lost cats? & Lou Reed
Yesterday, I had a lot of free time, and it being near winter time, I felt like walking a lot since it was a nice day, and there aren't gonna be too damned many more. I decided to walk to Vege Thai for lunch, and the library to pick up my Lou Reed CD holds.
Between Vege Thai and the library, I saw several signs for a lost cat. Mortimer. There was a pic; he is big and black with white areas. It said he was lost from 34th and Belmont, and that he is big, friendly, and vocal. I pretty much memorized every detail but the phone number, seeing the sign over and over.
I got my library stuff, and walked towards home. On Salmon, I run into this cat. I figured it must be Mortimer; he was black/white, big, friendly, and very vocal. So, I try to lead it back east, towards 34th and Belmont.
Yeah. That wasn't too successful. It kept getting distracted by birds, cats, cars, carpenters banging on wood. So I alternated between trying to keep its attention and running off to other streets to look for the sign, for the phone number. After seeing at least 3 copies of it, probably more, on my way to the library, I couldn't find one when I actually needed it.
I must've spent 45 minutes to an hour doing this. Finally, after wandering all the hell over, I finally gave up. I went home and showered, but then thought- well, I could at least drive back and find the number and call with what I knew, since I figured it was definitely their cat, and I had to get groceries anyway. So, I drove all the hell around Buckman, found the poster, got the number and called. "Uhh, yeah, my name's Chris, I think I saw your cat earlier on 32nd and Salmon, blah blah," then I drove back by there, just on the outside chance that the cat hadn't moved for almost 2 hours.
Well, it was there.... and it wasn't Mortimer. The picture showed just a little white on Mortimer's chest; this cat had way more white. There was a good reason it didn't want to follow me to 34th and Belmont. It WASN'T Mortimer...
I got 3 Lou Reed albums from the libraries: The Blue Mask, Coney Island Baby, and Sally Can't Dance. Never heard them before. The first two are supposedly "classics." The latter trashy, substandard, but a commercial success. TBM was supposedly his first album after sobriety, very honest and confessional, etc. CIB was just before it, so I guess it's his last non-sobriety album, whatever, but supposedly leaning in this "new direction" of dropping decadent stories for personal ones.
The Blue Mask- I thought it was totally blah and forgettable. Even with Robert Quine on guitar (and Lou supposedly taking up ead guitar seriously for the first time in years, too), I didn't get much out of it.
Sally Can't Dance - I thought it was pretty odd and forgettable. I was disappointed to find out the title track is not at all like the punky version done by John Doe and Jennifer Jason Leigh in Georgia (full disclosure- I have a giant crush on Leigh). People say Leigh can't sing, but that's okay cuz she yells the song and it really rocks. Unfortunately, they only show a bit of them playing it in the movie, and when I got the soundtrack it also has only a minute of the full performance. Laaaame.
The official versions by Lou, meanwhile, are slow, jerky, kinda half-funky but not nearly as appealing in approach. I say "versions" because there's a single version, and a full album version with.... ahem, objectionable lyrics. It's said that the song is a vicious putdown of either Nico or Edie Sedgwick; the song says Sally had a studio apartment where "she used to ball folksingers..." Nico had gone out with Jackson Browne; Edie with Bob Dylan. I think the truth is Lou's just creating a composite character of sleazy New York, and everyone's just trying to look for a gossip angle all the time.
Coney Island Baby - I'm listening to it right now, for the second time. I think this is probably the second-best Reed album I've heard, behind Transformer. It's pretty great, and many of the bonus tracks are too. Apparently, he was in real shit when he wrote it. His preceding album, Metal Machine Music, was an hour of screeching-noise ambient experiments and enraged his buying-public; he was being sued by a manager and producer; his roadies had taken his guitars/ equipment in leiu of payment; he owed everybody $$$; Ken Glancy, the head of RCA, was basically the only person who'd give him the time of day. I guess that desperation lead to a pretty great album.
The reason I write about it is mainly the title track. After reading all the Blue Mask notes about how that album was confessional, I think "Coney Island Baby" blows the doors off it. The song starts with Lou insisting:
"You know, man, when I was a young man in high school
you believe it or not, I wanted to play football for the coach...
And all those older guys,
they said that he was mean and cruel, but you know...
I want to play football for the coach....
They said I was a little too light-weight to play linebacker,
so I said, 'I'm playing right-end'
...want to play football for the coach
cause, you know some day, man,
you gotta stand up straight unless you're gonna fall
then you're gone to die...
and the straightest dude I ever knew was standing right for me all the time,
so I had to play football for the coach..."
and goes off on this long story, but I mean... what a weird opening for a Lou Reed song. I mean, all that crap about being an "average guy" on The Blue Mask can in no way compete with this opening, and the story of this song and his summation:
"Ah, but remember that the city is a funny place,
something like a circus or a sewer,
and just remember, different people have peculiar tastes
and The Glory Of Love,
The Glory Of Love,
The Glory Of Love might see you through..."
Nice surprise on a Friday, to finally get an old Lou Reed solo album that lives up to the Velvet Underground and Transformer.