Lou Reed: The Blue Mask

discuss. title track is the most devastating, raging piece of music ever recorded by the man. also, the band is perhaps the best he ever played with during this particular recording. my opinions.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/410Kqe-9BaL._SS400_.jpg

best lou album ever?

woops

I listened to this album last night, yeah. Or I mean...this morning. I get confused sometimes. I bought it many years ago simply because I'd heard the title track on the radio and went completely entirely nuts over it. I've said it before on this board, but what I have is a cassette of an interview he did about that song and how he interpreted the lyrics. He said he thought it was the best thing he'd ever done, lyrically.

So anyway, back in the day, I'd bought this album on the strength of that song. And it disappointed me, at the time. But I think it's okay now. I enjoyed it. A little bit too concentrated on trying to carry things with lyrics and poetry, but I did enjoy it. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got VU bootlegs to listen to...

i like Waves of Fear more than the Blue Mask.

I said my peace about the album here. At times too studied and often awkward, it's still leagues better than his seventies work.

I've said it before on this board, but what I have is a cassette of an interview he did about that song and how he interpreted the lyrics. He said he thought it was the best thing he'd ever done, lyrically.

i'm really curious to know if this is online anywhere or if there is a transcription or something because I would love to read it

i think maybe wfmu's blog posted this interview thing? i think i have it somewhere ...

Definitely the best Lou Reed album, by a wide margin. And while there definitely is some awkwardness, and at times it's flat-out goofy (e.g. the Syl-vi-a chorus of Heavenly Arms) it's still an incredibly great record, one of the 80s best.

Far and away my favorite solo album of his. The guitar interplay is a thing of beauty, too.

Fernando Saunders is probably my favorite part of the whole thing

"Sylvie and I got out our Ouiji board..."

you know what lou calls Fernando Saunders' bass playing? "Fernandizing."

i actually kinda admire this and the subsequent records' goofy qualities. i mean, his newfound domesticity and *gasp* love of life came as quite a relief to many a long-time fan when the thing was first released in '82--you know, after Lou had spent nearly a decade grappling with self-defeating nihilism (and with his own head largely up his own ass). also, unlike GUIP, it was actually good--with some fierce (and lovely) guitar playing even. who could ask for more?

and he makes domesticity sound scarier than transvestites, dope pushers, and overdoses.

well, yeah.. also, his dalliance with the bottle wasn't a very good idea either (and it made him look square to hipsters, natch--"how could you, Lou? i shot up to your song and you're drinkin' bud???").

well, it inspired one of my favorite couplets: "Things are seldom good, they go from bad to weird/Hey, gimme another scotch with my beer."

wait, Blue Mask is a "love of life" album??? I could see New Sensations or Coney Island Baby but I've always heard this one as being pretty dark. kind of like the clearheaded sense of self that occurs just after the depression phase of the hangover subisdes...

Actually it comes across as one of his more life-affirming, optimistic albums, IMO.

oh yeah, it gave him an excuse to write another batch of great songs, sure. but career wise, it was damn near suicidal (how many times did i have to hear people exclaim: “I liked him much better when he was all fucked up on drugs, man.”?).

xxp

tru dat. also, Lou is obviously 'in character' on the title track, duh.

meanwhile Legendary Hearts remains out of print.

not to me (heh).

I dunno about this album

it's really Lou's band at their jazziest; with maybe his greatest rhythm section ever: Fernando + Doane Perry on drums! (wonder what ever happened to him?)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doane_Perry

good grief, he joined Jethro Tull in 1984!!??

Average Guy is a funny song - the sound of this is hard for me to get over. All the fretless bass and way-too-crisp guitars, the gated drums, etc. Sonically it doesn't appeal to me.

well, it was the '80s, you know. sign o' the times.

hmm, i wonder if Lou had taken a liking to Chic's early-'80s records?

Lou Reed is one of those artists whose sheer prolificness and contrarianism defies all of my attempts at digestion of his catalog, even with the benefit of internet cliffs' notes devices.

