(Above: happy days).
Dork on the wild side - Luke McIlveen vanishes up his bum.
At least that's what I think the header said. Followed by this opener:
Luke McIlveen is a complete dribbler. I do not say this lightly. In fact, it hurts to say it. I’m not one of his greatest fans, never have been - and yet it must be said. The Murdoch hack scribbler has been transformed into a blithering idiot.
Oh wait, I got that wrong.
And here's the actual opener:
Luke somehow thinks that by owning a couple of Lou Reed records, and playing them, and liking a few songs, and printing a few lyrics to show how much in tune he is with the old vanished Lou Reed, he can freely dispense abuse to the current Lou Reed and in the process provide career advice.
Meh. With that sort of advice, prose as a form of crapulence, Reed can do without it. Here's how it goes:
Once, he lived on the fringe and wrote about heroin, alcoholism and trannies. Now he dabbles in experimental music with his wife Laurie Anderson, the self-titled “performance artist” (WTF does that even mean? Can you really call yourself that just because you married Lou Reed?)
WTF? Hey Luke, instead of just reading crappy Murdoch rags all day, head off to the wiki on performance art. Freshen up your knowledge of Laurie Anderson. She was married to Lou Reed in 2008; she turned up at the Adelaide doing performance art in 1974. Do you have to be dropkick ignorant to scribble this kind of nonsense? Okay ignorance is bliss, but why share your ignorance?
Or are you trying to tell us that deep down Murdoch hacks are infatuated with the idea of living on the fringe, writing about heroin, alcoholism and trannies? Not that there's anything wrong with any of that. It's just like, there are other alternatives ...
I mean, I'm told some people like to be hos for Chairman Rupert, and nothing wrong with that. But do go on:
The pair share a Manhatten “loft” apartment with their 11-year-old rat terrier Lollabelle. They have an electronic keyboard on the floor, switched on at all times because Lollabelle likes to step on the keys and make music. I’m not making this up.
Ye, they live in a loft, and they have a dog, and they play with their dog ... in a muso way. I'm not making any of this up. But do go on:
You see, Lou doesn’t want to write songs that people like any more. He wants to dabble in unconventional sounds. It’s kind of like music without the hassle of, well, music.
Uh huh. Well here's a trick for you Luke. Don't listen. And while you're at it, scrub Varese, Frank Zappa, and a helluva lot of other people off your philistine list. Even good old Percy Grainger. You know, with his music of the telephone wires and the machines carry-on. But do go on:
This is why he’s reviving his biggest recording mistake to date – Metal Machine Music – and inflicting it on Sydney audiences at the Vivid Live festival next month. For those of you who haven’t heard MMM, don’t bother. It is to Lou Reed’s career what Death of a Ladies Man was to Leonard Cohen’s – hours of screeching, synthesized crap that his reputation was lucky to survive. You could get the same effect by hanging off a railway bridge and waiting for a freight train to come along.
Ah hah, so you have been listening to Percy Grainger's later works!
But here's a word for you Luke. If you don't like late Percy, or late Lou, or perhaps good old Tristram Carey, never mind that he wrote The Ladykillers score and early Doctor Who before getting into musique concrète and electronic music, well you can always simply bugger off. Put on some Akker Dakker and bliss out.
But do go on:
“I’m going to take some underground films from the ‘60s down there you know,” Reed told the Herald. “I mean this whole thing really should be a lot of fun. Getting all these people together, it’s great.”
Yeah, great. For Lollabelle and all those hundreds of dogs who live a stone’s throw from the Opera House. The rest of us would rather sit home and dig out our knee cartilage with a tea spoon.
Well I guess that would be more fun than searching around inside Luke's skull for signs of brain cartilage. You certainly wouldn't need a tea spoon.
You see Luke, as Andy Warhol once said, art is anything you can get away with.
If the punters pay up and turn up and have fun, where's the harm. And if they don't want to, they can bugger off and the show's a flop, and where's the harm in that. Unless of course you can persuade a government to kick the can.
Come to think of it, where's the harm in punters turning up in festering abundance at dog and cat shows generally? To drool over canines and felines. Not my cup of tea but where's the harm?
Why the indignation, why the rage?
Um Luke they actually stopped talking when Cale departed/was removed/select which version you like back in 1968 from the Velvet Underground, but in the usual way of petulant artists, they got back together after Andy Warhol's death to put together the album Songs for Drella.
The thing about junkies is that they tend to be a little highly strung, perhaps something you might explore the next time you want to walk on the wild side. Since you like to dribble words, you'll be pleased to know that junk will help you in your desire to dribble petulance.
I'm indebted to this site for this anecdote:
A final note: While at the completion of the studio recording process John Cale stated that he would never work with Lou Reed again, a funny thing happened a few months later: On June 15th, Cale and Reed reconvened again to play selections of Songs for Drella at the Fondation Cartier concert in Jouy-en-Josas, France. At the end of the set, Cale and Reed emerged for an encore….with Maureen Tucker and Sterling Morrison, and the classic lineup of the Velvet Underground played “Heroin” together for the first time in 22 years. This moment would eventually lead to a full blown reunion of the four as the Velvet Underground through parts of 1992 and 1993 before they broke up yet again, this time during negotiations for an episode of MTV Unplugged. (Any further reunion possibilities were quashed forever two years later when Sterling Morrison died of cancer.) Considering all this, it seems even more amazing that not only were Cale and Reed able to set aside a good part of their differences for a year to create new music, but that the end result was such a well crafted song cycle.
You see Luke life is a little complicated for artists, and even more for those artists who get energy out of fussin' and feudin'.
Here's the thing Luke ... why don't you just stick your head up your bum, or stick to writing about sport. Rugby league: The ultimate in do-or-die sporting spirit is about your level. Dropkick with spiral punt. And there's always the cross-dressing in the Footy Show.
Leave Lou Reed. Love him or hate him, you just end up sounding like a petulant dipstick without the understanding, empathy or vocabulary to write about the y'artz. And whatever The Punch needs to do to maintain Australia's best conversation, it doesn't need a bovver boy wanting to sound like Sir Les Patterson ...
A final disclaimer: even someone with a complete disinterest in the current activities of Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson could do better than this splenetic spiteful ill-informed tosh. And yes, I have that complete disinterest ...
Take it away Lou, get Luke excited. Never mind that you've been there and done that. Never mind that you might be bored and want to do something else.
Luke wants you pickled in aspic, trapped like a mosquito in amber, never changing, always the same. Singing the same old song over and over again, in a voice never much chop and now decidedly croaky, like old farts do when they congregate in concert halls to re-live the sixties, knowing their next gig is a nursing home.
Take him back somewhere in his boyhood when he wanted to take a walk on the wild side ...
Just this once, please pretty please, do something he remembers, something he can understand, something he can relate to:
In the backroom she was everybody's darlin'
But she never lost her head
Even when she was giving head
She says, Hey babe
Take a walk on the wild side
I Said, Hey baby
Take a walk on the wild side
And the coloured girls go
Doo do doo do doo do do doo..
Oh dear god, how I wished I was in a loft apartment in New York right at this moment, rather than reading the crap in The Punch.
Instead I'm off to Melbourne for the weekend, in my very best black, to promenade in Brunswick street. A little closer to heaven than The Punch, but no cigar. Whatever sweet Melbourne is, it ain't the village ...
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