Lou Reed, Velvet Underground Leader and Rock Pioneer, Dead at 71
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On a side note, if you have a few minutes to spare, read Lou Reed's review of Kanye's Yeezus: http://thetalkhouse.com/reviews/view/lou-reed
It's interesting to read a legend's opinion on a modern pop-star.
So, when he's praising the horns line, the piano line, or the complex electronic effects, it's not Kanye who's responsible for all of that, it's Daft Punk, it's Mike Dean, or Mohawke.
Anyway, I'm getting unnecessarily off-topic here. So to get back: Lou Reed was undeniably an innovator like no other, a true hacker. He knew how to play a mean guitar (jazz, blues, rock'n'roll and a whole lot else), he wrote great poetry. The greatest thing that's said about him is, indeed, as another commenter already has said: "Only about 3000 people bought Velvet Underground albums, but all of them started a band."
My two favorite songs of his: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffr0opfm6I4 and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wNknGIKkoA
To bring this round to tech I guess it's similar to Steve Jobs getting credit for the iPhone when a lot of the work was done by the engineers. In other words Kanye had to bring those people together and guide the creation of the music or it wouldn't have happened.
As with his music, Reed is assuming his audience isn't an idiot. In this case, Reed assumes that you can fully internalize what West's role was and understand his words accordingly.
There is absolutely no-doubt that Kanye is the ringleader in this. He puts a bunch of people in a room, and while he may not be the person pounding the keys, but he's putting it all together and making it cohesive.
I can listen to the Hudson Mohawke / TNGHT song that Kanye used in "Blood on the Leaves" and think it's an okay song. But the way it comes in on Blood on the Leaves with Kanye's rapping and the "Strange Fruit" sample left me floored the first few times I heard it. He made those TNGHT so much more powerful.
Kanye's influence over rap is enormous (the singing rap thing that Drake and others are using really didn't gain mainstream attention until 808's) and he's extremely successful commercially. It's not accident, nor is it the simple result of others' work. It's the work of someone who is meticulous in his craft, knows his limitations, and respects the work of others while pointing them in the direction he wants to move.
So we know Kanye isn't a great rapper (he's had many songs Ghost written and I think its a pretty common belief among hip-hop heads) and you say he can't produce well? What can he do well?
I don't have the time to go through it all unless you really want me to, but your last post was riddled with fallacies and pretty biased opinion.
Lou Reed was something else, Kanye is what he made himself (a pop star). I doubt anyone's going to pick up a copy of Yeezus in 40 years and be amazed in the way people continue to pick up copies of The Velvet Underground & Nico.
Kanye may not be the world's best rapper, but he is no slouch, and to be producing (both meanings) in the capacity he does at the same time is staggering. I like to tell people it's as if Martin Scorsese played the lead role in all of his own movies.
From everything I've read, Rick Rubin arrived late to the project and edited a mountain of work down into a short album.
I make music as a hobby, am fairly decent at it (IMHO, anyway) and listen to a lot of music. Kanye puts together songs, particularly on Yeezus, that are different than what else is out there and I have little doubt that Yeezus will influence a lot of rap over the next few years.
I never tried to equate Kanye West to Lou Reed.
But the thing is, people DO take Kanye seriously as an artist. His albums are constantly praised over and over again by critics. Even in places you wouldn't really expect it, there is a general acceptance that Kanye is leading the pack when it comes to innovation in pop music.
The common criticism with Lennon was that he was a bad husband and father in his first marriage -- but this part of his life was never publicized, indeed, it was actively suppressed by his PR managers. And for whatever it's worth, Lennon was in the process of making amends in his final days anyways.
Reading that is like watching Lou Reed mentally wrestle himself to the ground. He really doesn't like the record, but keeps rationalizing: the annoying synth sound as a "challenge"; the abrupt changes are challenging and keeping us "off balance. But soon after undermines his own rationalizations to note (correctly, in my view) that the real reason to make music is to make something beautiful, and hope that other people agree with you. And there he truly uncovers what's wrong with Kanye's music, and all that ilk: it's disdain of the listener. Anyone who listens to it is Kanye's bitch, willing to take all of his musical shit and like it, and Kanye knows it. And he definitely likes it.