I do know that I pretty much always skip over songs from this album when they come up on random iTunes function, whereas "Bottoming Out" from Legendary Hearts rarely gets a pass from me.

i'm really curious to know if this is online anywhere or if there is a transcription or something because I would love to read it

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2006/11/lou_reed_minus_.html

"Betrayed"! "Home of the Brave"! "Don't Talk To Me About Work"! That album has so many great tunes.

"The Last Shot"!

career wise, it was damn near suicidal

Yes, especially after those multi-million sellers The Bells and Growing Up in Public.

haha--those were transitional records tho. come to think of it, were any of his Arista albums decent sellers?

No, but each eighties album outsold its predecessor until New York (which actually went gold!).

plus, I've read that, thanks to the publishing and songwriting royalties which finally started to trickle in, Lou did rather well in the eighties.

Blue Mask is the best of the Quine/Saunders/Maher albums by a vast margin, and one of my fave Lou solo albums. In fact, I'm a little surprised Quine hasn't gotten more dap in this thread for his contributions. I seem to remember reading in some magazine at the time that they had to send Quine home in a cab after he recorded his bit for "Waves of Fear," and I can totally believe that.

Oh, maybe Maher wasn't on that one. Well, Quine/Saunders then.

Don't like fretless bass, so that tends to mar this and other albums

Lou did rather well in the eighties

The motor scoooter commercial probably helped too. "Hey. Don't settle for walkin' "

I seem to remember reading in some magazine at the time that they had to send Quine home in a cab after he recorded his bit for "Waves of Fear," and I can totally believe that.

this is awesome.

I've never understood unconditionally disliking fretless bass. There are so many different tones and styles of playing out there. Yes, you have your typical cheesy jazz fusion, but you also have very simple lines like on PIL's "Rise." Fernando's tone and style is quite unique and funky and pleasing to me.

Have you guys seen the Lou Reed Live in New York DVD from 1983? Great stuff! Quine has a cig hanging from his mouth the whole time, and Fernando's in leather pants.

From a PSF interview with Quine (the whole thing is here):

"PSF: After that, what would you say about the time you played with Lou Reed?

Musically, the first week and a half was really great, out of the four years. We did The Blue Mask. It's a record that I'm really proud of. There was no rehearsing, no overdubs, no punch-in's for mistakes. The exact opposite of the Voidoids. I inspired and encouraged him to play guitar again. I didn't have a lot of fun with him but at least it's out there and I'm proud of that. With that record, Fernando Saunders and Doane Perry were taken aback by this primitive playing. There was an intensity there and we reacted to each other as musicians. It isn't a jazz record but there's that kind of sensitivity. He listened to some wild ideas I brought in like with 'Waves of Fear'- he had nothing to lose at that point as he'd just done Growing Up In Public.

It's just a shame- I'd still be with him now and put up with whatever personal problems I had with him. But he's not a nice guy. In one way, he respected me. If he yelled at me, I'd yell back. I'm outspoken and don't take crap from people. His problem is that he likes to be surrounded by 'yes' men that flatter him but he's smart enough to know what's going on and he hates them for it and he ends up with a lot of hack musicians.

The Blue Mask was a very big critical success but it didn't sell well. It built up his confidence though. By the time we did Legendary Hearts in late '82, he was much more of a control freak. He was rejecting ideas that I brought in. He was feeling pretty precious about his career. His biggest weakness is that he wants to be regarded as a poet. The more conscious he is of this, the worse songs he writes. It could have been a pretty good record. It wasn't going to be as good as the last one: the songs weren't as good. The atmosphere was really uptight- it's impossible to be friends with him. When I got the final mix, I was really freaked out. He pretty much mixed me off the record. I was in Ohio and took it out in the driveway and smashed the tape into pieces. I didn't talk to him for a month but he knew what he'd done. I have cassettes of the rough mix of the record and it was a really good record but he made it all muddy and murky.

