The Boy Who Cried Freebird Read Online Free PDF Page A

imprint, Red Seal, MMM was immediately and forever stuck between rock music and a hard place. Lou even made some faint apologies for not having a proper disclaimer on the album cover—only to angrily deny those regrets the next time he spoke to the press.
    With Reed’s uncompromising electronic maelstrom spread across four sides of vinyl, and each untitled side listed as exactly sixteen minutes and one second in length (this, too, proved to be untrue), MMM was unlike any other record released by a “rock” personality.
    Consumer reactions to Reed’s labor of love (and hate) were equally extreme. Musician/writer Richard Henderson recalled replacing all the tubes in his stereo amplifier before heading back to the record store to return his copy of MMM .
    â€œI walked in and watched someone bring back an MMM 8-track they had obviously just bought,” Henderson said. “Without a word they stood in front of the cash register and pulled all of the tape out of the cartridge onto the counter. Everyone in the store was watching while he spooled out the entire 8-track, dropped the cartridge on top of the pile of tape, and walked out without saying a word. I decided that if the record had that kind of effect on people, I was going to keep it.”
    For those who bought vinyl copies of MMM , there was the added bonus of a locked groove at the end of side 4, thereby assuring the (unsuspecting) listener of an endless journey into automated sound. While the double LP quickly went out of print, MMM found new life on compact disc. And like the 8-track format, the CD allowed one to hear Reed’s sonic montage from beginning to end without making consecutive decisions to forge ahead with sides 2, 3, and 4 (lengths 15:40, 16:04, and 13:40, respectively).
    When I began this investigation, I hit an unanticipated snag that brought my research to a standstill. That is, I kept listening to Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music . The more I heard it, the more I liked it, and this concerned me. My desire to hear conventional music diminished, and all my friends stopped visiting. I was discouraged about the whole thing until I bumped into musician/recording engineer Steve Albini at a Chicago nightclub called The Empty Bottle. After explaining my obsession with MMM to Mr. Albini, he kindly consented to discuss the record. He said:
    When I lived in Montana in 1977 a friend of mine told me about this weird Lou Reed album that everybody hated but he thought was pretty cool. He played it for me and I thought it was just totally captivating, really amazing. The thing that we both appreciated about it was that within the noise there are these little fluttery beautiful tiny melodic bits, which are probably part of the generative systems that were put together to make all the sounds. Those sounds may not have been orchestrated or intentional in any way, but were there—and no less interesting. People refer to that record as though it were completely chaotic noise. I have a lot of records that are completely chaotic noise and that is a total misunderstanding of this record. Whatever Lou Reed’s motive for making it, it’s still a reallyoutstanding nonharmonic piece of music. There were clearly choices made about how much density and which sounds in particular would get layered on top of each other. I don’t hear Metal Machine Music as a feedback and improv record; I hear it as a pure sound sculpture. I really enjoy listening to it. It’s not that weird, it’s only weird given that it came out in 1975 and was presented as a pop music record.
    Now that’s exactly what I was looking for. Someone articulate and knowledgeable who thinks MMM was pretty cool and fun to listen to. Perhaps Lester Bangs did know what he was talking about when it came to Metal Machine Music . Even Lou Reed said, “In time it will prove itself.” He also claimed to have laughed himself silly after presenting MMM as a serious