#lou reed re di new york

[chez-mimich]

“… Quella sera stessa, quando Reed sali sul palco con diverse ore di ritardo, apparve sconvolto, con il trucco da maschera della morte dipinto sul viso, vestito interamente di pelle nera. Farfugliò i versi delle canzoni e lasciò cadere il microfono. Durante «Walk on the Wild Side» si accovacciò sul palco, strofinandosi il microfono tra le gambe; mentre cantava «Heroin» cadde a terra, come se si fosse sparato una pera in vena. Riuscendo a malapena a tenersi in equilibrio come un funambolo tra dissoluzione recitata a uso del pubblico e realmente vissuta, arrivò alla fine del concerto tra l'entusiasmo degli spettatori. Come sempre, gli artisti votati all'autodistruzione poetica andavano di moda: quella primavera sui giornali francesi comparvero le foto dell'amato quanto vizioso Serge Gainsbourg che fumava Gauloises nel letto dell'ospedale dove era ricoverato per un infarto. La giornalista Lisa Robinson scrisse che ai fan fran cesi di Reed «sarebbe piaciuto vederlo sul palco con un ago attaccato al braccio»…”

(Will Hermes, “Lou Reed Re di New York”-Minimum Fax)

[kiki-de-la-petite-flaque]

Da "il Re di New York" la biografia di Lou Reed.

Il 19 febbraio del 1993 Reed prese parte a una serata di cantautori al Bottom Line con Rosanne Cash, David Byrne e Luka Bloom. Il concerto fu presentato dal dj di WNEW-FM Vin Scelsa, un intervistatore con cui andava d’accordo. Reed oscillò tra serietà e stand-up comedy. Nell’introduzione a «Heroin» osservò: «Mi piace questa canzone, ha soltanto due accordi. Si dovrebbe essere in grado di scrivere un’ottima canzone con un solo accordo. Due sono davvero troppi. Con tre, è jazz»

[ilcovodelbikersgrunf]

Da "il Re di New York" la biografia di Lou Reed.

Il 19 febbraio del 1993 Reed prese parte a una serata di cantautori al Bottom Line con Rosanne Cash, David Byrne e Luka Bloom. Il concerto fu presentato dal dj di WNEW-FM Vin Scelsa, un intervistatore con cui andava d’accordo. Reed oscillò tra serietà e stand-up comedy. Nell’introduzione a «Heroin» osservò: «Mi piace questa canzone, ha soltanto due accordi. Si dovrebbe essere in grado di scrivere un’ottima canzone con un solo accordo. Due sono davvero troppi. Con tre, è jazz»

[watusichris]

Lou Reed (Variety, 10/27/13)

Lou Reed died on this date 10 years ago, and Variety asked me to write an appreciation, which I re-post here. **********

From the remove of 47 years, it is difficult to adequately calibrate the impact of “The Velvet Underground and Nico,” the debut album by the New York band fronted by Lou Reed, who died Sunday at 71. Bearing a cover by Andy Warhol that could literally denude itself (“peel slowly and see,” the legend read), the LP was a shock to popular music’s system. It addressed topics – heroin addiction, sexual aberration – that had hitherto been taboo in popular music, and mounted Reed’s literally stunning lyrics in a matrix of molecule-rearranging noise. It is one of those few records of which this can be said: Nothing like it had ever been heard before, and it permanently altered notions of what was possible, and permissible, in rock music.

While Reed was capable of shaking the foundations of propriety with compositions like “Heroin,” ‘I’m Waiting For the Man” and “Venus in Furs,” and would push the boundaries even further with subsequent outbursts like “White Light/White Heat,” “I Heard Her Call My Name” and the orgiastic “Sister Ray,” he proved he was no one-trick pony. He was capable of penning the most tender and empathetic ballads in the rock canon – “I’ll Be Your Mirror,” “Pale Blue Eyes,” “I’m Set Free,” the astonishing “Jesus.” He also proved that he was a rock classicist at heart with such much-covered standards as “Sweet Jane” and “Rock and Roll,” the latter of which may be the definitive statement of the joy that lies at the heart of the music.

After Reed exited the Velvet Underground after years of infighting and discord in 1970, he embarked on a solo career that was characterized over its course by periods of extreme risk, infuriating sloth and intermittent brilliance. He wrested glam from the British with “Transformer”; took his own stab at rock opera with the lush, depressive “Berlin”; ground ears to pulp with his two-LP noise extravaganza “Metal Machine Music.” Using more conventional elements of rock music but seasoning them with his hectoring style, he forged such highly personal latter-day works as “Street Hassle,” “The Bells,” “The Blue Mask,” “New York” and “Magic and Loss.”

Because he was a thorny, restless and often reckless spirit who proceeded to the tattoo of his own drum, his work could succumb to abject failure: Witness his Edgar Allan Poe homage “The Raven,” his misbegotten collection of guitar pieces “Hudson River Wind Meditations” and his last release, 2011’s “Lulu,” a much-maligned collaboration with Metallica.

But such failures were ultimately understandable and could even be anticipated, since from the start of his career Reed’s rep, and ultimately his import, rested on his willingness to take chances. That was never a sure way to conquer the charts, but it was a route to change, and Lou Reed permanently altered the musical landscape. Seemingly answerable to no one and nothing other than himself and his own artistic impulses, he became, to his discomfort, an exemplary figure. His influence has long been a given; especially in the punk and post-punk era, dozens of bands embraced his sound and style. Watching early sets by such groups as L.A.’s Dream Syndicate was like watching young, half-formed performers groping towards their own essence, with Reed’s work as a road map.

As a personality, he could be prickly, harsh, forbidding; his confrontations with music journalists held the status of legend. The caricature is maintained in “CBGB,” the recent film about the New York punk club, in which a character called “Lou Reed” makes a cameo appearance, with fangs out. Reed played himself best. In Allan Arkush’s 1983 rock movie “Get Crazy,” he portrayed a rock star named Auden. It is not a great picture, but he elevated it with his presence. He gets the last word in the film, under the credits, singing, in his wobbling, drawling voice, a song called “Little Sister” – a heart-on-the-sleeve number with a corking, lyrical solo at its end.

It’s surprising, sweet, loving. But then, he was an artist of many dimensions, and surprise was so much of what Lou Reed was all about.

