Did you see the live performance by Lou Reed on VH1-Classics last night? It amazes me to this day how incredibly cool this dude is. It's great to see someone who had such a big influence on my life a long time ago is still relevant. I must admit, however, I don't know when that concert was recorded but he didn't have the funny mullet so I am thinking it was fairly recent.

The first time I heard of Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground was when my mom bought me a book called The Rock Scene by Richard Robinson and Andy Zwerling (1971 Pyramid). I still have this book, which taught me about Iggy Pop, the MC5, and a lot of other important bands of the time that weren't being played on the radio.

There's a set of black and white pictures in the middle of the book that include a shot of Lou Reed. Even though I didn't know his music at the time, just from what I read, I knew he must be very cool.

I'll always remember the very first time I heard "Walk on the Wild Side." I was at the beach right after getting out of eighth grade. (No radio stations in Winston-Salem were going to play this at the time!) I thought, "Wow, what a cool song." I made the connection between the song on the radio and the guy I had read about in that book. Then I found out Bowie had a hand in it. So I went down to Reznick's at Thruway Shopping Center and bought Transformer (along with a Spirit compilation with the first record and Clear).

The Weekend Wizard, who did Deaconlight on Friday nights back in the late 70s, found a stray cat and named it Vicious after the Lou Reed song. I haven't been able to find all the Transformer songs on iTunes, but the ones I did find I have posted below. I will keep looking for "Andy's Chest," which I did not realize when I first got the album was for Andy Warhol.

I still love Transformer and consider it one of the very very best records of all time.

-- 1 October 2005 (DD)