He approached me about playing live and I said 'what the hell.' It was a pretty good band- Fred Maher was there. Lou was very erratic with his rhythm playing but I dug that. It was impossible for the drummer to follow it. Me and Fred had to play around him. Fernando was great but I prefer a Duck Dunn-type player who can hold down the bottom. If Fernando doesn't dig a drummer, he wouldn't play with him- he didn't dig Fred. He's a great player when he plays with someone he likes. We did some more touring. He just happened to record bad concerts like Live In Italy. The band was sensitive enough that we were capable of improvising, like on 'Sister Ray' and 'Heroin' which we only did once. He had to teach it to the others but I knew it already.

But there was more and more of a strain between us. About a day before New Sensations was going to be recorded, he fired me and did the guitar himself. I did do the tour with him afterwards- that was a long tour. I came to him and said 'forget whatever happened, I just want to play with you.' By this time, we had an awful band. The new drummer would only play well in rehearsals and the keyboard player (Peter Woods) worked with Al Stewart and Cyndi Lauper. There wasn't much room to improvise. At the end of 'Kill Your Sons,' I'd do a drone and Lou would do a guitar solo- we'd get pretty far out there. This keyboard player thought it was joke and play with his feet- Lou would have to come over and tell him to stop. Because I wasn't on New Sensations, I didn't have a lot to add live. I'd be doing a song, playing D and G for six minutes like 'Doing the Things that We Want To,' which I didn't really like, with no variation and the keyboard guy playing accordian. I thought, 'this is not why I got a guitar and wanted to play in a rock and roll band.' We hated each other's guts, me and the keyboard player. Lou got really abusive at the end- he'd hog all the guitar solos and made sure I got mixed out- even live. I got back from the tour and decided that was it. I assumed he knew it. He'd put me down to the rest of the band, knowing that they'd tell me about it later.

From the greedy professional angle, I've had three things that have made people interested in who I am. The Voidoids things, the Lou Reed thing and Matthew Sweet. On a personal level, Reed was a guy who really influenced me and I had a chance to give something back to him. Encouraging him to play guitar again was digging my own grave. But I would have done it again because I owed it to him. This guy changed my life. If I did something to put him back in the right direction... I wish that it would have gone on with the level of something like The Blue Mask. Everything else after is pretty lousy. He never found anyone else to replace me except the Velvet Underground and he had to ruin that. I hate him because if I had my way, we'd still be playing. It was good steady work. He didn't tour often. I hate his guts because he made it impossible to play with him. There was nothing in it for me. He was not going to give me any space for any creativity."

At the end of 'Kill Your Sons,' I'd do a drone and Lou would do a guitar solo- we'd get pretty far out there. This keyboard player thought it was joke and play with his feet

Yikes

off-topic - why is Sally Can't Dance Reed's biggest seller? There are no hits on it and apart from the last trio of songs it sounds fucking horrible.

I think Lou has asked himself the same question on many occasions

It's not his biggest seller – it's his highest charting album. His two biggest sellers are Rock and Roll Animal and New York.

and SCD peaked so high on the goodwill and sales built on Transformer and RARA.

It sold on the back of "Rock and Roll Animal", didn't it?

(xp)

I heard Transformer sold quite well too...

xpost me and my slow typing...

how visible was Lou Reed

I know I saw the videos for "No Money Down", "Dirty Blvd" and "What's Good" on MuchMusic. Both the local classic rock station and the alternative station played songs from New York when it came out.

It looks like starting with "I Love You, Suzanne" his MTV and general cultural profile enlarged.

If it wasn't hearing "Walk On The Wild Side" on the radio, then my first exposure to Lou was definitely "I Love You Suzanne."

And hey, Lou had some moves (at 3:20):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc-bwzN6IVk

My recollection is that one thing that helped Lou start building a more mainstream audience was Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal.

XP Ha, saw that recently for the first time and Dancin' Lou was a <revelation>.

There's a loose narrative about the neighborhood running through all the New Sensations vids.

My recollection is that one thing that helped Lou start building a more mainstream audience was Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal.