[lilacerull0]

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

THANK YOU, MAAAAAAAL

jacket's on, i'm out the door

tonight I'm gonna burn this town down

- girls in their summer clothes, bruce springsteen

i need shades 'cause the sun is blinding

- cloudburst, oasis (picking this one for ⭐reasons⭐ :)

i'm gonna miss those longs nights with the windows open

i keep re-reading the same lines always up at 5am every morning

- i'll still destroy you, the national (SONG!!!!!!)

so sing a lonely song

of a deep blue dream

- love her madly, the doors

sometimes it's like someone took a knife, baby

edgy and dull and cut a six inch valley through the middle of my skull

at night i wake up with the sheets soaking wet

and a freight train running through the middle of my head

- i'm on fire, bruce springsteen

my throat was dry, with the sun in my eyes and i realized, i realized

i could never, i could never, never, never, go back home again

- is it really so strange?, the smiths

a falling star fell from your heart and landed in my eyes

- cosmic love, florence + the machine

we've got color, we've got sound

won't you recognize us, we're everything you hate

AND

there are stars out on the new york streets

we want to capture them on film

- starlight, lou reed and john cale

i don't love you i'm just passing the time

- she had the world, panic! at the disco (it's actually every lyric from this one)

you're too old to lose it, too young to choose it

and the clock waits so patiently on your song

you walk past the café, but you don't eat

when you've lived too long

oh, no, no, no, you're a rock 'n' roll suicide

- rock'n'roll suicide, david bowie

i thought you died alone

a long long time ago

- the man who sold the world, david bowie

and if you close the door, the night could last forever

- after hours, the velvet underground

oh, hear this robert zimmerman

i wrote a song for you

about a strange young man called dylan

with a voice like sand and glue…

- song for bob dylan, david bowie

put a "∞" in my ask box and I'll shuffle my music player and give you my favorite lyric from the song that comes up.

[brn1029]

This date in music history…and I personally blame Lemmy for all those famous deaths….

January 9th

2016 - Lemmy

Stars paid tribute to Motorhead frontman Lemmy at his funeral at Forest Lawn Memorial Cemetery. Motorhead drummer Mikkey Dee, Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl, Slash from Guns N' Roses, Robert Trujillo and Lars Ulrich from Metallica, Judas Priest singer Rob Halford and Anthrax frontman Scott Ian. all spoke at the service. Lemmy's bass guitar was plugged in to a stack of amplifiers and the volume turned up, with the congregation applauding as feedback from the speakers filled the chapel.

2014 - The 10 Greatest Double Albums of All Time

Rolling Stone magazine published their Readers Poll: The 10 Greatest Double Albums of All Time. The top 5 were: 5. Led Zeppelin Physical Graffiti - Bruce Springsteen - The River, 3. The Rolling Stones - Exile on Main Street 2. Pink Floyd - The Wall, and winning the poll was The Beatles - The White Album.

2005 - Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley went to No.1 on the UK singles chart with 'Jailhouse Rock.' The single sold just 21,262 copies to reach No.1, the lowest sales ever for a UK chart topper since data began in 1969. The single was released to celebrate the 70th anniversary of his birth, a previous Elvis chart topper was re-released each week.

2003 - Elvis Presley

A grand piano once owned by Elvis Presley was sold for $685,000 (£425,711). Music producer Robert Johnson and partner Larry Moss sold the piano to the chairman of the Blue Moon Group, Michael Muzio who was planning to take the piano on a casino-sponsored promotional tour. He was then planning for the piano to be shown at the proposed rock museum at Walt Disney World.

2002 - David McWilliams

Irish singer, songwriter David McWilliams died of a heart attack at his home in Ballycastle, County Antrim aged of 56. Released over 10 solo albums and wrote 'The Days Of Pearly Spencer,' 1992 UK No.4 for Marc Almond.

1997 - David Bowie

David Bowie performed his 50th Birthday Bash concert (the day after his birthday) at Madison Square Garden, New York with guests Frank Black, Sonic Youth, Robert Smith of The Cure, Dave Grohl, Lou Reed, Billy Corgan and Placebo. Proceeds from the concert went to the Save The Children fund.

1981 - Terry Hall

Terry Hall and Jerry Dammers from The Specials were both fined £400 ($680) after being found guilty of using threatening words during a gig in Cambridge, England.

1976 - Queen

Queen were at No.1 on the UK singles chart with 'Bohemian Rhapsody'. The single enjoyed a nine week run on the chart selling more than a million copies by the end of the month. It reached No.1 again in 1991 for five weeks following Mercury's death, eventually becoming the UK's third best selling single of all time.

1970 - Led Zeppelin

During a UK tour Led Zeppelin appeared at The Royal Albert Hall, London, the night of Jimmy Page's 26th birthday. (John Lennon, Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck were all in the audience). The two and a quarter hour set was recorded and filmed but shelved for several decades, eventually seeing a release on a 2003 official DVD.

1965 - The Beatles

The Beatles started a nine week run at No.1 on the US album chart with 'Beatles 65', the group's fourth No.1. Beatles '65 includes eight of the fourteen songs from Beatles for Sale and also includes 'I'll Be Back' from A Hard Day's Night and the single 'I Feel Fine'/'She's a Woman'.

1963 - Charlie Watts

Drummer Charlie Watts joined The Rolling Stones after leaving Blues Incorporated and his job working as a graphic designer.

1955 - Rosemary Clooney

Rosemary Clooney was at No.1 on the UK singles chart with 'Mambo Italiano' the singers second No.1. The song was banned by all ABC owned stations in the US because it "did not reach standards of good taste".

(One sample listen to today’s music should show you that the standards of good taste have long since died…ladies and Gentelmen…Cardi B….🙄🙄😩)

[1962dude420-blog]

Today we remember the passing of Joey Ramone who Died: April 15, 2001 in Manhattan, New York

Jeffrey Ross Hyman, known professionally as Joey Ramone, was an American musician, singer, composer, and lead vocalist of the punk rock band the Ramones. Joey Ramone's image, voice, and tenure as frontman of the Ramones made him a countercultural icon.

Jeffrey Ross Hyman was born on May 19, 1951, in Queens, New York City, New York to a Jewish family. His parents were Charlotte (née Mandell) and Noel Hyman. He was born with a parasitic twin growing out of his back, which was incompletely formed and surgically removed. The family resided in Forest Hills, Queens, where Hyman and his future Ramones bandmates attended Forest Hills High School. He grew up with his brother Mickey Leigh. Though happy, Hyman was something of an outcast, diagnosed at 18 with obsessive–compulsive disorder alongside being diagnosed with schizophrenia. His mother, Charlotte Lesher, divorced her first husband, Noel Hyman. She married a second time but was widowed by a car accident while she was on vacation.

Hyman was a fan of the Beatles, the Who, David Bowie, and the Stooges among other bands, particularly oldies and the Phil Spector-produced "girl groups". His idol was Pete Townshend of the Who, with whom he shared a birthday. Hyman took up the drums at 13, and played them throughout his teen years before picking up an acoustic guitar at age 17.

In 1974, Jeffrey Hyman co-founded the punk rock band the Ramones with friends John Cummings and Douglas Colvin. Colvin was already using the pseudonym "Dee Dee Ramone" and the others also adopted stage names using "Ramone" as their surname: Cummings became Johnny Ramone and Hyman became Joey Ramone. The name "Ramone" stems from Paul McCartney: he briefly used the stage name "Paul Ramon" during 1960/1961, when the Beatles, still an unknown five-piece band called the Silver Beetles, did a tour of Scotland and all took up pseudonyms; and again on the 1969 Steve Miller album Brave New World, where he played the drums on one song using that name.

