Velvet Underground

[Robin Landseadel]

On Apr 26, 2009, at 7:18 AM, Dave Monroe wrote:

> On Sat, Apr 25, 2009 at 5:13 PM, Robin Landseadel
> <robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>> Lou Reed's "Metal Machine Music" ...
>
> Note that CDs can't replicate that final locked groove on the LP, and
> I've yeat to hear it even simulated well digitally ...

On a late Saturday morning back in the mid-seventies, working for the  
now-de-funk-ed "Wherehouse" chain, we had a little contest to see what  
sort of music would most quickly clear out the store. It was "Metal  
Machine Music" vs. a Nonesuch issue of Schoenberg's "Ode to Napoleon  
Bonaparte" featuring music critic Bernard Jacobson as narrator/ 
reciter. Interestingly, there were a few folks that stuck around for  
"MMM":

		. . . sentient humans simply find it
	impossible not to vacate any room where it is playing. With
	certain isolated exceptions: mutants, mental patients, shriek
	freaks, masochists, sadists, amphetamine addicts, hate buffs,
	drug-numbed weirdos too walled off by chemicals to feel
	anything, other people whose nervous systems are already so
	bent out of shape that it sounds perfectly acceptable, the last
	category possibly including the author of this article. . .

Guess there were plenty of shriek freaks in Eagle Rock back in 1976. I  
suppose it was the innate bizarreness of Schoenberg's work or perhaps  
the music critic's bumbling delivery, but I managed to clear out that  
record store of prospective purchasers of music in 90 seconds at 11:00  
am. on a busy Saturday morning.