The 500 - #194 - Transformer - Lou Reed

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by Los Angeles-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. 

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Album: #194

Album Title: Transformer

Artist: Lou Reed

Genre: Glam Rock, Pop Rock

Recorded: Trident Studios, London

Released: September, 1972

My age at release: 7

How familiar was I with it before this week: Somewhat

Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at position #109, moving up 85 spots

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Andy's Chest

I am excited to introduce a new guest poster to The 500 Blog series – Jennifer Jones. I have been friends with Jennifer for more than 25 years, having met her through her husband Oscar. Not only was Oscar the goaltender on my tournament hockey team, he was also a talented musician and is still part of the live music scene here in the city of London, Ontario. There were many nights when my wife, Jen and I would be in the audience at a local watering hole (The Wick, The Brass Door, The Salt Lounge, Call The Office) while Oscar played bass. I always appreciated her perspective on music, as her tastes varied from mine.

Last November, Jennifer was posting photos of some of her favourite albums of all time. Among those posts was the cover to this week’s record, Transformer by Lou Reed. I dropped her a line and asked if she would be interested in sharing a few thoughts and, delightfully, she agreed. Here is her post.

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As a really young teenager, the soundtrack of my life was monopolized by the Velvet Underground, and by Lou Reed in particular. It’s hard to explain my love for Lou: Despite his infamy, I can say that this love has been long-lived and has zero chance of dying.

Guitarist, singer and songwriter Lou Reed (Circa 1975) 

To me, Lou’s music is about stories: Stories that paint a picture of the people he surrounded himself with (or who happened to surround him) and the kinds of things that irked or inspired them. These stories are so raw and colourful and real, I’ve always felt a little transported back to Andy Warhol’s Factory and the dirty streets of New York. (Holly, good for you, girl - I would have gone too!) I feel like Lou did with his music what Andy did with his art, which was to create these stark, unapologetic snapshots capturing – even elevating - the culture around them and reflecting this back to those living it - and to anyone paying attention.

American visual artist Andy Warhol (left) and Reed in the 70s.
Warhol's studio in New York was called "The Factory" and
was a famous hang-out for artists, musicians and celebrities. 

I was later to the Transformer party, for sure, but since I first heard it, it’s always been my favourite: It is simply impossible to get sick of this album. Like my love for Lou, I find it hard to explain, but I suspect it’s because it is textured with a little of everything, from the catty, campy, burlesque (New York Telephone Conversation, Good Night Ladies), to the sweet, melodious, slightly tragic (Perfect Day and Satellite of Love) and of course the ultimate story-scape anthem that is Walk on the Wild Side.

Album cover for the single, Walk On The Wild Side. An
iconic song and Reed's best known, Rolling Stone ranked
it #223 on The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

Although some of the songs were written or recorded earlier than Transformer, every single one belongs here - and has to be here - to make up this magnificent whole. Even in the midst of some of Lou’s most celebrated work, Andy’s Chest is still one of my all-time favourite Lou songs, less for the honour it gives Warhol (wonderful in itself) but more for the magical intimacy of its tiny, nonsensical, surely drug-fueled, vignettes. For me, this song has always been a kind of demented lullaby - maybe it’s all that swooping and rocking.

Marilyn Diptych - one of Warhol's best know art pieces.

While Transformer does feel a little gentler in some ways than what I think of as typical Lou (because of David Bowie’s involvement and influence?), Lou’s trademark “snark” is definitely felt all the way through. The connection between Lou and Bowie is interesting: I always saw Lou as much grittier and rougher around the edges, but maybe paired with Bowie’s grace and elegance, the match was all the better.

Friends and musical collaborators, Bowie (left) and Reed (right)

take a humorous photo with Iggy Pop. Collectively, with

14 records on The 500 list (as musicians).

I like to think about the album title and all that it evokes: Lou transforming himself, becoming “someone else, someone good”, moving in a different, separate direction (I’m So Free, Hangin’ Round), and the evolution/ transformation/becoming that occurs in some of the songs (Make Up, Walk on the Wild Side).

There’s an addictively bold, infectious, prideful energy to all of Transformer’s stories that draws you back to listen again and again - and again! To me, overall, Transformer is disarmingly poetic, a little fantastical, and a little snide – just like Lou.

Guest Blogger - Jennifer Jones

The 500 - #293 - White Light / White Heat - The Velvet Underground

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by Los Angeles-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. 

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Album: #293

Album Title: White Light/White Heat

Artist: The Velvet Underground

Genre: Noise Rock, Experimental Rock, Art Rock

Recorded: Mayfair Sound, New York City

Released: January, 1968

My age at release: 2

How familiar was I with it before this week: Not at all

Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #272 (moving up 21 spots)

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist:  White Light/White Heat

I am delighted to welcome a guest blogger to write about White Light/White Heat, the second studio release by New York City rock band The Velvet Underground. It is the second time I have introduced a guest blogger whom I have never met in person, the first being two years ago when Facebook friend Karen Snell stepped in with a post about PJ Harvey’s Rid Of Me.

