Metal Machine Music: Lou Reed Wins Again

After 35 years, Metal Machine Music is finally being understood and enjoyed (NY Times):

A real-time, chamber-music performance of an inhumanly generated composition: that was Lou Reed’s “Metal Machine Music” as played by the Fireworks Ensemble at Miller Theater on Friday night. Mr. Reed recorded his 1975 album “Metal Machine Music” (RCA) by leaning guitars against amplifiers, cranking them up until the feedback screamed, playing melodies amid the sonic melee and layering and manipulating the results, including changing the tape speed of some parts. Then he chose four segments for 16-minute LP sides. It sounded like a riot in a shortwave radio factory: a fusillade of sustained, pulsating and scurrying electronic tones that adds up to a hyperactive drone, as consonant as the overtone series. It was proudly anticommercial and defiantly arty. It was Minimalistic process music at rock volume, an impersonal wall of sound. Now, 35 years later, it also sounds unexpectedly merry.

I'm guessing this means Mistrial will finally make sense in 2025 or so.

Faber Wants Morrissey Memoir, Posts an Open Letter

From the Guardian (don't you ever read the Guardian, Neil?):

A Faber editor has written an open letter to Morrissey pleading with the singer to bring his "much-rumoured memoir to the House of Eliot".

Lee Brackstone, editorial director at Faber, wrote that it would be "the fulfilment of my most pressing and persistent publishing dream" if Morrissey were to pick Faber as the publisher of his autobiography. The singer and former frontman of the Smiths revealed in late 2008 that he would be writing his memoirs in order to "[set] the record straight", and in November an essay from his forthcoming autobiography was published in The Dark Monarch: Magic and Modernity in British Art, entitled "The Bleak Moor Lies".

Posting the open letter on Faber's company blog, Brackstone wrote that "forlorn as this hope may be, I can only fantasise that at least you might read my letter through and consider the pleasures and prestige of being an author at Faber, the last great family-owned independent publishing house in the western hemisphere".

And so on. Basically, I just like the picture they ran with the story (above).

"I Slept With Joey Ramone"

The LA Times has a review of a new "family memoir" about Joey Ramone with the provocative title listed above. It's actually more of a synopsis, beginning with...

It's hard to remember a time when the Ramones were not, well, the Ramones. But Mickey Leigh can. Not only was he the band's first roadie and sang on their first record, he was Joey's little brother. In "I Slept With Joey Ramone" -- co-written with veteran music journalist Legs McNeil -- he traces the arc of the band's success, and his brother's role in it, in a way no one else could.

Nothing too exciting in the article, but the book could be good. Legs McNeil contributed, for what it's worth.

Val Kilmer in "MacGruber," Coming April 23

See the trailer here.

Prince Gets Inspired by the Vikings

From Fox:

Prince has released a new song about the Minnesota Vikings, inspired by a big win over the Dallas Cowboys and days ahead of the NFC Championship game in New Orleans.

“I saw the future,” said Prince.

Prince was in attendance for the Vikings 34-3 win. He said he went home night after the Cowboys game and wrote the song, "Purple and Gold," which he says came easy and fast.

"Purple Pride" was given exclusively to FOX 9's Robyne Robinson on Thursday. The Vikings love it and put the song on their website Friday afternoon.

Bob Dylan's Great Version of "Jokerman" on Late Night

I love how chaotic this performance is, complete with search for the proper harmonica. I also like how little it has to do with the version on the record. Just great all the way around.

Donald Fagen on Jean Shepherd and A Christmas Story

Nice little thing on Jean Shepherd by Donald Fagen in Slate. Shepherd was responsible for the stories that make up A Christmas Story. Here's a peak under the lampshade:

If you know Jean Shepherd's name, it's probably in connection with the now-classic film A Christmas Story, which is based on a couple of stories in his book In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash. He also does the compelling voice-over narration. On Christmas, TBS will continue its tradition of presenting a 24-hour Christmas Story marathon. There are annual fan conventions devoted to the film—released 25 years ago this Thanksgiving—and the original location in Cleveland has been turned into a museum. But long before A Christmas Story was made, Shepherd did a nightly radio broadcast on WOR out of Manhattan that enthralled a generation of alienated young people within range of the station's powerful transmitter. Including me: I was a spy for Jean Shepherd.

In the late '50s, while Lenny Bruce was beginning his climb to holy infamy in jazz clubs on the West Coast, Shepherd's all-night monologues on WOR had already gained him an intensely loyal cult of listeners. Unlike Bruce's provocative nightclub act, which had its origins in the "schpritz" of the Catskills comics, Shepherd's improvised routines were more in the tradition of Midwestern storytellers like Mark Twain, but with a contemporary urban twist: say, Mark Twain after he'd been dating Elaine May for a year and a half. Where Bruce's antics made headlines, Shepherd, with his warm, charismatic voice and folksy style, could perform his most subversive routines with the bosses in the WOR front office and the FCC being none the wiser. At least most of the time.

Read the whole thing if you've got a few minutes.