Lester, Lou, and Rachel
Will Hermes' Lou Reed book, my VU epiphany at a Taco Cabana drive-thru, a mother lode of unholy awe, Lester Bangs' couch
Would I be here without Lester Bangs? By here I mean sitting at a keyboard in New York City decades and decades after buying a copy of Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung in high school in suburban Texas (though now that I think about it, I no doubt just tucked a copy into my boxers and walked out with it). Steal this book. And that one. And this one as well. Through his enthusiasm, I began to hero worship the likes of the Velvet Underground, MC5, and the Stooges, even if it was still impossible at that point in the early 1990s to find such albums. It seems weird to say it now, but it took years to find something like Fun House.
And it took more than a few spins before The Velvet Underground and Nico finally landed. It felt so dim and distant that I almost dismissed it after a few plays, yet I can still recall being in a Taco Cabana drive-thru when that chair got dragged across “European Son” and everything in me shattered in the most glorious way. I’m definitely here because of Lou Reed and this music.
Soon after, I began typing up my own essays, which included erudite, very stoned topics like “REM Kicks the Beatles’ Ass,” glow in the dark stickers, my friend Lee, and the parallels between the clothing on Trout Mask Replica and 3 Years, 5 Months And 2 Days In The Life Of.... But those ramblings stem directly from Richard Meltzer’s baked/ half-baked essays in Gulcher. I would never say I tried to write like Bangs though.
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