This time it is another social media friend whom I have yet to meet personally. Using the pseudonym, Various Artists, he hosts a website, blog and podcast under the banner My Life In Concerts. It is a multi-media diary of experiences attending concerts in the Southwestern Ontario region between 1975 and the present.

After reading a couple of his blog posts, it became apparent the author and I have much in common. We are both Londoners of about the same age, with a love of music who (independently of each other) chronicle our interests through blogging and podcasting.

This summer, we chatted about our interests in music and, generally, about our blogging pursuits. About five weeks ago, Various Artists posted a piece about seeing John Cale, formerly of The Velvet Underground, perform in London in 1983. I asked if he would consider guest blogging for the upcoming VU record and he agreed. Here it is.

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I heard Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side on the radio for the first time in early January, 1973. It was life-changing.

From the song’s New York underground demimonde subject matter to its slow, cool, jazzy sound to Reed’s Sprechgesang vocals, it was unlike anything I had ever heard. It was hugely impactful to a young bored-in-the-burbs misfit who found the world and sound of this record intriguing.

It kicked off a life-long love of the music of Lou Reed. However, it wasn’t until 1974 that I found out that Reed had previously been in a 1960s group called The Velvet Underground.

Over the next few years, as I delved more deeply into rock’s history -- especially its “alternative” history—I became increasingly fascinated with everything I read about this way-ahead-of-its time, quintessential NYC band in tandem with a growing obsession with Andy Warhol’s life, art, and milieu, especially his silver ‘60s Factory period that the Velvets initially sprung from.

Warhol, second from left, with The Velvet Underground

I was learning about all this while also reading up on the nascent, contemporary downtown New York punk rock scene that was unfolding in the then-mid-70s.

I was dying to hear what the VU sounded like, which was characterized as dark, abrasive, arty, confrontational music wedded to lyrics with highly transgressive themes. In other words, it was right up my alley.

But it was almost impossible to access their records at that time and I knew no one who owed any. I had an idea in my head of what they might sound like. But I could only guess.

The Velvet Underground (1968)

When I finally got to hear the Velvets in early 1979, I was baffled. It was their largely sparse, introspective, almost folk-ish self-titled third album that became my entry into their music. It was followed quickly by Loaded, their final LP from 1970: a snappy’ n’ catchy collection of pop-rockers. While I immediately adored both albums, they weren’t anything at all like what I was expecting.

Instead, 1968’s White Light/White Heat -- their most menacing, malevolent and uncompromising release -- was the album I had been expecting to hear.

I finally got to purchase and listen to their hugely influential 1967 debut—The Velvet Underground and Nico, my favourite album of all time—upon its Canadian reissue in the spring of 1982, with WL/WH being reissued early in ’83. It seems almost everyone in my music circle was picking up and listening to these reissues while reading Jean Stein and George Plimpton’s oral history of Warhol Superstar Edie Sedgwick, Edie: An American Biography.

The song styles on the debut can be broken down into three categories: discordant experimentation with taboo lyrics (The Black Angel’s Death Song, Heroin, etc.); gentler, reflective material (Sunday Morning, I’ll Be Your Mirror, etc.); and the straight-ahead rockers (I’m Waiting for the Man, There She Goes Again, etc.)

The band then went on to make a trio of albums, with each focusing on one of those three styles.

WL/WH is the dark, paranoid, speed-freak noisefest and boundary pusher. It also takes a lot of cues from free jazz: it’s more improvisational and closer to their live performances of that time than their debut.

And no matter how much music changes, this is an album that will NEVER pass as Easy Listening. Particularly Side Two.

Multiple versions of White Light/White Heat purchased
by Various Artists throughout the years.

With Nico gone and Reed firing Warhol as their manager (although he was back again for the album’s black-on-black cover design), the Velvets hurtled headfirst into the extremes of the band’s sound and preoccupations.

Reed stated that he purposefully wanted to go "as high and as hard as we could”, while John Cale has said it was a “very rabid record” and “consciously anti-beauty." However, the resulting over-amped blur was not exactly what the group members had wanted either. While they were going for loud and aggressive, the high levels of distortion and compression were more the result of production naivete and error.

Lou Reed (left) and John Cale

Regardless, the corrosive-sounding results have influenced noiseniks, feedbackers, and avant-gardists for years, from No Wave bands through Sonic Youth and beyond.

The focus on extremes extends to the LP’s subject matter as well, which was pretty controversial for the late ‘60s. Subjects range from descriptions of euphoric, amphetamine-fuelled adrenaline (the title cut), a smacked-out orgy among drag queens and sailors (Sister Ray); a dead girlfriend (I Heard Her Call My Name); an operation gone horrifically wrong (Lady Godiva’s Operation); a macabre tale of manslaughter (The Gift), and the anticipation of a female orgasm (Here She Comes Now), the album’s only pensive moment).

1968 magazine ad promoting the record

When the band released this album in early 1968, it was so out-there that it fared even worse than its predecessor, barely scraping into the bottom of the US Top 200. This was the antithesis of the peace-and-love hippy vibes of the time (although I love the late 1960s music from both coasts).

