LOU REED - TRANSFORMER. DAY 11

LOU REED - TRANSFORMER

I wont lie and pretend I miraculously discovered the greatness of Lou Reed on my own. Like most things I got into early, Lou Reed was uncovered by teenage detective work through the pages of Rolling Stone. When I borrowed a copy form the library (yep, CDs from the library) I recognised the songs but didn't know who sang them.  Like anything that happened before your time, usually the timeline of events means nothing in the discovery. Like, you read WW2 started and Hitler dies 5 mins later, it didn't happen like that, but that’s how your brain learns the information. The same could be said for music History. The Velvet Underground could have been at their peak when Transformer was released and because they were both accessible simultaneously it didn't matter that it wasn't factually true...am I making ANY sense at all? 

Well, to dispute the very point I just made - I actually did have respect for the difference between Lou Reed in VU and Lou Reed solo. It obviously sounds different but there’s a subtleness in Transformer that mirrors the growth in Reed. New York City is the overriding flavour here. At 15 when you listen to this and you’ve never been anywhere, you can almost feel hip and relevant and on the cusp of something great..New York style. 

I owe my love of Lou Reed to REM who always mentioned the Velvet Underground in interviews and since I obsessively read those interviews it was a good staring off point to learn more and give me something new to read. 

When I was 15 I saw Lou Reed at a short lived music festival that was never held again called ‘Alternative Nation’. I mean, with a cutting edge name like that I’m surprised it didn't take over the world. Being the good Catholic school kid that I was I couldn't dye my hair any more outrageously than the magic silver white engineered purple so my best friend and I added the extra oomph of green yellow and blue with food dye. Unfortunately that master plan went awry when it poured with rain for a good six hours straight and we were left with watered down rainbow streaks across our foreheads. As chaotic as it was, that festival had one of the best line ups ever: 

NIN

Faith No More

Ween

Violent Femmes

L7

Live 

Cosmic Psycho’s

The Tea Party

Primus 

Bodycount 

Lou Reed deserved more than an ungrateful bunch of drenched turds chanting for Faith No more and NIN...but he was composed, unrelenting and epic. Just like Transformer. 

GRANT LEE BUFFALO - MIGHTY JOE MOON. DAY 7

GRANT LEE BUFFALO - MIGHTY JOE MOON

What’s the appropriate aural version of saying for ‘sight for sore eyes’? Whatever it is, it applies to Mighty Joe Moon. As I pressed play there was an audible sigh of relief for the familiarity the first few chords of ‘Lone Star Song’ provides. 

Grant Lee Buffalo is layered with haunting guitars and organ but its comforting rather than mournful...soothing in that Mellon Collie and the Infinite sadness kind of way before that album existed. Can a reference be a reference if it didn't even exist yet? 

Grant Lee Buffalo supported REM on the Monster world tour in 95. Listening to this album conjures up strong memories of half standing half sitting punters, distracted by their conversations and nursing beers in the warm summery wind of the Myer Music Bowl. I was 15 and my tickets were my Christmas present. Being the ultimate in teenage cool I was there with my Mum who said many times afterwards that she feared being crushed by a sea of Doc Martins or accidentally stoned by the second hand smoke wafting over the crowd. I was supposed to go with this girl Sarah, but being the flaky, unreliable bimbo she was, she flaked out. This experience would set the tone for the next few years until at Uni I met my most reliable best friend who came to just about anything with me...even Savage Garden...twice. For those in between years and even after, I would skip the bullshit of others and go on my own...or with my Dad. Like I said, I’m as cool as they get. 

Around the time of the REM tour, Grant Lee Buffalo was on high rotation on ‘rage’ with the music video for ‘Mockingbirds’ which became a constant in my dream life. I still dream once a year that I’m in the video in a big bird costume in B&W. It’s likely that I spent too many weekends staying up all night watching music videos. 