Here we see clearly: Lou Reed isn't anyone's bitch, even when some egalitarian part of himself perversely really wants to be. We are witnessing, in black and white, his higher principles assert themselves even after he his lower ones sacrifice aesthetics and credibility on their petty alter named 'open-mindedness'. He means well here, but he just can't get away from his own good taste.
Makes me respect Lou Reed more, actually.
Then for this I would respect less Lou Reed: when it's crap just say crap. In music strong taste is expected and politeness is a loss of time.
People's relationship with music is an odd one - what you listen to you is meant to say something about who you are. You can't listen to classical because then you're an elitist snob. You can't like Justin Bieber because then you're a teenage girl. You can't like Kanye West because then you're an egomaniacal asshole. You can't like rap music in general because then you condone drugs, sex, objectification of women, electronic music and (gasp!) street slang. It's such a weird phenomenon, and it doesn't happen nearly to the same degree in other mediums. I can watch a horror movie without people thinking I'm a serial killer. I can watch a comedy without worrying that people will think I'm an idiot. I can read basically any novel on any subject without changing people's opinion of me, beyond "oh, he reads". But music is different. When I was in high school you could clearly identify social groups by what music they listened to, which also matched their fashion, and I think the majority of people don't move beyond that headspace ever.
At so many points in this album, the music breaks into this melody, and it's glorious — I mean, glorious. He has to know that — why else would you do that? He's not just banging his head against the wall, but he acts as though he is. He doesn't want to seem precious, he wants to keep his cred.
And sometimes it's like a synth orchestra. I've never heard anything like it — I've heard people try to do it but no way, it just comes out tacky. Kanye is there. It's like his video for "Runaway," with the ballet dancers — it was like, look out, this guy is making connections. You could bring one into the other — ballet into hip-hop — they're not actually contradictory, and he knew that, he could see it immediately. He obviously can hear that all styles are the same, somewhere deep in their heart, there's a connection. It's all the same shit, it's all music — that's what makes him great. If you like sound, listen to what he's giving you. Majestic and inspiring.
Where you think he's trying to rationalize feeling positive about the album, I think he's simply saying that there were some aspects of the album he didn't completely connect with, while other aspects absolutely floored him. On the whole, I'd say that's still a pretty stunning endorsement.
You should take a class or two on aesthetics. Beauty is, at most, a secondary goal in a multitude of art forms.
My favorite song is ‘Beginning to see the light’.
I think my favorite Velvet Underground song would have to be "Here She Comes Now", because I get the same feeling from Kurt Cobain's cover of it[0].
> Over time it grew into one of my favorite songs in that I learned to find beauty in the clash of consonance and dissonance.
Do you listen to the Jesus and Mary Chain, by any chance?
[0] Perhaps blasphemous to mention a cover on a thread about Lou Reed's death, but hey, if it were't for VU, the cover would never have existed.
Heroin is great, but other songs like Pale Blue Eyes make me tingle more
Heroin took me years to appreciate, once I "snapped" that the dissonance is a metaphor for the addicts' life I fell in love with it.
In a similar vein, considering your appreciation for "the clash of consonance and dissonance," I hope you're getting a chance to see My Bloody Valentine during their short tour in the next few weeks.
I'll check out more VU, any suggestions for songs/albums in a similar vein (experimental, noisy, good guitar/bass interplay, heavily instrumental)?
I bought the album in 1987 during a school lunch break. Someone saw, and wanted to play it in the common room. There are many really nice tunes on the album, but unfortunately Heroin was the first song that got played so that record got taken off pretty fast.
-Lou Reed
http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/interviews/musn...
I was talking to Lou Reed the other day and he said that the first Velvet Underground record sold 30,000 copies in the first five years. The sales have picked up in the past few years, but I mean, that record was such an important record for so many people. I think everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band!
There were plenty of others before him, but he had his place, as well.
Even though his later years were not up to par.
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. [1]
Lou Reed was an amazing musician, and someone that promoted intellectual curiosity [2], hence the 20+ points. (too bad one of the mods seems to disagree, hence it was flagged to now show up at the front page anymore).
[1] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html [2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFy4kRLCJBU&t=20
"If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
Lou Reed spoke on technology at SXSW. He was an audio purist. He made a video mocking the GOP. I think he qualified as an influential geek and deserves a black band on the title bar of HN.