While it sold little in its time, it has since gone on to sell half-a-million copies and win critical acclaim over the decades while laying the groundwork for punk and more discordant rock that followed.

Once unavailable, there are now box set and deluxe editions of the album. For a certain type of musician and person, WL/WH will continue to be an inspirational touchstone.

There is a famous quote from Brian Eno: "The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band." Actually, the first album sold a bit more than that, but his point is taken.

Lou Reed and John Cale both moved on to successful, idiosyncratic careers, with Reed dying in 2013. Meanwhile, Cale also went on to produce a number of classic LPs from Patti Smith, The Stooges, and others, and is about to turn 80. He’s soon releasing a new album and going on a celebratory tour. Congrats, John!

Highly Recommended Viewing: Todd Haynes superb 2021 documentary, The Velvet Underground.

The 500 - #316 - Self Titled - The Velvet Underground

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by Los Angeles-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. 

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Album: # 316

Album Title: Self Titled

Artist: The Velvet Underground

Genre: Alternative Rock, Art Punk, Post-Punk

Recorded: TTG Studios, Los Angeles, California

Released: March, 1969

My age at release: 3

How familiar was I with it before this week: Not at all

Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, #143 - moving up 173 spots

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Candy Says

"Candy says,
I've come to hate my body
And all that it requires in this world"

These lyrics begin the opening track, Candy Says, on the 1967, self-titled third record by New York-based, experimental rock band The Velvet Underground. The song was written by vocalist, guitarist and primary songwriter Lou Reed. It is told from the perspective of a transgender woman and is based on Candy Darling. Darling was, like The Velvet Underground, part of  a clique of performers and artists promoted by Andy Warhol in the mid-60s.

The feeling being described by the speaker is called gender dysphoria, the sensation of discomfort experienced by people whose gender identity differs from the sex assigned to them at birth or their sex-related, physical characteristics.

I am far from an expert on topics related to gender identity and expression but, as an elementary school educator, I am becoming better informed and increasingly more compassionate. A common mantra in my profession is "Maslow before Bloom", which promotes the notion that educators must ensure  most of the conditions presented in Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs are met before a child can begin to achieve the learning objectives set out by Benjamin Bloom's Taxonomy. (See graphic below).

Simply put, a child can not be expected to remember, understand, apply or analyse information if their basic physiological, safety and belonging requirements have not been met. Consequently, my colleagues and I prioritize each student's needs in order to maximize their success. As one might expect, this differs from building to building and from student to student. At one school, a breakfast program may be required to ensure every child has access to a nutritious meal.. At another, the establishment of a Gay/Straight Alliance within the student body might provide a sense of belonging to a student who is silently coming to terms with their own sexuality.

As I listened to The Velvet Underground this week, I tried to imagine the New York City art scene in the late-60s. Andy Warhol's Superstars and the infamous Factory buildings (an art studio that moved to four locations in Manhattan between 1963 - 87) have been featured in many films, both fictional and documentaries. Consequently, it wasn't a big leap of imagination for me to visualize this strange, psychedelic artistic space filled with a wild collection of eclectic, free-spirited and drug-fueled characters. David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Liza Minelli, Debra Harry, Jean-Michel Baquiat and, of course, Candy Darling and The Velvet Underground made The Factory their home and base of artistic, social and sexual discovery.

Warhol in one of the studio spaces at The Factory, NYC

In a way, Warhol was also recognizing the importance of Maslow before Bloom. The Factory was a "safe space" for many people who often did not feel they “belonged, including those whom Warhol called "sexual radicals". Thus, artistic expression flourished. Not all of it was good, but some of it - such as this week's record - was exceptional.

A "Happening" at The Factory

The story of Candy Darling, who died of lymphoma at the age of 29, also made me think about the French idiom, "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" ("the more things change, the more they stay the same". We  have come a long way since gays and trans-people existed in a hostile world -- save a few, progressive, non-judgmental collectives in major cities. Yet hostility toward them persists amid growing societal tolerance.

Nearly 240 anti-LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer) bills have been filed in the United States this year -- most of them targeting trans-people. Educators still often hear hateful, vitriolic criticism of even our efforts to provide a sense of safety and belonging for these students. Candy Darling was, according to her biographer Cynthia Carr, relentlessly bullied in high school and, at age 16, a group of high-school boys tried to lynch her.

Darling and Warhol (1971)

I am proud of many things in my 25-year teaching career. My math and literacy instruction skills have advanced significantly and I even have a pretty good handle on the science and dance curriculum -- two subjects with which I had the least experience.

However, topping all is my expanding capacity for compassion and understanding. I will always put Maslow before Bloom, and I work tirelessly to make every student feel safety and belonging.

"Candy says,

I've come to hate my body

And all that it requires in this world"

Hopefully, the education community will become a refuge for future Candys to feel safer in a harbour of belonging where they can develop and be fulfilled as the human beings they are.