Joey initially served as the group's drummer while Dee Dee Ramone was the original vocalist. However, when Dee Dee's vocal cords proved unable to sustain the demands of consistent live performances, Ramones manager Thomas Erdelyi suggested Joey switch to vocals. Mickey Leigh: "I was shocked when the band came out. Joey was the lead singer and I couldn't believe how good he was. Because he'd been sitting in my house with my acoustic guitar, writing these songs like 'I Don't Care', fucking up my guitar, and suddenly he's this guy on stage who you can't take your eyes off of." After a series of unsuccessful auditions in search of a new drummer, Erdelyi took over on drums, assuming the name Tommy Ramone.

The Ramones were a major influence on the punk rock movement in the United States, though they achieved only minor commercial success. Their only record with enough U.S. sales to be certified gold in Joey's lifetime was the compilation album Ramones Mania. Recognition of the band's importance built over the years, and they are now regularly represented in many assessments of all-time great rock music, such as the Rolling Stone lists of the 50 Greatest Artists of All Time and 25 Greatest Live Albums of All Time, VH1's 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock, and Mojo's 100 Greatest Albums. In 2002, the Ramones were voted the second greatest rock and roll band ever in Spin, behind the Beatles.

In 1996, after a tour with the Lollapalooza music festival, the band played their final show and then disbanded.

Ramone's signature cracks, hiccups, snarls, crooning, and youthful voice made him one of punk rock's most recognizable voices. Allmusic.com wrote that "Joey Ramone's signature bleat was the voice of punk rock in America." As his vocals matured and deepened through his career, so did the Ramones' songwriting, leaving a notable difference from his initial melodic and callow style—two notable tracks serving as examples are "Somebody Put Something in My Drink" and "Mama's Boy". Dee Dee Ramone was quoted as saying "All the other singers in New York were copying David Johansen (New York Dolls), who was copying Mick Jagger... But Joey was unique, totally unique."

In 1985, Ramone joined Steven Van Zandt's music industry activist group Artists United Against Apartheid, which campaigned against the Sun City resort in South Africa. Ramone and 49 other recording artists – including Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Keith Richards, Lou Reed and Run DMC — collaborated on the song "Sun City", in which they pledged they would never perform at the resort.

In 1994, Ramone appeared on the Helen Love album Love and Glitter, Hot Days and Music, singing the track "Punk Boy". Helen Love returned the favor, singing on Ramone's song "Mr. Punchy".

In October 1996, Ramone headlined the "Rock the Reservation" alternative rock festival in Tuba City, Arizona. 'Joey Ramone & the Resistance' debuted Ramone's interpretation of Louis Armstrong's "Wonderful World' live, as well as Ramone's choice of Ramones classics and some of his other favorite songs; The Dave Clark Five's "Any Way You Want It", The Who's "The Kids are Alright" and The Stooges' "No Fun."

Ramone co-wrote and recorded the song "Meatball Sandwich" with Youth Gone Mad. For a short time before his death, he took the role of manager and producer for the punk rock band the Independents.

His last recording as a vocalist was backup vocals on the CD One Nation Under by the Dine Navajo rock group Blackfire. He appeared on two tracks, "What Do You See" and "Lying to Myself". The 2002 CD won "Best Pop/Rock Album of the Year" at the 2002 Native American Music Awards.

Ramone produced the Ronnie Spector album She Talks to Rainbows in 1999. It was critically acclaimed but was not very commercially successful. The title track was previously on the Ramones' final studio album, ¡Adios Amigos!.

Joey Ramone died at the age of 49 following a seven-year battle with lymphoma at New York-Presbyterian Hospital on April 15, 2001, a month before he would have turned 50. He was reportedly listening to the song "In a Little While" by U2 when he died. In an interview in 2014 for Radio 538, U2 lead singer Bono confirmed that Joey Ramone's family told him that Ramone listened to the song before he died, which Andy Shernoff (The Dictators) also confirmed.

His solo album Don't Worry About Me was released posthumously in 2002, and features the single "What a Wonderful World", a cover of the Louis Armstrong standard. MTV News claimed: "With his trademark rose-colored shades, black leather jacket, shoulder-length hair, ripped jeans and alternately snarling and crooning vocals, Joey was the iconic godfather of punk."

On November 30, 2003, a block of East 2nd Street in New York City was officially renamed Joey Ramone Place. It is the block where Hyman once lived with bandmate Dee Dee Ramone and is near the former site of the music club CBGB, where the Ramones began their career. Hyman's birthday is celebrated annually by rock 'n' roll nightclubs, hosted in New York City by his brother and, until 2007, his mother, Charlotte. Joey Ramone is interred at Hillside Cemetery in Lyndhurst, New Jersey.

The Ramones were named as inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as part of the class of 2002.

Several songs have been written in tribute to Joey Ramone. Tommy, CJ and Marky Ramone and Daniel Rey came together in 2002 to record Jed Davis' Joey Ramone tribute album, The Bowery Electric. Other tributes include "Hello Joe" by Blondie from the album The Curse of Blondie, "Drunken Angel" by Lucinda Williams, "You Can't Kill Joey Ramone" by Sloppy Seconds, Joey by Raimundos, "I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone" by Sleater-Kinney, "Red and White Stripes" by Moler and "Joey" by the Corin Tucker Band, "I Heard Ramona Sing" by Frank Black, Amy Rigby's "Dancin' With Joey Ramone" and "The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)" by U2.

In September 2010, the Associated Press reported that "Joey Ramone Place," a sign at the corner of Bowery and East Second Street, was New York City's most stolen sign. Later, the sign was moved to 20 ft (6.1 m) above ground level. Drummer Marky Ramone thought Joey would appreciate that his sign would be the most stolen, adding "Now you have to be an NBA player to see it."

After several years in development, Ramone's second posthumous album was released on May 22, 2012. Titled ...Ya Know?, it was preceded on Record Store Day by a 7" single re-release of "Blitzkrieg Bop"/"Havana Affair"

[poetyca]

Antony & The Johnsons

Gli Antony and the Johnsons sono un gruppo musicale di New York. Nato in Inghilterra, a Chichester, West Sussex nel 1971, Antony Hegarty si trasferì ad Amsterdam nel 1977 per 18 mesi prima di sistemarsi a San José (California) nel 1981. Negli Stati Uniti frequenta una scuola cattolica dove fa parte del coro. Al suo 11º compleanno gli viene regalata una tastiera Casio e si cimenta con le canzoni dei Soft Cell, Kate Bush e Yazoo. Da adolescente fu influenzato dal synth pop britannico, in particolare da cantanti come Marc Almond e Boy George. Attratto dal palcoscenico, frequenta la School for the Performing Arts di San José e l’Università della California a Santa Cruz. All’età di 18 anni mette in scena le prime performance, ispirate a John Waters e all’icona-guru Divine. Attratto dal mondo newyorchese degli anni ottanta, ispirato anche da personaggi come Joey Arias che cantava A Hard Day’s Night vestito da Billie Holiday, si trasferisce nella grande mela. Il “Mondo di New York” risulta essere più consono alla sua sensibilità artistica e alla sua ricerca espressiva incentrata sul tema dell’identità.