― Double Chocula (James Redd and the Blecchs)

sure -- then he torpedoed the profile for the next decade

speaking as someone who was "there" as the time (albeit maybe 18-19), yes New Sensations felt like a much more mainstream album with a higher profile, "Suzanne" was actually on the radio

This is true. But anecdotally I knew quite of few of those RnRA fans, I feel like maybe they helped keep him alive during the lean years.

listened to and criticized each other’s work, Maybe this had something to do with his albums very eventually getting to be fairly consistently good/better? Was struck by hearing an interview yesterday with comedian-writer-editor-etc. Phoebe Please Don't Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes: EssaysRobinson, incl. the things "no one will tell you," when you aren't doing good work anymore---this incl. agents and producers as well as friends---and and this morning an interview w Toni Morrison on editing and teaching and writing: "Writers don't know what to trust in their writing...they'll do something more elaborate, not trusting what's already there," which reminded me of xgau's Lou review comments thinking that sometimes he tried too hard, even that throwaways might be his best stuff---well *some* of his best stuff, when he gets that hooky bad behavior going, flowing, I'd say---but anyway, making a record is necessarily more of a collaborative process, on some level, no matter how you treat your colleagues, while writing the lyrics, even in the studio, is more a singleton (so a lot of "singer-songwriter" records seem better to me musically than lyrically)--unless maybe just that one person---evah--gets through, which may (possibly) be the case w Laurie.

Though of course this is her story (incl. possible push-back, even if unconscious, vs. his bad reputation)

shared a house that was separate from our own places; Sounds good!

Speaking of collaboration in the studio, when I first started buying VU LPs, in the 70s, I noticed that at least some of thee classicks had the whole line-up listed as writers---then, when the same titles showed up on RnRA, the solo artist got solo credit--was wondering if maybe he bought out the others, and/or could afford better lawyers by then (at least ones provided by suits backing his new career of evil solo genius)

RnRA and some others.

I feel like Laurie was sufficiently famous and high up on the food chain to be able to call Lou’s bluff on his BS, and no doubt they did all those things together and yet, what I am trying to say, I would personally prefer to gaze upon Lou through Billy Name’s fisheye lens rather than having to deal with him directly. Although he was nice enough when he signed my copy of New Sensations.

O hell yeah, like Marcus saying he'd go out of the room to avoid meeting Bowie, despite loving some of his music
re collab(Also thinking of Dylan's long and winding The Cutting Edge, but sessioneers prob had to sign some kind of prenup? But there has eventually been litigation, like Johnnie Johnson vs. Chuck Berry)

Speaking of lawyers, Eugene Pallette to thread! And also, one of the reasons Andy flourished whereas, say, Terry Southern didn’t, aside from the Polish-American Catholic work ethic, is that Andy had some kind of army of lawyers in tow to fight back against harassment from the Feds, iirc.

Warhol, you mean? Wasn't he Czech? They've long had a Our Boy Done Good museum over there. Reminds me of reading in a review of his Diaries that he kept them per tax advice.

Son of Czech-Americans, I mean, although maybe one was Polish?

Oops, sorry, Slovakia. Maybe I can find something else interesting I read about him once to post here.

As I told Sund4r elsewhere, Ben Monder told me he loved hanging out with Bowie - and Tony Visconti too!- whilst making Blackstar, because he was really smart and well-read and remembered most of what he had read.

Cool, well, Marcus wrote that back in the original heyday, when Bowie was a workacokaholic, or just starting to get past that.

i think.

On the other hand, a neighbor of mine (no, not that one!) told me a slightly crepey story of a Diamond Horndog Dave asking a female friend to accompany him to the Empire State Building (DO U SEE?) to be his wing whilst he picked up chicks. I guess you are only young once.

Son of Czech-Americans, I mean, although maybe one was Polish

I think they were Ruthenians, one those difficult to define ethnic groups that were all over the Austro Hungarian Empire: a bit Czech, a bit Polish, a bit Ukrainian.

