Lou Reed - Rock N Roll Animal

When I think about what I really think Classic Rock is, I think about this album.  I tend to be overly critical of Classic Rock, but this album certainly isn't why I act like that. I act like that because the Baby Boomers so steadfastly refuse to give up the music they grew up with, and they're also the ones that allowed radio stations to all be owned by the same shitty team of accountants that decided if every station in the country was exactly the same, then they could make more money.  Because running at a profit isn't enough, they want to hit the fucking lottery every payday.  But back when I was a kid and the term Classic Rock hadn't been invented (we would just hear Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter playing the live intro to Sweet Jane and say, "Turn it up!  This is a classic!"

So this was sort of my real introduction to The Velvet Underground.  I know, some of you are saying, "That's not VU, ya chucklehead," and I won't try to pretend that it is.  But for a lot of kids in say, 1977 or '78, this was the ubiquitous collection of VU songs that was in everybody's record crate.  The addition of Dick and Steve on guitars kind of smoothed out some of the rough edges of VU, and mad this set a lot more accessible to a lot of people.  I always thought that this was a good thing, because it helped get VU's songs the attention they deserved.  I know they're a big touchstone today, but in 1978, you might read about them sometimes, but you rarely heard them on the radio or found their records in someone's crate, unless that someone was particularly nerdy.

But the great thing about this album is that in making these songs more accessible and radio friendly, a real wide spectrum of people dug this record.  At least here in the flatlands of the Midwest.  I can remember a lot of parties and trunk lids opened up and when the opening intro to Sweet Jane started, so did the party.  It may seem kind of overplayed these days, but it took a lot of years to get us to that state.  The thing is, it seemed like everyone liked that song.  Jocks, burnouts, straight kids - it didn't matter.  Everyone around here loved this album.  Which is cool, because while Ive heard it get panned for being too commercial sounding, it also has a long song called Heroin on it, and the whole thing only has five songs anyway.  So yeah, it has a more commercial sound, but it still required a certain amount of attention on the part of the listener.  The further away from that decade I get, the more I think this is a record Lou Reed should be really proud of.

They played every song on here on the radio.  They played them all at sort of different times of the day.  You could hear Sweet Jane and Rock n' Roll anytime, morning, noon and night.  Heroin would be a night song, White Light, White Heat would be a late afternoon, evening song and Lady Day would be one of those late night, weekend kinds of songs.  How many other albums can boast that kind of radio love?  And like I said, it was in everyone's record crates.  It was definitely in mine, and I think it was one of the first records I bought that I thought meant that I took this music stuff seriously.  I definitely listened to it for fun, but I knew that Dick and Steve were the guitar players and that Prakash John played bass.  This stuff wasn't on the album cover, either.  It may have been on the gatefold cover, but I never saw a copy with that cover until the recent reissue.  The label must have killed that pretty early on, I guess.  I still don't have a gatefold version, but it's also not like I'm looking for one.

I did without this record for years, too.  I remember in about 1987 or 88 I took a stack of about forty records to the used record store and traded them in on cd's.  My plan was to get rid of some stuff I knew I'd replace with cd's for sure.  Fortunately for me, I didn't do that with my whole record collection (I think I'd wake up and cry all day, every day if I did).  But I never did get around to getting this on cd!  I have no idea why, because I think it's truly one of the great Classic Rock albums that everyone should own, but I just never did grab it.  I found a great looking copy of it probably five or six years ago and just grabbed that.  I think it was three bucks.  It's on Dynaflex vinyl, and I think I've mentioned before that I really don't have issues with those.  You have to take care of them, but so long as you have a full size platter, I think they sound just fine.  My copy of this sounds as good as I ever remember it sounding, so I'm okay with it.

I think this is kind of a funny album in that it works for me in the moment, more than as a nostalgic trip.  But the line in Sweet Jane about those being different times when riding in a Stuz-Bearcat (isn't that the best name for a car ever?  I wish I had one) always did make me think about different times, even when I was 16 and this record was only a few years old (but new to me).  It's the rare record that can be this good, this universally loved and this interesting to listen to.  If you don't have it, you should really save up three bucks and get it.  If you do have it, you should grab a beer and put it on!