Lou Reed died today, and it is sad. I tried to pick a song to play, and kept coming back to this one. It’s Lou Reed, and John Cale, in a tribute to Andy Warhol.
I get homesick for the 1970s sometimes. And I get homesick for the 1960s too, even tho I was only a child. Inspiring, and creative, times.
Rolling Stone quotes Reed in its obituary: “One chord is fine,” he once said, alluding to his bare-bones guitar style. “Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you’re into jazz.”
Amy Winehouse and the Mod Father, Paul Weller.
An old friend of mine got his band back together, almost 30 years after they broke up, and played two nights. Part of the reason was, as I understand it, to show their now-grown kids what dad can do. (If you lived in Göteborg in the early 1980s you might want to press play.) The last time they played together was in the summer of 1985, and everyone was very young.
My friend was sweet enough to send me the link for the youtube version of their show. As I listened (because, let’s be honest, you don’t really see much) I realized that those songs were sitting somewhere in my brain. They’d been there all along.
I’ve never been fascinated by time travel, but all of a sudden it felt as if the 1980s was a place. A place I could travel to on a plane. And if I did travel there, I’d find the streets and the bars and the stores and the people still there, intact. The people who are dead now, and the people who are older now, and the buildings that were torn down. Still there. A strange feeling.
And if that just made you want more, here is a link for the entire wondrous concert.