Back in Pittsburgh, Tom had grown up with a puny cousin, Andy Warhola. Andy had been raised by a crazy mother who couldn’t afford milk for the little kid and raised him on black bread and strong coffee—“Coffee-Nerves Warhola,” the neighborhood kids would cruelly call him. When his mother went on errands, Tom’s teenaged aunts—those rowdy girls who slept toe-to-head-to-toe in double beds—would baby-sit Coffee Nerves. They’d tie him to the bed with scarfs, where he’d scream until he couldn’t scream anymore. The girls would put up their hair and leaf through movie magazines, all the while watching out the window to see if the old lady was coming home. When they saw her, they’d untie the kid, collect their money, and go home, while the scrawny little victim screamed. It made a good story and they told it a lot, and went on telling it even when “Coffee Nerves,” who was Tom’s age, grew up to be Andy Warhol, trying for the rest of his short life to forget his squalid beginnings. So when my unevolved father-in-law—who would address twenty sentences to me during the ten years I’d be married to his son—opined to me that watering the lawn was simply force-feeding it, I’d feel curiously at home. Tom and I had been through a lot, and though some of it was different, a lot of it was the same. We felt the same light-headed relief when we drove home—from his father’s, or my mother’s. We’d place hypothetical bets: if we matched them in a boxing ring, who would win, his father or my mother? We both agreed it would be my mother, going away

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/07/world/europe/andy-warhol-slovakia-mikova-medzilaborce.html

And, to confirm Tom D’s excellent contribution:
https://europebetweeneastandwest.wordpress.com/2016/02/09/i-am-from-nowhere-andy-julia-warhol-from-carpathian-ruthenia-with-love/

Carolyn Says

"Dirty Blvd" got significant play on MTV

Wow this is interesting, Chris Molanphy on Lou's chart success/sales

Rock n Roll Animal and New York are his only gold albums in America! Even Transformer isn't gold

"Dirty Blvd" and "What's Good" are his only number ones (Billboard Modern Rock singles)

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/123-embrace-and-repel-lou-reeds-chart-history/

There’s a pretty charming story in the recent NYTimes profile of Laurie Anderson about her and Lou keeping separate apartments:

They each had a view of the Hudson River, and Reed would call her sometimes during the day to point out an interesting cloud. Then they would stay on the phone together, looking at it for a while.

Xpost though according to wiki Transformer sold 475k in the UK which is a lot

Carolyn Says Sees

Welp since we were talking writing, feedback, colleagues, accomplices:

Delmore's Delicatessen of Dreams Responsibilities World Weddings Movies open all night

(Although I don't have the edition w Lou intro)

I do, now, since my paper copy is gone and I bought the ebook. I don’t like the Lou intro that much, surprise.

Puts me in a bit of a sour mood or deepens it, when I think of an annoying figure who once tried to permanently borrow some of my Delmore Schwartz books in order to enhance his already pretension persona before he really went off the deep end.

Actually I was a pole vaulter he appears in the Anthony DeCurtis bio where he runs afoul of Lou for flirting with Laurie which my (yet another) neighbor’s at the time (rock) journalist girlfriend didn’t believe until they asked the offending party himself who confirmed.

Reed’s own way of handling such situations was typically more blunt and frontal. At a birthday dinner for the novelist A. M. Homes at the Greenwich Village restaurant Il Cantinori, Reed noticed Anderson, seated across the table from him, enjoying a conversation with writer Lee Smith. Reed leaned across the table, glared at Smith, and challenged Anderson. “Who the fuck is this guy?” he asked. A devoted fan of Reed’s, Smith defused Reed’s anger by asking him about Delmore Schwartz.

Who could resist flirting w Laurie?

Good thing I know to ask about Delmore

proud and regal name!

Your Bialystock to his Bloom was such a perfect wit.