Nel 1990 Antony entra nella dimensione che più sente appartenergli, impersonando una drag queen ed esibendosi al Pyramid Club in guêpière, testa rasata e sigaretta fra le dita. Antony (con gli altri componenti del gruppo, i Blacklips) scrive scenari, canzoni, arrangiamenti ed entra in scena in tarda notte come Fiona Blue, drag queen e archetipo androgino ispirato da Klaus Nomi, Leigh Bowery e Diamanda Galas. Nello stesso periodo Antony si laurea in Teatro Sperimentale.

Nel 1995 Antony decide di dedicarsi completamente alla musica, dai Blacklips appena sciolti chiama il batterista Todd Cohen, che insieme a Joan Wasser e Maxim Moston ai violini, Jeff Langston al basso elettrico, Jason Hart al piano e Michele Schifferle ospite al violoncello, formano l’orchestra artefice dei raffinati arrangiamenti delle sue composizioni. Nascono così Antony and the Johnsons, nome ispirato a Marsha P. Johnson, il travestito newyorchese che nel 1970 fondò la casa di accoglienza per travestiti STAR, la cui tragica fine nel fiume Hudson sarà evocata in River Of Sorrow.

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_and_the_Johnsons Antony and the Johnsons is a music group presenting the work of Antony Hegarty and her collaborators.

British experimental musician David Tibet of Current 93 heard a demo and offered to release Antony’s music through his Durtro label. Antony started the band, its name inspired by the transgender rights activist Marsha P. Johnson.[3] The debut album, Antony and the Johnsons, was released in 1998. In 2001, Hegarty released a short follow-up EP, I Fell in Love with a Dead Boy, which, in addition to the title track, included a cover of “Mysteries of Love”, a David Lynch/Angelo Badalamenti song and “Soft Black Stars”, a Current 93 cover.

Producer Hal Willner heard the EP and played it to Lou Reed, who immediately recruited Hegarty for his project The Raven. Now gaining more attention, Hegarty signed to US-based record label Secretly Canadian, and released another EP, The Lake, with Lou Reed guest-performing on one of the tracks. Secretly Canadian also re-released Hegarty’s debut album in the United States to wider distribution in 2004.

Antony’s second full-length album, 2005’s I Am a Bird Now, was greeted with positive reviews and significantly more mainstream attention. The album featured guest appearances by Lou Reed, Rufus Wainwright, Boy George and Devendra Banhart, and circled themes of duality and transformation. I Am a Bird Now featured arrangements by Maxim Moston and Julia Kent and was mixed by Doug Henderson. In September 2005 Antony and the Johnsons were awarded the Mercury Prize or the best UK album of 2005. Rival Mercury nominees, and favorites for the prize, the Kaiser Chiefs suggested that Antony got in on a technicality; despite the fact she was born in the United Kingdom she spent much of her time in the US – although they later apologized for the suggestion that she wasn’t a deserving winner. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_and_the_Johnsons

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[themfacts124]

This Day In Music: 10 Jan 2016

David Bowie died.

David Bowie died of liver cancer at his New York home two days after his 69th birthday, and two days after releasing the album Blackstar. His first UK Top 40 hit was 'Space Oddity' in 1969, and he went on to have over 50 other UK Top 40 hits, including five Number one's. Bowie also had two US Number one singles, 'Fame' in 1975 and 'Let's Dance' in 1983. His record sales, estimated at 140 million albums worldwide during his lifetime, made him one of the world's best-selling music artists.

Born David Robert Jones in London in 1947, Bowie was influenced at an early age by Elvis Presley, Little Richard and Fats Domino, all from his father's record collection. After struggling for commercial success in the 1960's, Bowie moved from band to band saying, "I used to dream of being their Mick Jagger."

It wasn't until Bowie started studying dramatic arts that he became immersed in the creation of a personae to present to the world, even performing a mime act on tour with Marc Bolan's Tyrannosaurus Rex. Eventually Bowie produced what he called "the ultimate pop idol," when he combined the persona's of Lou Reed and Iggy Pop to become Ziggy Stardust.

Dressed in a striking costume, his hair dyed reddish-brown, Bowie launched his Ziggy Stardust stage show with his backing band, Spiders from Mars. Bowie's ability to re-invent himself throughout his career, from folk acoustic guitar to Ziggy Stardust, The Thin White Duke and his 1980's New Romantic success, while always maintaining a certain androgynous appearance.

In the early 1970s, Bowie's songs and stagecraft added a new dimension to popular music, heavily influencing both its immediate forms and its subsequent development. Bowie was a pioneer of glam rock, simultaneously, he inspired the forefathers of the punk rock music movement.

On 10 January 2016, Bowie died of liver cancer in his New York City apartment. He had been diagnosed 18 months earlier but had not made his condition public.

[diceriadelluntore]

