Metal Machine Music

[zhao]

What's your favourite, non-Velvets Sterling Morrison project? ...Moe Tucker project? ...Doug Yule project?

im not familiar with what S. Morrison did outside of the velvets...

not sure if Angus MacLise can be considered to have ever been a "member" -- wasnt he either asked to join and turned them down, or was actually one of them for a brief time, like 2 days, and then left, saying what the band wanted to do was just too boring? -- anyhow i like his solo recordings a lot. now there's some psych-noise avant rock.

incidentally, anyone ever heard the rock band la Monte Young formed? i bought the 2 CD live recording in a used bin a long time ago and loved it, imagine Well Tuned Piano performed by the Dead... (but the CDs were mistreated and long lost -- realized too late that its super rare)

yes some props must be given to the gesture of MMM, given the context others have mentioned (year, major label, etc.)... but speaking as someone who has listened to a TON of atonal, monotonous, one-note records over the years, its just forgettable (like, immediately after)

There'd be heaps of stuff from the academy and art worlds though, e.g. Steve Reich's Pendulum Music is just feedback from microphones swinging past each other above a floor-mounted speaker, so they eventually turn into a constant shriek of feedback as they come to rest. Late 60s from memory.

the history of noise is ground well covered, no? futurists - dada - concrete - etc. etc.

but still must mention people like Eliane Radigue, Pierre Henry and Pierre Schaeffer here... so many Noise (by all definitions) recordings made by them and many others like them in the 50s. saw Henry perform a few months ago, non eventful, and only just for sake of able to tell my grand kids, should i ever have any, and should they by chance become music nerds like us.

reich's pendulum music is a very elegant piece. sculptural on both physical and aural levels... michael you saw the original performance of it in the late 60s?!?!?! WTF?

 

[michael]

Nah, haven't seen it at any time! Was meaning my memory of liner notes, music history etc. is it was composed in the 60s. I'm 33...

 

[zhao]

Nah, haven't seen it at any time! Was meaning my memory of liner notes, music history etc. is it was composed in the 60s. I'm 33...

ah ok. was my impression that you are about my age. i saw it performed in LA once. there were at least 5 mics used, in conjoining but separate rooms, and the feedback was very rich, very loud but pleasant... each swinging at slightly different intervals and walking around the space was a very nice experience. it was followed by one of Cage's indeterminate radio pieces - performers rotating the dials on small radios and pausing at i-ching derived numbers... had a recording of the evening on 3 inch CD but lost along with everything else i owned...

 

[Sick Boy]

im not familiar with what S. Morrison did outside of the velvets...

not sure if Angus MacLise can be considered to have ever been a "member" -- wasnt he either asked to join and turned them down, or was actually one of them for a brief time, like 2 days, and then left, saying what the band wanted to do was just too boring? -- anyhow i like his solo recordings a lot. now there's some psych-noise avant rock.

Ok so what you meant was John Cale then.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

im not familiar with what S. Morrison did outside of the velvets...

nothing. Mo Tucker either. that's why it's silly to just dismiss Reed. I mean sure his solo work mostly sucks but but someone had to turn all that drony avant weirdness into actual songs and I reckon he did a pretty fine job of it.

not sure if Angus MacLise... saying what the band wanted to do was just too boring? -- anyhow i like his solo recordings a lot. now there's some psych-noise avant rock...

well yeah sure MacLise & Young & whoever were like a trillion times more avant & obscure but is that really the point? VU was a rock band that incorporated some avant elements. it's apples & oranges really. as great as Young/Riley etc. are they don't really write songs you know? Even "Sister Ray" has a groove, after a fashion. I dunno, I think you can look at it like; Cale is the guy for everyone influenced by VU's weirder more abstract side & Reed is the one for Jesus & Mary Chain (Mo Tucker there too) and The Feelies type stuff. Not that one can't like both of course.

 

[zhao]

fair enough. my slagging off of reed was admittedly a bit too harsh... and not ALL the other members were more interesting... J+M Chain were one of my teenage staples...

also, just because of this thread, i've downloaded MMM again. and will have another listen after 10 years... report back soon.

 

[Tentative Andy]

I fucking loath Lou Reed. Berlin is shit. The Velvets are shit.

No.
No no no.
*shakes head rapidly*

 

[Mr. Tea]

Yeah I'm not a fan of Lou Reed, especially his solo work, but it's just laughable nonsense to say that he was the least creative/avant Velvet. It was just Cale.

Really? Berlin fucking slays, IMNSHO (much better than Transformer, at any rate, though obviously 'Satellite' and 'Wild Side' are great).

 

[DannyL]

I don't see why MMM turns people off so much either. It's just a mediocre noise record, like thousands of mediocre noise records since.

.

I think it's just this - it's mediocre. And for someone of Reed's rep to put out something markedly different, markedly experiemental - possibly/probably as a "fuck you" big gesture to critics, consumers - I guess that explains some of the ire. It fails, artisically.

All the above said before (like Zhao) listening to it again, which this thread has inspired me to do at least...

 

[Leo]

i'm not a lou fan now, but it's fair to say that as a teenager back in the late 70s, i (and many others, i assume) was led down the path to more challenging/underground music by him, so i owe him props. maybe you couldn't find really hardcore underground shit in the record sections of suburban department stores like kmart or sears, but you COULD find "transformer" and "berlin." and that was a revelation for a 15 year old.

and imho, "coney island baby" and "street hassle" are pretty damn good. hell, i even still occasionally dig the alice copper band-powered "rock'n roll animal" live record.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Really? Berlin fucking slays, IMNSHO (much better than Transformer, at any rate, though obviously 'Satellite' and 'Wild Side' are great).

No way. I mean fair play to you of course. But I hate Loaded but I'd still take that over of any of his solo work. It's like VU except it sucks. The worst is when he covers actual VU songs and they're all 70s glammed out with studio musicians. