Just us, and Pittsburgh. I wonder why.
OBIT There's something about Lou Reed's passing that brought out some bad writing and dubious conclusions. Perhaps the oldest fans feel obligated to write as though they're 25, full of Rock and Roll Gospel. In the Daily Beast, Elizabeth Wurtzel:
No, he's not. Let's look at that line again: He made the most coherent case yet for self-destruction as a lifestyle choice that was somehow more hopeful and rhapsodic than whatever they were selling under steeples. Here's exhibit A in the "Rock and Roll as a Means of Self-Redemption" nonsense. Ah, to be a heroin-addicted hustler in New York in the 70s! Sweating in an unheated abandoned apartment, unable to hav a bowel movement - it's so romantic.
That's enough. Sally can't dance, but she could probably write.
Look, Lou was Lou. He couldn't sing, and wasn't exactly Mr. BlazingHands on the guitar, but he had a certain uncompromising sense of cool that produced an interesting thing now and then. The only album I had was "Street Hassle," which had New Wave Cred when it came out, for some reason. It also had Bruce Springsteen doing a spoken introduction for the title tune, turning his "Tramps like us" like from "Born to Run" on its head. It's a nice little work. It has strings, of all things. But the album also has "Dirt," a song whose calamitous, drunken, stumbling incompetence stands as a glorious rebuke to all the polished, careful pop of the day. Without the chorus of Actual Singers chanting "Cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap Uptown dirt," though, it wouldn't have cohered into anything, and when you consider that it's really about dressing down someone who's just Dirt - cheap, as noted, and also from Uptown - you think, well, Cole Porter it isn't.
Cole Porter he wasn't. But there wasn't anyone else in rock whose name would pop up, and you'd think, with amusement and affection: Lou! Still at it! Wonder what he's up to now? He was an original.