Durante i concerti dell’ultima parte della sua carriera, imbracciando la sua fedele Fender, partiva con il riff leggendario di Sweet Jane e spiegava, con molta autoironia, la sua teoria dei tre accordi con cui ha costruito la sua carriera. Lou Reed è stato una delle figure più grandi della storia della musica rock degli ultimi 40 anni. Lewis Allan Lou Reed nasce a Brooklyn nel 1942. Si trasferisce a Long Island e frequenta buone scuole. Durante il liceo  inizia a conoscere la musica pop, ma un primo, decisivo, episodio gli segna la vita: per una diagnosi psicologica di bisessualità, Lou viene sottoposto a diverse sedute di elettroshock, segnandolo per sempre (ne racconta con struggente forza in Kill Your Sons, da Sally Can’t Dance, 1974). Si iscrive alla Syracuse University dove ha un primo incontro fondamentale: suo professore di scrittura creativa è Delmore Schwartz ( a cui dedicherà la leggendaria European Son nel primo album dei Velvet Underground del 1967) che lo incita a cercare forza e letteratura anche nei testi più immediati, come i testi delle canzoni. Reed si laurea nel 1964, dopo aver condotto per anni all’Università una trasmissione radiofonica, Excursions On A Wobbly Railm dal titolo di una composizione del jazzista Cecil Taylor. Della sua fondamentale esperienza con i Velvet Undeground si sa tantissimo, meno della sua esperienza da solista. Amareggiato e tossico, nel 1970 va a Londra, dove svogliato e triste registra un anonimo album omonimo, Lou Reed, che sembra il tramonto di un mito. Ma David Bowie e Mick Ronson, che fanno di tutto per lavorare per lui, sono gli artefici della rinascita, che ha il volto, sfocato e incredibile, di Transformer (1972), album leggenda che lo proietta a re del glam raccontando dei bizzarri personaggi che frequentavano la Factory di Andy Warhol. Nel 1973, il lato oscuro e nevrotico della questione: Berlin è un concept album suggestivo e immortale, una discesa agli inferi insieme ai fiati dei fratelli Brecker, Jack Bruce, Dick Wagner e tanti altri. Nel 1974 altra svolta: Rock’n’Roll Animal è uno dei più grandi live di ogni tempo. Reed prende le canzoni del periodo Velvet e le riveste della forza brutale dell’hard rock, con versioni definitive di Sweet Jane e Rock’n’Roll. Dopo il mezzo passo falso di Sally Can’t Dance, nel 1975 il suo disco più criticato: Metal Machine Music passa dall’essere il capostipite del noise rock, ad una pagliacciata fino ad una clamorosa scelta stilistica per finire il contratto con la RCA, Nel 1976 esce uno dei suoi album più intimi e belli, Coney Island Baby, dominato da una malinconia di fondo che culmina nel brano conclusivo, Coney Island Baby, dedicato a Rachel, il misterioso e affascinante transessuale con cui ha una relazione. Rock And Roll Heart (1976) e il bellissimo Street Hassle  (1978) segnano il passaggio di casa discografica e la fine di un decennio irripetibile. Non così gli anni ‘80. con Reed bloccato su poche idee, qualche live buono, ma niente di significativo. Quando però unisce musicisti eccezionali (Fred Maher alla batteria, Mike Rathke alla chitarra e il grande Rob Wasserman al basso e contrabasso) decide di scrivere un disco sulla sua città. New York esce nel 1989 ed è puro stile Reed: musica semplice e travolgente e testi sopraffini, piccole storie per raccontare quel lato oscuro, indifeso ma così umano tanto caro a Reed. Romeo Had Juliette è una trasposizione contemporanea del tema shakespiriano tra un portoricano e una irlandese. Halloween Parade è la canzone della festa e rimanda alle filastrocche di Transformer, in Last Great American Whale e Dime Store Mystery, tenebrosa, alla batteria c’è Moe Tucker, la batterista dei Velvet Underground. There Is No Time è rock come se fosse stata in Rock’n’Roll Animal, come la bella Strawman e le classiche ballate come Beginning of a Great Adventure e Endless Circle. ma la canzone simbolo, una delle più belle mai scritte da Reed, è Dirty Blvd. una mini novella sulla vita dei bassifondi che dice più di certi studi sociologici al riguardo, e che va addirittura al numero 1 della classifica Billboard. È la rinascita di un mito: con John Cale scrive un capolavoro, Songs For Drella (1990) in omaggio a Andy Warhol; canterà collegato via satellite con Bono degli U2 durante lo Zoo Tv Tour Satellite Of Love; riunisce i Velvet Underground, e  inizierà con nuovo slancio tutta una serie di esperimenti musicali, tra teatro, collaborazioni eccellenti (con i Metallica, The Raven come opera teatrale) e ha pure il tempo di scovare un cantante che sembra nato da una delle sue canzoni, Antony Hegarty, cantante transgender dalla voce portentosa. Se ne va per un cancro al fegato, ma avendo segnato la cultura musicale come pochissimi. Lester Bangs scrisse:  Lou Reed è la persona che ha dato dignità, poesia e una sfumatura di rock'n'roll all'eroina, alle anfe, all'omosessualità, al sadomasochismo, all'omicidio, alla misoginia, all'imbranataggine e al suicidio.

[warholiana]

Lovely review of my Warhol bio by Michael Millner in the US edition of The Spectator:

“An extraordinary and revealing biography — surely the definitive life of a definitive artist….There is something interesting, revealing or humorous on just about every page. Gopnik deftly excavates his data mine. His prose is precise and pointed, and his year-by-year narrative clips along. He is also a master of pithy and informative character and historical sketches.”

Magus of mass production

Warhol by Blake Gopnik

Ecco, pp.976, $45.00

reviewed by Michael Millner

This article is in The Spectator’s April 9, 2020 US edition.

‘If you want to know all about Andy Warhol,’ the artist said in the East Village Other in 1966, ‘just look at the surface: of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behind it.’ This quotation re-appeared in 2002 on the US Post Office’s commemorative Warhol stamp. It’s fabulously fitting for a stamp that reproduced a self-portrait, but when scholars recently compared the audiotapes of the interview with the printed version, the passage wasn’t on the tapes. Warhol sometimes invented interviews from whole cloth. He answered questions with a gnomic ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or, refusing to speak at all, allowed proxies like his ‘superstar’ Edie Sedgwick to answer for him. After all, he was just surface — leather jacket, shades, wig. The magus of mass production was there and everywhere forever, but nowhere in particular. This negation of personality seems a publicity ploy, or the evasiveness of a shy man, or possibly the self-protection of a gay man in pre-Stonewall America. It was all of this, but also much more. The self-as-surface routine was perfect for a new kind of celebrity, one founded less on accomplishment and talent and more on presenting a surface for the projected desires of a mass audience. Authenticity and the sense of a deep self were obstacles to the creation of this new celebrity persona. Warhol made millions by autographing screen prints that were mass-produced by anonymous assistants. Warhol somehow understood how this all worked. Born in 1928 in Pittsburgh to working-class Catholics from eastern Europe who barely spoke English, he realized the power and danger of being known to the world. The flipside of ‘15 minutes of fame’, Warhol suggests again and again, is death. The paintings of Marilyn Monroe memorialized her suicide; those of Jackie Kennedy, her suffering following her husband’s assassination. After Warhol survived his own assassination attempt in 1968, he allowed Richard Avedon to photograph the surgeon’s scars that crisscrossed the surface of his torso. There is no narrative development or personal bildungsroman in Warhol’s art, and his affectless manner resists psychologizing, the biographer’s stock-in-trade. His images are impressions, flashes whose immediacy, flatness and repetition carry little sense of progression. The Brillo box contains no story, and the subject of a film like Empire, with its eight hours of static footage of the Empire State Building, remains inanimate. Despite Warhol’s resistance, Blake Gopnik has written an extraordinary and revealing biography — surely the definitive life of a definitive artist. He accomplishes this through broad and deep, even obsessive, research into what he calls Warhol’s ‘social network’. Gopnik reports that he consulted 100,000 period documents and interviewed 260 of Warhol’s lovers, friends, colleagues and acquaintances. Warhol kept everything — he was a hoarder, collector and archivist all his life — and Gopnik has left no archival folder unopened or box unperused. Across 976 pages and more than 7,000 footnotes on a separate website, he recreates the swirl of ideas, culture and especially people that orbited Warhol. Warhol famously thought of his studio as a factory, producing work after work off an assembly line. The catalogue raisonné of his paintings, drawings, films, prints, published texts and conceptual works would, if it were ever completed, rival that of the other master of 20th-century self-replication, Picasso. Gopnik has surveyed it all.

