative, moving, powerful, inspirational, magical, mysterious, legendary, live, transforming, inspired by the urban decay of New York, glorious, and best described by Lou Reed himself when once he said sha-la-la man.







we take off our pants... so you don't have to.