It's odd. The moment I was most happy to hear Lou Reed's voice was at my old school, which was kind of particularly Christian and white and heard "Walk on the Wild Side" and I was still conflicted--neat enough that the song that mentioned Candy Darling and those colored girls singing was playing just before a kind of karaoke night thing the school held, and also feeling a little bittersweet that a song made the same year I was born was still radical enough if you listened, but familiar enough that its radicalism didn't, like, filter through to make some nun turn it off.
I like Lou Reed and I liked Velvet Underground--but I admit I like the Cowboy Junkies' version of "Sweet Jane" better. I've liked a handful of covers of "Perfect Day" more than most any version of Lou Reed.
Because his voice always seems to remind it's like, the last day. Doesn't it?
(Anyone hear echoes of it in Radiohead's Creep--just askin'?)
But he fucking wrote Candy Says and oh. He was a poet of people and pain and things that aren't cute but real. That mattered a lot. It always should.
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