Top 102 Albums Minus 11 White Light, White Heat

Top 102 Albums Minus 11  
White Light, White Heat - The Velvet Underground

"If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry." Emily Dickinson

The most iconic band in rock history? Perhaps. Today Twitter and Facebook are ticker taped with Lou Reed thoughts, clips and eulogies as the news of Lou Reed's death spreads. It seems as shocking that he was 71 as that he has died. How could someone who seemed so contemporary have been around so long. Rock autobiography after rock autobiography includes that moment when "I first heard The Velvet Underground". It was said that they sold only a few thousand albums but that everyone who bought them went on to form a band.

Top 102 Albums⁺ No 34 Berlin

Top 102 Albums⁺ No 34 
Berlin - Lou Reed
R.I.P. Lou Reed - 27th Oct 2013
There was a time when this was always on my turntable. The line which went from Bowie to Reed was one of my earliest explorations into the weird web of connections that gradually becomes a record collection. Bowie was a pre/early teen obsession and I got a Lou Reed greatest hits cassette because of the link. I just searched for an image of the cassette (see below) and felt the pull of nostalgia - this was one of only five or six cassettes I owned at one point. Must dig around in the attic and see if I still have it, or maybe not.

Top 102 Albums. No 83 Songs for Drella

Top 102 Albums. No 83
Songs for Drella - Lou Reed & John Cale

Over on Cathedrals of Sound the selection at No. 84 was Grant McLennan's Horsebreaker Star, an excellent album. Following a trail from it I've been listening to it, then others by McLennan and his on/off songwriting partner Robert Forster. I remember the trepidation when buying the first solo album after The Go-Betweens split. Then I followed the trail to albums by Husker Du's Grant Hart and Bob Mould and then spent a long time listening to John Cale albums before I thought of this and for some reason this spoke to me and said "I'm today's choice." In a tone not to be argued with (I started this post yesterday but something disagreed with my stomach and I had to take to bed. Seems sort of appropriate as this album was made between disagreements.)