There is something interesting, revealing or humorous on just about every page. Gopnik deftly excavates his data mine. His prose is precise and pointed, and his year-by-year narrative clips along. He is also a master of pithy and informative character and historical sketches: ‘Warhol’s Pop wasn’t about borrowing a detail or two from commercial work, as many of his closest colleagues [like Robert Rauschenberg] did; it was about pulling all its most dubious qualities into the realm of fine art and reveling in the confusion they caused there. ‘He wants to make something that we could take from the Guggenheim Museum and put it in the window of the A&P over here and have an advertisement instead of a painting,’ complained one early critic of Warhol’s, getting it right, but backward: Pop pictures started in the windows and then migrated to the museums.’ Warhol is about the Age of Warhol as much as Warhol himself. We learn about the new possibilities of gay life in 1950s New York, the city’s underground film scene, the history of silk-screening (so important to Warhol’s art), the fluctuations of the art market, the history of department-store window design. We learn about fascinating things we may not even want to learn about, such as the size and color of Warhol’s penis. (Large and gray, like the Empire State Building.) Warhol arrived in New York City in 1949 and quickly made a name for himself as a commercial illustrator, especially of women’s shoes. He lived for two decades with his mother, Julia, one of his most influential muses, and sought out an emerging coterie of gay artists including Truman Capote, with whom he had a stalkerish infatuation. The great Pop paintings of the early 1960s transformed American art. No less important was Warhol’s mid-Sixties salon and studio, the Silver Factory (silver because wallpapered in aluminum foil). This perverse and fecund anti-commune of ‘superstars’ and hangers-on spawned Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, as well as Warhol’s wannabe assassin, Valerie Solanas. On June 3, 1968, Solanas shot Warhol in the name of feminist revolution. His heart ceased beating on the emergency room table before a determined surgeon saved him. In the 1970s, he turned to what he called ‘business art’, mainly portraits of other famous people. He died in 1987, aged 58, after gallbladder surgery. Gopnik unpicks many of the conventions of Warhol’s non-biography. Warhol wasn’t an aesthetic rube when he arrived in New York. He had received an extraordinary avant- garde education from four years at the Carnegie Tech art school and at the Outlines gallery, which had brought Jackson Pollock, Alexander Calder, Joseph Cornell, Francis Bacon, Merce Cunningham and many other transformative artists to Pittsburgh in the 1940s. Warhol did not suddenly reinvent himself as a Pop artist in the early 1960s. As he built a successful career illustrating advertisements in the Fifties, he regularly tried to cross the line between commercial and fine art — a crossover he finally achieved in late 1961 with ‘Campbell’s Soup Cans’. Warhol was baptized ‘Drella’ by acquaintances — part bloodsucking Dracula and part innocent yet social-climbing Cinderella. But Gopnik also argues that one of Andy’s greatest desires was for compassionate companionship. This was never achieved. The ‘routine’ gallbladder surgery which led to his death was anything but routine. He had been very ill for weeks but avoided treatment out of a lifelong fear of surgery and a misplaced faith in the healing powers of crystals. Emphasizing Warhol’s radical ambiguity in art and life, Gopnik makes it impossible to say anything easy about him. His Warhol is a complex artist practicing what Gopnik, in a marvelous turn of phrase, calls ‘superficial superficiality’. The Warhol brand, the images of branded goods, famous faces and dollar bills, celebrates consumerism but also leaves us a little nauseated from our commodity fetishism. Warhol’s endless ‘boring’ films are hard to ignore because they give us so much space and time to think. They are studies in modern emptiness, and thus deep meditation. Warhol the critic of modern celebrity was also one of its greatest adulators. This double image of Warhol seems just right. ‘His true art form,’ Gopnik writes, ‘first perfected in the first days of Pop, was the state of uncertainty he imposed on both his art and his life: you could never say what was true or false, serious or mocking, critique or celebration... Examining Warhol’s life leaves you in precisely the same state of indecision as his Campbell’s Soup paintings do.’ Gopnik’s analysis of Warhol’s ambivalence evokes another great observer of midcentury American culture. Lionel Trilling, the gray-suited lion of Columbia’s literary studies, would have hated Warhol, had he deemed the Silver Factory worthy of a visit. Still, Trilling’s America is Warhol’s: ‘A culture is not a flow, nor even a confluence; the form of its existence is struggle, or at least debate — it is nothing if not a dialectic. And in any culture there are likely to be certain artists who contain a large part of the dialectic within themselves, their meaning and power lying in their contradictions.’ To Trilling, the great American authors contained ‘both the yes and the no of their culture, and by that token they were prophetic of the future’. Warhol absorbed and reflected the affirmations and negations of his America — but was he prophetic of ours? Yes and no. For a long time now we have lived in the Age of Warhol. If he were alive today, he would film us staring blankly at the social networks on our smartphones, hour after hour, while nothing and everything go on and on. By retaining ambivalence, Warhol allowed us to recognize and experience the deepest ethical dilemmas of American life — and he paid a price for being our screen and mirror.

[sportsgameqia-blog-blog]

Thursday Sports in Brief | FOX Sports

New Post has been published on https://sportsguideto.com/trending/thursday-sports-in-brief-fox-sports/

Thursday Sports in Brief | FOX Sports

COLLEGE BASKETBALL

WACO, Texas (AP) — Kalani Brown had 20 points and 17 rebounds as No. 8 Baylor won over a top-ranked team for the first time, beating UConn 68-57 Thursday night and handing the Huskies their first regular-season loss in more than four years.

The Huskies (11-1) hadn’t lost a regular-season game in regulation since a 76-70 home loss to Baylor in a Nos. 1 vs. 2 matchup on Feb. 18, 2013 — a span of 163 games. Their only regular-season loss since then was 88-86 in overtime at Stanford on Nov. 14, 2014. They had won 126 consecutive regular-season games, 58 of them non-conference matchups.

First-time eligibles Tony Gonzalez, Ed Reed and Champ Bailey are among 15 modern-era finalists for the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s class of 2019.

They will be joined in balloting on Feb. 2 by Steve Atwater, Tony Boselli, Isaac Bruce, Don Coryell, Alan Faneca, Tom Flores, Steve Hutchinson, Edgerrin James, Ty Law, John Lynch, Kevin Mawae, and Richard Seymour. Although previously eligible, Flores — who coached two Raiders teams to Super Bowl titles — and longtime defensive lineman Seymour are finalists for the first time.

