No offense but, ugh! "Studying" rock music kills the point. It's like politely listening to hot jazz 
in a classical music venue. Rock is of the gut and heart, not so much of the mind (although the mind 
plays a role). Anytime it gets over-studied and over-wraught, it gets boring.

I suppose the analytical among us will say "everything" is worth studying, and I guess there's an 
argument to be made there. But I choose not to have it. For me, certain music is visceral and 
certain music is intellectual. They both have a strong effect, when done properly. Lou Reed's best 
work is more a gut-punch than a thought-piece. I would argue, that's why his music inspired so many 
people to form bands. They didn't know exactly what they liked about the music, they just wanted to 
do the same thing. VU's best and Reed's best reonate in places where other rock music wasn't 
resonating at that time, and it's a safe bet that where it resonated deepest was far, far away from 
"studying" it.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Lewis" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, October 29, 2013 9:48 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Excellent Lou Reed rememberance


> I've always felt that an artist like Lou Reed is well within the range of
> our attention; I once wrote a review of the "Coney Island Baby" 30th
> Anniversary reissue for the ARSC Journal that didn't make it into the
> Journal. What was particularly interesting about it was that the issued
> "Coney Island Baby" LP (1975) was an excellent, but inexplicably short
> project. The CD included a batch of unproduced tracks containing versions
> of songs that did not appear in Reed's published oeuvre until "Street
> Hassle (1978)," an album of which the filler material had a strangely
> retrospective feel, but the listener had no frame of reference for the
> selections. The frame of reference was supplied, decades later, by the
> "Coney Island Baby" 30th Anniversary reissue -- these were tunes from
> "Coney Island Baby" that were never finished because Reed's relationship
> with RCA then went south. Reed's career is full of fascinating instances
> like this that involve the vagaries of studio recording, technology -- he
> embraced Manfred Schunke and binaural sound at one point -- revisiting past
> selections, ambitious efforts met with commercial and critical
> indifference. There has been a whole range of scholarship that has grown up
> around The Velvet Underground as their five studio and two live LPs proved
> only the tip of the iceberg in regard to their recorded output.
>
> Lou Reed did have contact with scholarship, such as in the incident
> described here: http://www.jazzwax.com/2013/10/lou-reed-1942-2013.html
>
> He's an interesting guy, and definitely made major -- and positive --
> contributions and changes to pop music; a deep thinker and someone whose
> work tended to have impact in the long term rather than the short. Lou's
> work may not appeal to all tastes -- it never did -- but he is more than
> worthy of study.
>
> David Lewis
> Lebanon OH
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 9:07 PM, Tom Fine <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
>
>> Marc Myers hits all the right points. Many obituary writers clearly didn't
>> understand Lou Reed, the NYC arts scene of the 60's through 80's, and
>> pretty much anything else that was hip and different. Lou Reed's influence
>> on a certain strain of rock music cannot be overstated. He may also have
>> influenced the fact that the Czech Republic is a stable democracy today
>> (one news report indicated that the Velvet Underground strongly influenced
>> a young Vaclav Havel to become a poet dissident).
>>
>> http://www.jazzwax.com/2013/**10/lou-reed-1942-2013.html<http://www.jazzwax.com/2013/10/lou-reed-1942-2013.html>
>>
>> -- Tom Fine
>
>