AND I GUESS THAT I JUST DON'T KNOW: How can you sum up Lou Reed's musical legacy? Brian Eno, of course, said it best almost thirty years ago: "I was talking to Lou Reed the other day and he said that the first Velvet Underground record sold 30,000 in the first five years. I think everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band."
So maybe what we're supposed to do today is listen to any of the bands which are the legacy of Reed and the Velvet Underground -- Talking Heads, Sonic Youth, Ministry, anything punk or industrial, any band that wanted to louder, darker, and/or more literate than the rest. Or just listen to Reed himself. New York and Songs for Drella have both been in my rotation regularly the past six months, thinking about Pedro fly, flying away from the dirty boulevard, once and for all. But that's Reed at his most conventional. "Heroin," on the other hand? The drums, alone ... can't describe. Brilliance. What a loss.