Also being considered for induction are senior committee nominee Johnny Robinson, a star safety for Dallas/Kansas City from 1960-71, and contributors finalists Gil Brandt, former personnel director for the Cowboys and now the NFL’s top draft consultant, and Broncos owner Pat Bowlen.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — President Donald Trump has signed legislation awarding former New Orleans Saints and Washington State football player Steve Gleason the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor awarded by Congress.

The 41-year-old Gleason has ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, and Congress sought to honor him for his work as an advocate for people with the paralyzing neuromuscular disease.

Gleason is the first NFL player to receive a Congressional Gold Medal.

He became famous for blocking a punt in 2006 on the night the Superdome reopened after Hurricane Katrina. He retired from the NFL in 2008 and was diagnosed with ALS in 2011.

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Prosecutors have decided not to pursue a domestic violence charge against Washington Redskins linebacker Reuben Foster, though the NFL continues to review the matter.

Prosecutors in Tampa, Florida, filed a notice of termination of prosecution on Wednesday. The notice states that the first-degree misdemeanor battery charge is dismissed and there is no need for Foster to appear at any future court hearings.

Prosecutors concluded there was insufficient evidence to file charges against Foster after “a meticulous review of the facts of the case,” said Estella Gray, director of communications for the State Attorney’s Office.

She didn’t elaborate further.

CLEVELAND (AP) — Cavaliers All-Star forward Kevin Love has been cleared to begin “select basketball activities” following left foot surgery.

Love played in just four games this season before having surgery on Nov. 2 to repair an injury sustained during Cleveland’s exhibition opener. He had cartilage removed and fluid drained from the base of his large toe.

The team said Love visited Dr. Martin O’Malley at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York on Wednesday. The evaluation revealed that Love’s foot is healing and he can begin some on-court activities under the direction of the team’s medical staff.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Larry Weinberg, one of the founders and original owners of the Portland Trail Blazers, has died. He was 92.

Weinberg’s death was announced Wednesday by the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee.

Weinberg was one of four men who got the franchise started as an NBA expansion team in 1970 to the tune of $3.7 million.

Weinberg, a veteran of World War II, real estate developer, and a pro-Israel activist, sold the team to the late Paul Allen in 1988 for $70 million.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The Philadelphia Phillis have agreed to a two-year contract with reliever David Robertson.

Terms of the deal, which also includes a club option for the 2021 season, were not announced Thursday. Robertson, 33, went 8-3 with a 3.23 ERA and five saves in 69 games last season for the New York Yankees.

An 11-year veteran and 2011 All-Star, Robertson has appeared in at least 60 games in nine straight seasons, and the right-hander could compete for the closer’s role in Philadelphia, which hasn’t made the playoffs since 2011. Searanthony Dominguez led the Phillies with just 16 saves last season.

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Buffalo Sabres captain Jack Eichel will miss at least two games with an upper body injury.

Coach Phil Housley didn’t reveal the nature of the injury except to list Eichel as day to day ahead of Buffalo’s home game against Florida on Thursday. Eichel will miss Buffalo’s game at Boston on Saturday before having the injury re-evaluated.

He’s been out since aggravating the injury in the first period of a 3-1 loss to the New York Islanders on Monday.

Eichel is the Sabres’ All-Star game selection. He leads Buffalo with 49 points and ranks second with 15 goals in 40 games.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — The St. Louis Blues acquired goalie Jared Coreau from the Anaheim Ducks on Thursday for future considerations.

Coreau will report to the San Antonio Rampage of the American Hockey League. The 27-year-old goalie was 3-6-2 with a 3.57 goals-against average this season for the San Diego Gulls season in the AHL. He’s 5-9-4 with a 3.74 GAA in 21 career

COLLEGE FOOTBALL

BALTIMORE (AP) — Jim Margraff, the winningest football coach in Johns Hopkins University history, has died at 58.

The Baltimore university said the former Hopkins quarterback, who led his alma mater’s football program for 29 years, died suddenly Wednesday at home. University officials didn’t release a cause. The Baltimore Sun reported that Margraff had open-heart surgery to correct a congenital defect in 2005.

Margraff guided the Blue Jays to the NCAA Division III semifinals for the first time just a month ago. With Margraff at the helm, Johns Hopkins posted a 221-89-3 record, won a Centennial Conference-record 14 league championships and made the NCAA playoffs 10 times. That record also made Margraff the winningest coach in Maryland state history.

TORONTO (AP) — Toronto FC hired Ali Curtis as the new general manager, succeeding Tim Bezbatchenko.

The 40-year-old Curtis most recently served as sporting director for the New York Red Bulls. He left the Red Bulls in June 2017.

He worked in the MLS league office for eight years and held the position of senior director of player relations and competition before joining the Red Bulls.

Source

https://www.foxsports.com/other/story/thursday-sports-in-brief-010419

[katef-m]

Roll Bus Roll | New York, NY

Back in your arms, New York, and it feels so good. We depart from Montreal at quarter to midnight. It's snowing again. Bus sleep is interrupted twice: at the US border, and then in Albany, where we're kicked off our Greyhound to wait for half an hour in a terrible concrete bus station devoid of benches, everybody stale and blurry with tiredness. I think of The Dharma Bums:

'The bus came at four o'clock and we were at Birmingham Alabama in the middle of the night, where I waited on a bench for my next bus trying to sleep on my arms on my rucksack but kept waking up to see the pale ghosts of American bus stations wandering around: in fact one woman streamed by like a wisp of smoke, I was definitely certain she didn't exist for sure. On her face the phantasmal belief in what she was doing... On my face, for that matter, too.'

Lights out all the way through Vermont. I wake to a New Jersey sunrise, my eyes opening precisely as the state line flashes past the window. Everybody else on the bus is asleep but I'm wide-eyed and over-excited to be in Bruce Springsteen's home state, winding towards New York. Port Authority is hot and loud, full of screeching announcements and too many people. We brush our teeth in the bathrooms, re-layer jumpers, drink Stumptown coffee in the dim-lit, fancy-pants Ace Hotel lobby, then ride the subway to our Brooklyn Airbnb. In the afternoon we carry our snow-sodden clothes to a nearby laundromat where the air is warm and soapy.

