Metal Machine Music

[AntManBee]

[Chris D]

Yeah, what about it?

Sue me, but I prefer Lou with melody. "Satellite's gone, way up to the stars...."

[AntManBee]

Originally Posted by Chris D

Yeah, what about it?

Sorry if the message appeared before the poll I was trying to create. Never done that before...

[Sergio Zamora]

[Chris D]

Originally Posted by AntManBee

Sorry if the message appeared before the poll I was trying to create. Never done that before...

Now I get it. Sorry for jumping early.

[saltwatersnow]

Originally Posted by Chris D

Now I get it. Sorry for jumping early.

hes never early, hes always late, first thing you learn is that youve always got to wait

[Jon Abbey]

there should be an option between "Great" and "Terrible", I think it's fine, there are plenty of more interesting noise/drone records, even if most of them were made later than MMM, and not released on major labels.

I was also surprised how poorly Lou's solo stuff held up when I played some of it after Robert Quine died. he basically could have just stopped making music after the Velvets, no great loss in my book...

sws, send that guy down here after he stops by up there, please.

[Dr Dave]

One of the most famous albums I've never heard.

[AntManBee]

Originally Posted by Dr Dave

One of the most famous albums I've never heard.

Or infamous, depending on who you ask.

Silly stuff.

You'll have to pardon me for being he snob here, but these kind of "meaningful" albums have always left me cold. Pure sonic masturbation.

Reminds me of when I sat through Metheny's Zero Tolerance For Silence. Members of Sonic Youth sang it's praises, so how bad could it be?

Oy............

[AntManBee]

Originally Posted by Jon Abbey

I was also surprised how poorly Lou's solo stuff held up when I played some of it after Robert Quine died. he basically could have just stopped making music after the Velvets, no great loss in my book...

I have to agree. MMM is the only Reed album I feel like playing nowadays. Actually the only one I care for owning these days. There's the occasionally good track on the other albums though (the title track from "The Blue Mask" immediately leaps to mind).

[Brian Olewnick]

Originally Posted by Scott Dolan

Pure sonic masturbation.

Like there's something wrong with that.

Otherwise, what Abbey said. Serves the purpose of getting some small percentage of Reed fans to open their ears a bit, happily pisses off others. I can imagine it being, er, seminal were one to happen across it at the right time in one's musical development.

[AntManBee]

Originally Posted by Scott Dolan

Pure sonic masturbation.

Actually, I don't think it is. I find it a rather beautiful record (yes, beautiful) with little melodies appearing here and there.

Scott, what do you think of ambient music?

[Sergio Zamora]

I actually have never heard it in its entirety, but I want to.

Originally Posted by Ollie

Like there's something wrong with that.

Depends on whether or not you like getting splooged on.


AntMan, it all depends. I've heard ambient that I like and dislike. I don't hate any particular genre as a whole. Hell, not even Country.

I love a lot of those old Hearts Of Space series.

I've got this one disc that a buddy of mine got me for my birthday called One A.D. It's a compilation. Thats a pretty cool album that I still listen to every now and then.

Higher Intelligence Agency, baby!

[AntManBee]

Originally Posted by Sergio Zamora

I actually have never heard it in its entirety, but I want to.

Side three is the best. Each time I listen to it, something happens during side three that makes it more intense.





I actually listened to MMM three times in a row once...

[AntManBee]

Originally Posted by Scott Dolan

Hell, not even Country.

No why should you? Some country is as good as anything.

[Monte Smith]

I'm sure it stinks, but I would like to hear it. Haven't so far because none of my friends are hip in that way and I sure as hell am not going to buy it.

But as I type this, I have on Freddie Hubbard's Hub-Tones and my boy is wailing while banging on his aluminum foil pie pan with a plastic Easter egg, as though to say, "Make it stop." So there really is no accounting for taste. He did enjoy, this morning, the Essential Jimmie Rodgers.

The only way I could get my yungun to sleep when he was that age was to play Coltrane's Live At Birdland. Put him in his bouncy chair and he'd be out in no time.

Always wondered whether that was a good thing, or a bad thing.

But then he started diggin Ornette later that year. I exhaled deeply at that point.

[SEJ]

I love MMM.

Oh, and Monte, did you get a tape of your boy playing pie tin and egg? Can I get a copy?

[Dr Dave]

I just listened to four samples I found. These admittedly short samples were not as amusing as, say, "The Return Of The Son Of Monster Magnet," a similar electric meat-grinder kinda groove from the first Mothers of Invention album.

I have a sudden desire to listen to Peter Green's infamous "End Of The Game" recording also, which I recall as one of the least listenable guitar albums of all time. Green pumping a wah-wah pedal against a formless groove for what seemed like hours (I think the album clocked in at under 40 minutes)

[Joe Milazzo]

I voted "great". The music is so pure in its self-indulgence that it attains a kind of saintliness. Go figure.

Besides, MMM prompted any number of memorable *blurts* from the pen of Lester Bangs.

[RBS]

I paid 6 dollars for that piece of garbage a long time ago.

[Monte Smith]

Originally Posted by SEJ

Oh, and Monte, did you get a tape of your boy playing pie tin and egg? Can I get a copy?

Regretfully, I did not. I did, however, videotape the scamp tonight because he has recently taken to crawling. That's right. Junior, or "El Destructo," as we sometimes call him, has gone mobile. This evening I thought it would be cute to memorialize for all time his early progression from living room to kitchen. As a carrot, I dangled before the camera his favorite toy, a blue plastic key that honks, chimes, and plays "The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round" and a severely abbreviated "Camptown Races." Sorry, no Lou Reed. Anyway, it would have all gone fine if the infant had merely reached the toy and been satisfied. But oh no. He wanted the camera--you betcha he did. The videotape records the panting yelps of a child set on victory as he rolls over his horrified, outflanked father.

[AntManBee]

Originally Posted by Dr Dave

I just listened to four samples I found.

Lou Reed himself included what was it - five minutes? in the box set of his. He probably did so to kill any interest in the album since he seems to have adapted a stance of denial towards the album. I never thought that samples and snippets say much about MMM. The first seven minutes or something are annoying, it takes more than that for the album to make sense.

[SEJ]

Originally Posted by Joe Milazzo

I voted "great". The music is so pure in its self-indulgence that it attains a kind of saintliness. Go figure.

Wow, that pretty much nails it. This thread is now closed.

[sonic1]

When I first found this album I played it a whole lot. I don't play it anymore because I am sick of it (I have heard it used a lot by far out DJs and also in lots of weird indie movies). It has now become sorta trite. But it is an incredible album, and maybe now enough time has passed that I can give it another listen. You have to respect his bravery at the time-even if it was just the influenced of a meth drenched brain.

I have to say I am very very annoyed at the denial of his honest intention at the time-. But maybe if he was in such a state as then we would have lost him to drugs a long time ago. It seems he has always struggled with wanting to be a pop star and being an avant-gardist. Didn't he lose John Cale after White Light White Heat arguably the most edgy VU album?

Jared

Originally Posted by Jared

You have to respect his bravery

Oh?

Self indulgence=bravery

Horseshit.

[AntManBee]

Originally Posted by Scott Dolan

Self indulgence=bravery

Equal only if you agree it's self-indulgent.