Lou Reed has a way of polarizing lovers of rock and roll, breaking up marriages, sending brothers off to war against one another, etc.  Uncle Donnie gets Lou, though, at least enough to be able to write him with some advice.  No telling what Lou might make of this, or of Uncle Donnie.  Reading this did send me back to Disc 1 of the most excellent Lou Reed box set, which is a pretty cool collection, though apparently out of print.  As Kurt Loder would instruct us if he were here, though, do check it out. – RS

TO: Lou Reed
FROM: Don Skwatzenschitz
RE: Career advice

I gotta tell you, Lou, you scared the hell out of me at the Warhol crockery exhibit at MoMA last week. I mean, you certainly deserve to catch a little shut-eye as much as the next guy, but in the coat room? Hanging upside down? How’d you get up there in the first place? Never mind; I don’t want to know.

I’ve been thinking about you since that incident, and I’ve got to say, for a guy just starting to finagle his way back into the spotlight here in the States, you have a funny way of promoting yourself. People, strangely enough, get put off by you a lot of times. And you’re a swell guy, Lou. That joke you told at MoMA about Bob Dole and the vat of Vaseline was a riot. Even better was the point in the evening when you and Antony Hegarty sang “Only You (And You Alone)” over by the stoneware exhibit. I never knew you had such a beautiful falsetto.

There are some things you need to consider as you venture further out in the coming year, namely the following:

Put on Metal Machine Music—the arena tour! Your recent shows at the Redcat in Los Angeles featured your peculiar brand of noise/ambient/industrial instrumental music, with something called the Metal Machine Trio. According to some of the accounts I’ve read, the shows were well received by the people who were able to tolerate an evening of such stuff, and who stuck around once they figured out “Walk on the Wild Side” would definitely not get an airing that night. It got me thinking—next year is the 35th anniversary of Metal Machine Music, right? Wouldn’t it be great to take your noise/ambient/industrial instrumental concept into arenas, where you could play all of MMM (or as close an approximation as possible) to as many fans as are willing to fill, say, a 7,000-seat venue? Imagine the sound of all that feedback, bouncing in that empty cavernous space, and off 6,800 empty seats! (more…)