The following morning I put my fleece on and we run eight miles round Prospect Park in the freezing rain, first heading up the long straight Brooklyn streets and getting lost around the botanic gardens. The park is empty save for clumps of brown leaves left over by autumn, like bran flakes left too long in milk, the trees now spiky with December cold. We splash round the running loop, and we see scarcely another soul. Rosy-cheeks rewarded with Dun-well's vegan doughnuts, a little later we find ourselves in East Village, where a sunset glows fierce pink-purple-orange behind tenements and tall buildings, outlining fire-escapes and falling heavy on the sidewalk, like all good New York City sunsets do. We finger old leather jackets in thrift stores and then meet a friend for drinks, bar-hopping numerous fairy-lit watering holes. Each street is prettier than the last, the bars themselves havens of light and warmth looping along the neighbourhood. But no snow like in Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch: 

'Tiny table. My knee to her knee-was she aware of it? Quite as aware as I was? Bloom of the candle flame on her face, flame glinting metallic in her hair, hair so bright it looked about to catch fire. Everything blazing, everything sweet. They were playing old Bob Dylan, more than perfect for narrow Village streets close to Christmas and the snow whirling down in big feathery flakes, the kind of winter where you want to be walking down a city street with your arms around a girl like on the old record cover-because Pippa was exactly that girl, not the prettiest, but the no-makeup and kind of ordinary-looking girl he'd chosen to be happy with, and in fact that picture was an ideal of happiness in its way, the hike of his shoulders and the slightly embarrassed quality of her smile, that open-ended look like they might just wander off anywhere they wanted together, and-there she was! her!'

I make two mental notes: to visit Greenwich Village's Jones Street, the location of that record cover, and to see it in the snow one day.

That Greenwich Village pilgrimage happens the very next afternoon. I am alone in the sunshine, and then my phone dies. Annoyed, I think about how this is the first time in years I'll traverse a city without a smartphone. But it turns out to be fun, roaming the cold sunny streets with no direction, thinking about all the people who started up their dreams here. The early twentieth-century bohemians; the Cafe Society lot a hundred years later, Paul Robeson and Ella, and Billie singing Strange Fruit; the fifties Beats adopting the Village as their east coast home,;Dylan Thomas collapsing at the Chelsea Hotel, Patti Smith living in the Chelsea Hotel, Leonard Cohen singing about it; other stars flickering into life: Hendrix, Dave Van Ronk, Joni Mitchell, Simon & Garfunkel, The Lovin' Spoonful, The Velvet Underground, Lou Reed. Bob Dylan, of course. A teenage Springsteen playing with his band The Castiles at Cafe Wha?. It's one of the few clubs still shaking its ass - the Gaslight's long gone - and late every night a queue weaves round the side of the building. Today the neighbourhood is jammed with cars, tourists, students, high rents. But after hours, the streets fizz. It's too early to tell whether this is just me being an excited music-nerd, or the after-effects of a great slice of pizza from Joe's. Or there's still magic here, tucked inside tiny candlelit bars and feathery snowflakes and the remnants of previous decades, of iconic record covers and ideals of happiness. Because we did get Joe's pizza that night, after five minutes navigating the Strand bookstore crowds, and stand-up tickets to a Broadway show (Matilda), which was really good, but it's the Village food afterwards I'll remember most. Hot cheap falafel next door to the Wha?, then Joe's - the place is crowded with coloured lights and midnight eaters shaking chili flakes onto steaming slices - and then nutella crepes, and now it is very late and we run through the dark chilly streets to the subway station.

New Year's Eve starts smug: we rattle to Upper West Side for a yoga class followed by a 10k run around Central Park. Being bagel fiends, we trek to Williamsburg in our sweaty gear to eat three of the best filled bagels you'll ever find: pumpernickel with hummus and grilled aubergine, cinnamon with walnut cream cheese, french toast with butter. After all of this it seems to be evening again and there's a party in our apartment. Balloons and banners await guests in the living room and on the kitchen table sits a big container of cheese balls, the sink filled with beer and ice cubes. Suddenly there are a lot of drunk Australians, and the room is full, and I am not quite drunk enough, but drunk enough to hit balloons about and dance. On the rooftop a moustached artist tells me about our mutual connection to music and how there's a secret second rooftop. At midnight we see the fireworks glitter silently over Manhattan, and suddenly everybody knows about the second rooftop and we're there, balancing beer up a wooden ladder. This being America, the party wraps up by 3am, and a few of us sit on the rooftop playing Springsteen's Streets of Philadelphia as somebody collects bottles and sweeps around our feet.

2017: it begins with a Brooklyn rooftop, a long sleep, and a free coffee from a Manhattan Pret - 'this one's on the house, ma'am!' - followed by Bryant Park in the sunshine, ice skaters, giant pretzels, chimney stack cake. The following day, our last in the city, we go out with a bang. Levain cookies from Upper West side: the girl raises an eyebrow when we order a second, and it does nearly overwhelm us: the subway ride downtown is not pleasant. East Village's Crif Dogs (corndogs and tater tots) for dinner, as people queue for the speakeasy next door, and Big Gay Ice Cream for dessert. My cone is lined with peanut butter, I repeat, my cone is lined with peanut butter. Last of all, pints at Swift, warming the bar stools for a long while, the Christmas lights glowing through our beer. And it's midnight in Manhattan, and we're on our way.

Roll bus roll, take me off A rolled sweatshirt makes the window soft If I fall asleep, don't wake me up Roll bus roll, take me up Old bodegas and old streetlights Harlem looks so warm tonight All those cheap desserts, memory hurts, I could die I gotta take two Tylenols and close my eyes places: Stumptown/Ace Hotel lobby | 18 W 29th Street, Manhattan Dun-well Doughnuts | 222 Montrose Avenue, Brooklyn Cafe Wha? | 115 Macdougal Street, Manhattan Strand bookstore | 828 Broadway, Manhattan Joe's Pizza | 7 Carmine Street, Manhattan Yoga to the People | 2710 Broadway, Manhattan Bread Brothers Bagel Cafe | 220 Bushwick Avenue, Brooklyn Levain bakery | 167 W 74th Street, Manhattan Crif Dogs | 113 St Marks Place, Manhattan Big Gay Ice Cream | 125 E 7th Street, Manhattan Swift Hibernian Lounge | 34 E 4th Street, Manhattan

[chez-mimich]

1. Ho suonato in gruppi criminali di Long Island in cui spesso facevamo a scazzottate;

2. Ho frequentato diverse scuole e ho sempre avuto una band, come “Pasha and the Prophets”o L.A. and “The Eldorados”;

3. Sono stato espulso dai R.O.T.C. per aver minacciato di sparare a un ufficiale;

4. Dichiarato inabile alla leva per problemi mentali;

5. Ho lavorato come autore di canzoni e non ho avuto successo;

6. Con Warhol e i Velvet Underground in varie formazioni + ho contribuito a creare «ambienti multimediali» che nei felici anni Sessanta si chiamavano «psichedelici»;

7. Ho lasciato Warhol, riorganizzato la band e poi anche me stesso;

8. ESILIO + GRANDE RIFLESSIONE

9. BEGHE LEGALI + DEPRESSIONE

10. RCA, dischi solisti, soddisfazione.

(Il curriculum di Lou Reed presentato per la campagna promozionale del suo Tour. Da Will Hermes, “Lou Reed Re di New York”)