vulgarweed | Memento Mori

Those of you who know me in real life, or have been following me online for long enough, ought to know two things:

1) I was a professional rock critic full-time for many years. I've been writing about rock'n'roll on a freelance basis off and on all along almost my whole life, starting with the Xeroxed underground rock 'zine I started in '84 when I was 14.

2) The Velvet Underground have always been my bellwether, since I first tracked down a copy of the banana album when I was 14. My love for them and the whole avant-rock/punk/post-punk tradition they spawned has always run hand-in-hand with my lifelong love of metal. They're not that far removed. "Sister Ray" IS metal. But whenever I am in need and lonely, it's always been the VU I go to for comfort and challenging. They only ever made four albums, but those four albums have never failed to get me through my worst years.

So in light of those facts, I am absolutely gutted by Lou Reed's death. So I've been spending most of my time in the last 48 hours on Facebook, where most of my f2f-friends/music-writer colleagues are. That's where I'm finding comfort right now.

I'm working on a long post about this, with links, for later. Right now, I just need to be with people who understand, and they're mostly on Facebook.

There's so LITTLE overlap between the fandoms that sustain me and lift me up. That BOTHERS me. But that's an issue for another time. Right now, I leave you with this. Lou Reed and John Cale playing "Heroin" at the Bataclan in Paris, 1972

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5Fk7PQLYZw

(click and listen. Give it a few minutes of your life.)