Metal Machine Music

As I just had the septic tank pumped out (the truck literally just left), this seemed to be a good time to write about Lou Reed's "Metal Machine Music." I've been very fond of Lou for years, since maybe "Transformer" & backtracking beyond that to the Velvet Underground. Like Iggy Pop (though less so), he's a kind of power source or touchstone I can plug into from time to time. Anyway, it seems that back in 1975, Lou released this double album of guitar feedback & noise called Metal Machine Music. I saw it in stores at the time, but was aware of its reputation as a godawful unlistenable artifact allegedly released by Lou to fulfill his contract with his record label. So, over the years, while I'd occasionally wonder about the thing, I never managed to check out its contents. Lovely cover, though:


I swiped that off of some random web site. Let me know if I'm breaking the law here...

So, anyway, today as I was waiting for the truck to finish pumping out around a decade of raw sewage, I was mindlessly surfing on Google & found an interesting blog that had a link to a page with 20 second musical (I use the term loosely, ha ha) samples of Lou's opus...

And the verdict is: not bad. In my capacity as an occasional guitar abuser, I feel I have some minimal authority to proclaim on this. For 20 seconds, the content sounds quite reasonable, especially in the light of popular musical advances since the advent of MMM. I'm thinking Industrial Music & so on. Even stuff at the time or just after (Throbbing Gristle, Einsturzende Neubauten, etc) was not so far away from this. For 20 seconds or so, the textures of whining feedback layered on top of each other (apparently) are almost "pleasing" in some ways. I've heard worse. What it really reminds me of is when sometimes bands, at the end of their set, would leave all of the guitars propped against the amplifiers, still turned on, & a sort of random howling noise would ensue. Then, either the band would come back for an encore, or the roadies would eventually wake up & turn the stuff off. So, now I (& you) know a little of the mysteries of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music.

And, since the truck is gone & the air is starting to clear, tis time to get back to Shadow Bay, I suppose...