Mighty Joe Moon makes me think of the in between seasons like Autumn and Spring for reasons that I don’t understand. Its the kind of album I’d listen to if I was at College somewhere in America and had boy trouble. When I was at Uni though the only Grant Lee Buffolo connection was the pastry chef where I worked part time was obsessed with them. I always found it odd...he had long blond hair, drove an old wagon that broke down constantly and surfed. This equation messed with my head as the internal stereotype machine I use everyday, couldn't put all these pieces together in a way that fit. Do surfers listen to wistful alt-country? Isn't Jack Johnson more their thing? 

STAND OUT TRACKS: 

# All of them: Grant Lee Phillips could sing the instruction booklet to a microwave and it would sound prophetic

NIRVANA - NEVERMIND. DAY 2

NIRVANA - NEVERMIND

I forgot I had this album and I forgot I was so into Nirvana at one stage...which stage? That 14 yo ‘I hate everything’ stage when I used a cricket bat to jam my bedroom door closed and spent most of my spare time in muted darkness. I suspect based on how we all know Kurt Cobain’s life turned out, he kind of felt the same as I did. 

So that’s why Nevermind is like a timepiece, capturing a moment when music changed and then evolved because of Neverminds impact. If you were in 2020 and you asked Doc and Marty to take you to back to a time when music felt alive in that self-hatred, raining all the time kind of way then they would set the DeLorean to arrive in 1991 and maybe you could take a scenic tour through the next few years of Seattle’s influence on music. 

I didn't buy this album until later..maybe because I was 12 when it was released and we didn't even have a CD player until I was almost 13. Times have changed. 

I haven’t listened to Nevermind for years. I had to take a break halfway through my second listen and watch some Ellen for comic relief. Clearly, I’m old and boring now but I’m amazed I used to do my homework listening to this. It demands attention and maybe I’m just more aware of it than I used to be. Smells like Teen Spirit still has lyrics that I sing along to and yet have no idea what I’m saying.  I’m probably singing the weird Al Yankovic version. 

Considering Dave Grohl is still making music, I wonder where Kurt Cobain would be if he didn’t die at his peak...its common knowledge that his suicide note quoted Neil Young: ‘It's better to burn out, than to fade away.’ True - it probably cements your status as icon of the ‘prozac generation’. Plus the Nirvana catalogue has funded Courtney Love’s lifestyle of addiction wrapped inside celebrity until now. Kurt listened to REM’s Automatic for the People before he killed himself. I read he felt that some of Nirvana’s music had limitations and aspired to make his next record more like Automatic; with orchestra and melancholy that lulls you rather than yells at you. Cobain had serious undiagnosed stomach problems, his heroin addiction was in part to numb his stomach pain and since the stomach is the epicenter of your emotions I can understand why.

Every album I have has an accompanying story and here’s Nevermind’s: 

My best friend at school was obsessed with Nirvana, listening to Nevermind non stop on a cassette tape (she didn't have a CD player either)..so anyway one night, rather spooky outside, howling wind and black as ink..no moon. We were listening to the tape and lamenting school the next day when it automatically jumped to the B side and started playing songs from the A side backwards..I swear it! I’m a sissy when it comes to stuff like this so I’m not embarrassed to admit I did my best not to listen...but in between trying to fold the pillow over my head I hear out of nowhere this creepy voice become audible through the noise of backward gushing guitars and my bf’s hears her brothers name along with some other words I can’t remember.I was shit scared but curious and while she continued to listen to it repeatedly...I don’t think I listened to Nevermind for 2 years after.

KILLER TRACKS: 

#8 Drain You

#5 Lithium - I’m so happy cause today I found my friends - they’re in my head

The most melodic song on Nevermind..best lyrically too...perfection

#2 In Bloom - Nature is a whore

Killer Harmony’s and every element sounds full and all encompassing 

#3 Come as you are - take your time, hurry up

You cant fake a voice like Kurt Cobain’s...he even enunciates with self loathing