i hadn't listened to this record in many years -- a shame for me... but i'll make sure that i have a copy at all times in the future so that when someone asks me who andy warhol really was or why we care about him at all, i'll have an oral history account of just why warhol is still, to me, the quintessential definition of the 20th century american artist. nothing defines post-war american culture to me better than crass, conspicuous consumerism -- and if warhol's art succeeds in nothing else at all, it's elevating, celebrating, and making part of the canon that very zeitgeist... what lou reed's songs on 'songs for drella' remind us is that andy may have been a dilettante, andy may have been fickle, andy may have been a bitch -- but he worked bloody hard, grafting and grafting, to encompass artistic forms from a core of painting through the outer rings of cinema, music and television... our higher culture nor our popular culture today would exist as they do without andy warhol -- maybe that's for good, maybe that's for bad, but in my mind, that's a fact... i always see the "celebrity andy" of the 70s and 80s as someone looking for a shell -- he'd given all he could give for his vision of art (whether you buy into the vision or not), was sucked by leeches and nearly killed doing it, and chose to find shelter in the most conspicuous of locations... he could hide there best...
this album reminds me what a great, cerebral musician john cale is... his words are poetry, and his arrangements are pitch perfect... a true musician, true artist -- and as always, a pitch perfect ice to lou reed's snotty, street smart fire... i understand completely why the two of them couldn't possibly work together again... the tension, when it's there (listen FOR GOD'S BLOODY SAKE if you never have to 'white light/white heat' by the velvet underground -- i love 'velvet underground and nico' for the fusion of the two, but there's so much more dynamism for me in 'white light/white heat') is something that just speaks to me on such a basic, primal level that when we lose these two, like we lost andy, a little piece of my definition, of my understanding, and of my faith that my 'vision' (for whatever it's worth) is not unique in the world, will evaporate...
masterful...
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