Lou Reed: " Metal Machine Music"

NOTE: I've revised and re-worked this review on June 8,2010. Read it HERE.

The last couple of days I have re-discovered the joys of Lou Reed's "Metal Machine Music". Panned universally by critics when it was first released, the "noise-scapes" that filled the 4 sides of the double album were considered to be a drastic attempt at commercial suicide and a hearty "fuck you" to his label, RCA, who were goading him into writing another hit song.

"Walk on the Wild Side", from the "Transformer" album, was not your typical 70's radio hit. But Reed had never been "typical" about anything. The song's success must have surprised everyone involved with the project, from producer David Bowie to the nameless bigwigs making decisions in the RCA conference rooms to Lou himself.

If you think about it, it was absurd to want an artist like Lou Reed to conjure a follow-up to a song like that and expect it to shoot up the charts like it's predecessor did. "Walk on the Wild Side" was one of a kind. Over 30 years later and there's still nothing like it (that I've heard, anyway). It was only natural for the former frontman of the Velvet Underground to rebel against any attempt to force him into writing a sequel.

So, instead, he invented a gizmo (I wish I could remember what he called it) that sounded like a short wave radio placed in the middle of a nuclear reactor. In reality, it was a four track recorder he used, but God knows what he did to create all those sounds. If I were to come up with a label for this kind of "music", I think I'd call it "ambient chaos" or "chaotic ambience". It is, I suppose, the polar opposite of what is considered to be "ambient" music, which usually provides a more relaxing experience. "Metal Machine Music" is about as relaxing as a bumpy ride on a train bound for Hades.

And yet, I love it.

It was in the mid-late 70's when I first purchased MMM. I had heard a lot about it, but my exposure to Lou Reed's music was limited to hearing "Walk on the Wild Side" on the radio. Still, I more or less knew what to expect.

Sound Warehouse was probably the biggest record/tape store in Oklahoma in those days. This was when 8-Track tapes were almost as popular as vinyl records (hard to believe, but true). My friends and I would drive 50 miles just to go to a Sound Warehouse and loiter for hours to looing at album covers and reading liner notes. Most of the time we didn't have the money to buy any of them, but every once in a while the store would run clearance sales on 8-Tracks that, for whatever reason, they wanted to get rid of. Probably because they just didn't sell. It was all "off-the-wall" stuff that, I'm sure, was totally off the radar for the typical customer. They'd sell 'em for as little as 50 cents apiece. I took advantage of the situation.

Luckily, I never was the "typical customer" and a lot of these tapes were from bands that I'd read about in Creem and Rock Scene...bands that had been critically lauded but ignored by the public. That's what I was all about, my friend. I bought scads of these 8-Tracks. I obtained practically the entire Berserkly catalogue (including every one of the awesome Jonathon Richman & the Modern Lovers albums). I got at least three Nektar tapes, a couple by a bizarre group called Magma. lots and lots more.

But the most unusual one I ever bought was Reed's "Metal Machine Music". ON 8-TRACK! FOR 50 CENTS!!!!!! You have to understand, you just can't get these anymore. They sell on eBay for big bucks (you can't even find one there at this time). Thurston Moore, of Sonic Youth, has lauded the album as an integral influence on his band's sound and has even used excerpts in a couple of their own songs.

AND I HAD IT!...big deal. I don't have it anymore. I think it was among a box of tapes that were stolen from my car while it was parked at my school. If it was, well, I hope the thief felt cheated when he/she listened to them. Sparks, PFM, Moonshine, that kind of stuff just wasn't hip in my little town. And I ESPECIALLY hope MMM freaked the thief out. I can see it now...he's tooling down the highway checking out his newfound booty...he pops MMM into his deck...the sheer aural assault almost drives him off of the road as he becomes hypnotized by the noise. He can do nothing to stop it, and before the first program has even ended he is hopelessly and incurably insane.

Most likely he chunked it out the window within 30 seconds of inserting it into his Lear stereo. It hit the ground and broke into several pieces, the metallic tape blowing like a long, black streamer in the wind.

Can't say that I blame him for that. To say that it is "a difficult listen" is a grand understatement. I think I only played it once all the way through, and that was with headphones. I actually bragged about that...I considered it an achievement that set me apart from the other music geeks I hung out with. It was a milestone for me. Don't ask why...I guess it had something to do with how certain I was that I had joined a circle of people, those who had endured the entire album, which had to be almost infinitely small.

Anyhoo, I bring all this up because in the process of burning discs from Pandora I decided to "create a station" around the "song" "Metal Machine Music". To be honest, I didn't think it would even recognize it. But I was surprised to see that, not only was MMM represented, there were lots of bands churning out "ambient chaos" that exhibited the same room-clearing standards as the original. I knew that "noise" had become a genre (or a sub-genre) but I'd never had the opportunity to sample it. Now that I have, I'm pretty heavy into it. Of course, had I never listened to MMM when I was a kid I would probably dismiss it outright. Even now I am hesitant to classify it as "music" (though there definitly was a time when I defended it as such). But, seeing as how I've been indoctrinated, I can say that all this cacophony actually sounds good to me. It's a nice change, a unique alternative to the usual.