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All posts for the month March, 2017

Classic Albums – Transformer: Lou Reed

Posted by Mark on March 19, 2017
Posted in: Music. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 1 comment

Between Thought And Expression

Lou Reed: Transformer In Depth

My god, this is good. I don’t even like Transformer that much, but it’s undeniably foundational… and it’s great. It’s just not my favorite Lou. GET OFF MY ASS. This is my site. I can like what I want. Remember when I posted that Velvet Underground documentary?  You don’t own me. Where’s my whistle?

Click to buy the DVD if you wanna own it forever.

Ok. Here’s the deal. Transformer is a hugely influential album because (mainly):

  • It’s the first (real) Lou Reed solo album
  • David Bowie (a huge Velvets fan) produced it
  • Mick Ronson (bowie’s guitarist) did the arranging (and there’s some pure beauty)
  • Herbie Flowers has that awesome overdubbed Standup/Electric bass line for Walk On The Wild Side
  • The whole album is gender fluid, queer as fuck, and very very very ahead of it’s time, topic-wise
  • It is the Shadow Lord of the glam movement. T-Rex and Ziggy Stardust would be more saccharine without Transformer to counterbalance.

The story of how I found a streaming copy of this episode of Classic Albums is wild and the stuff of legend. I had eaten a legal edible cannabis candy (50mg THC) and I was extremely high. Almost too high. Pulling myself together enough to do anything was akin to hugging smoke. However, I had a flash of epiphany and searched on Bing, because if you search for videos on google, you get almost exclusively YouTube results. Is it because Google owns YouTube? I would say so. There was no full version of this episode of Classic Albums on YouTube. A lesser man would have given up, but I went to Bing instead.

Bing provided about a half dozen full versions, on various sites of dubious legality (lots of Russian). Who cares? I found one on a Russian tube site, and watched it. It was a low resolution copy (like watching YouTube on 240) but totally adequate. Luckily I know a little Russian, thanks to Cold War paranoia and high school Russian classes. Using my knowledge of the Cyrillic alphabet I was able to find not only a high resolution version, but a longer version! There’s like an additional half hour of interviews and performances here. Holy Shit.

lou reed david bowie transformer

The 70’s demanded ugly clothes.

Anyway. Watch this. It’s absolutely riveting. My favorite part is when Lou is listening to the multitrack of Perfect Day, and he isolates only the strings. It’s perfectly sublime and beautiful, easily as lovely as the strings on Eleanor Rigby (if not as complex), and Lou’s face changes and he freezes. You can tell that he hasn’t heard that in a long time, and he’s moved by the beauty. He then praises Mick Ronson’s arrangement, and it’s touching, and real.

It’s totally worth the hour and half to watch. Or even listen to at work. You can even buy it on DVD like a grown up.  You are absolutely free.

Watch Derek And The Dominos On TV

Posted by Mark on March 14, 2017
Posted in: Music. Tagged: , , , , . 2 comments
derek and the dominos

This was an American band.

Eric Clapton’s Fertile Years

The In Between Years

Derek And The Dominos are an anomaly in the career of Eric Clapton. Everyone knows about Layla, and the story behind it (kinda), but few know the album itself. It’s fucking great. You must listen to it fully.

After the breakup of Cream, and then the formation and immediate dissolution of Blind Faith, Eric Clapton was tired of being Eric Clapton. He was not tired of being addicted to heroin yet, though. He was still all thumbs up on that.

Eric Clapton was only 25 in 1970, yet he had already been famous for 7 years. He was the guitarist of the Yardbirds, John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Cream for fuck’s sake. Cream. For that alone he would be in the hall of fame, and that was just one charm on the bracelet. And then Blind Faith which also was huge. Holy Shit. It’s a lot. Eric was a little freaked out being God. He toured with his Blind Faith opening act,  Delaney and Bonnie, where he was fairly anonymous. It’s also where he met up with the fellows who would become the Dominos to his Derek.

Around this time (1970) George Harrison (bosom chum of Clapton) had just left the Beatles and was recording All Things Must Pass, his bestest solo album. It also featured all the other Beatles, just not all together (now), along with a bunch of fucks who would end up being the Dominos. Carl Radle, Bobby Whitlock, Dave Mason (kinda), and Jim Gordon.  American fellows and exceptional musicians. They had swing, they had that southern Lynyrd Skynyrd shimmy. Seriously, listen to the music on Layla. It is pure Southern swamp. Hell, it could be Muscle Shoals.

Take a look at the above performance on the Johnny Cash Show. They’re tight. They sound great, and it has a country groove to it. Derek & The Dominos kicked ass.

So, where were we? Ah yes, Eric Clapton took George Harrison’s band as his own. That’s not all he took. Wink.

The Longing Of Eric Clapton

Eric Clapton had fallen in love with his best friend’s wife. Pattie Boyd Harrison has had more famous songs written about her than anyone else I can think of. Here’s some off the top of my head:

  • Something
  • For You Blue
  • Layla
  • Bell Bottom Blues
  • Wonderful Tonight

There’s an article about 10 songs about her on Mental Floss, but the ones above are the biggies.

Eric Clapton’s Layla era songs are full of longing, regret, defiance, and conflict. The boy is hurting, but he’s in love. Look at the video below and see that even decades later, there’s still emotion he can tap into. Also, look at what a good singer he became.

Ok. This post has taken forever, over days, so I’m just going to birth this half formed, rather than let it languish in eternal almost done.