I’m trying to remember what Garland Jeffreys said about this whilst wearing t-shirt I bought from his wife at his apartment (He was doing a free concert on the grounds). Seem to recall he was unimpressed by Delmore at the time Lou introduced him. But man, I sure loved the James Atlas bio, along with the Delmore portrait in When Kafka Was the Rage, but took no little offense at his portrayal in Humboldt’s Gift.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/apr/16/garland-jeffreys-hung-out-with-lou-reed-brush-with-greatness
The ending of this almost made me want to cry, really, although probably not nearly as hard as Lou cried at the end of Terms of Endearment.

A proud and regal name!
He told various stories about why his Mom named him that. As I mentioned on the xpost Delmore thread:
...Cynthia Ozick concludes, in her intro to Screeno: Stories and Poems, though some may think of the fancy poems as Delmore, the urban raincoat stories as Schwartz, "they're really from the same DNA." By the time GJ met him, may have already been consistently on the skids, although seems to have always been quite variable. Have held off on reading the Atlas bio because JA dismisses the stories after first collection, or more of them than I do, also, having read so much of him, don't really want to read that much more about him, as w Proust etc., but more so. Prob will someday, though.

Haven’t reread in years, but whatever beefs Atlas may have with some of the work, his portrayal of DS is extremely sympathetic.

I found Schwartz a lucid critic and pretty good short story writer and a clotted, obscurantic poet.

This indigestible hybrid of (Hart) Crane and Roethke.

You forgot top tier raconteur!

His most famous poems and a selected few others are good but yeah.

I know I seem to stand alone as his sole stan on ILB/X, but I feel something similar about Gilbert Sorrentino: indifferent to his poetry, jaw drops at everything else he does.

Coterie Writers Of Minimum Distinction Memorial Thread

The most recently, frequently revived Lou thread, so I'll paste this here, from ilxor tylerw's invaluable tumblr, doomandgloomfromthetomb:

Lou Reed - Tinley Park, Chicago, Illinois, September 12, 1992*

Last week, we heard Lou debut some spoken word renditions of a few Magic & Loss lyrics. Today, we get to hear them in a more traditional setting: you can’t beat two guitars, bass and drums. I’ve picked this particular show not only because it’s a very nice FM broadcast, but also because it features a very unique, very cool, very short-lived band: the awesome Marc Ribot on lead guitar and bassist Greg Cohen, along with drummer Michael Blair.

Ribot and Cohen at this point were probably best known for their work in the John Zorn and Tom Waits universes, and it’s interesting to hear their styles added to Lou’s early 1990s period. Ribot in particular is probably the most distinctive guitarist this side of Quine that Lou has worked with — and he sounds great here, going for broke in a way that Mike Rathke doesn’t. Check out his smoky solo on “Magician” or his driving, his shimmery sound on “Tell It To Your Heart” or his dramatic playing on “Sword of Damocles.” That latter tune is a highlight; towards the end, Lou quotes “Save The Last Dance For Me,” making its connection to Doc Pomus explicit. A really powerful moment!

I like the other Magic & Loss numbers, too — they’re a little more revved up and energetic, for sure. It’s also impressive that Lou tries to perform “Harry’s Circumcision” in front of a somewhat rowdy outdoor audience. He really believed in his new material — in fact, the set is dominated by late-period material, aside from a few obligatory walks on the wild side. Onwards!

Lou Says (1992): You’re confused because you’re thinking about pop music and pop records, or rock ‘n’ roll. Think about Brecht and Weill, “Seven Deadly Sins.” Boy, now I wish I had come up with that one first. If you think of it as Lou Reed music, not pop or rock, those expectations (of what kind of songs belong on a pop record) disappear, because they don’t exist for an artist… All the way back to “Heroin,” the idea was to tell stories from different points of view, with conflicting opinions. Some of it can seem very personal, or at least it comes across that way, because you’re acting. And then you can write something equally personal that’s completely at odds with what the first person said. Any great novel has lots of “personal things” floating through it, whatever the character you’re writing about.
*link is at top of tyler's page:
https://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/search/Lou%20Reed%20Marc%20Ribot