I CAN ONLY DREAM.
This is back on the front page - and at the #1 - so my last mention doesn't make sense anymore.
Did you hear about the latest research that shows adding a delayed version of a signal to itself [1] enhances the security of many existing encryption and anonymity protocols by adding an additional layer? Some people are considering adding it to the next version of popular Internet privacy software [2]. I don't understand how it works, though, so maybe I should:
Ask HN: Why comb in a Tor?
(Obviously I made this up just to set up the punch line. Or should I say, PUNch line?)
Loosen up. People here are human with shared interests that go beyond interpreters and cloud computing. To have one story about a celebrity death hit the front page every so often isn't a big deal. And saying that, the entire front page was covered in stories about Job's death for a couple of days, but we survived. We're here, stronger, more alive than ever.
The guidelines are not defining "hacker news" (or "not hacker news") at all. There is only a section which is called "What to submit" and both definitions (On-topic and off-topic) leave a lot space for interpretation. At the end it is really determined by the votes what is interesting to hackers (or the readers of HN) and what not. If something is breaking the rules, the mods would jump in - especially when an article is on top of the frontpage.
Actually I find those pointless "why is this on HN" comments a lot more off-topic than upvoted links (= interesting to more readers than the other options) that are not strictly computer- or startup-related.
People who want to dictate others what to post or upvote on HN and what not, should probably become mod or pg.
Eg. Paris Hilton is a "Media Hacker" because she's managed to create a successful brand for herself despite not having traits commonly seen in successful celebrities (a talent in acting or a talent in music).
This might be an accurate description, but I don't want to see Paris Hilton news on Hacker News.
Jenny said when she was just five years old There was nothin’ happenin’ at all
It was the fifties. We were living in cookie cutter houses in the suburbs. Our parents will still recovering from the war, buckling down and making a better life for their children, with barbecues and trips to the beach and…
Every time she puts on a radio There was nothin’ goin’ down at all Not at all
The radio was primarily for baseball. They played music, but it did not change our lives and then…
Then one fine mornin’ she puts on a New York station You know, she don’t believe what she heard at all
It happened overnight. Sports became secondary. The music, the politics, suddenly life was full of opportunities and children were the leaders, not their parents.
She started shakin’ to that fine fine music You know her life was saved by rock ‘n’ roll
Imagine that. Not an iPhone. Not an iPad. The greatest exponent of technology was the transistor radio, almost no one had a color television set, never mind a flat screen. But that rock and roll music coming out of the tiny speaker or earphone…was enough.
Between thought and expression lies a lifetime
Lou Reed's greatest contribution though was his ability to mix great song writing with artful experimentation. From ST with Nico to Loaded to White Light White Heat to Vicious and Metal Machine Music, Lou consistently wrote great songs and expanded the worlds musical pallet. He will be missed.
It's a very personal record, rather quiet, and gives a lot of insight in to who Warhol was from both Reed and Cale. Here's a sample, with Cale singing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FBvP8o35CA
Love your liver!
I'm not sure what Lou's situation was but this is a good time to stress your liver is important and a lot of people abuse it. You don't have to drink alcohol to have liver problems I'd say there is a huge stigma whenever people hear about people having liver problems.
I suddenly developed fatty liver, I'm a non-drinker, no drugs and slim, it was either my diet or the heartburn drug (the only drug) I am taking. Right now my right side and back ache constantly it's not fun.
Thanks for the downvotes guys. Fine if you loved Lou Reed, but how would you feel if Hacker News featured every famous person death you didn't care about? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_in_2013
Would you still visit the site?
Hacker news, as far as I understand it, is not tech news. Other sites have that covered. This is the discussion of ideas.
Never would have known if I didn't read HN
The Velvet Underground/Lou Reed's music really helped me during a hard part of my life.
I think now's a good time to go listen to Transformer again.
No idea how familiar you are with The Velvet Underground but have a listen to The Velvet Underground (self titled - 1969) if you haven't heard it before. Just amazing.
Sad to hear the news that Lou Reed is gone - though, he sure did make sure he experienced everything he could from life along the way.
Thanks Lou.
Since everyone else does sweet songs, let me add this :):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYu0sk9D_pk
Thank you Lou Reed for all the great music!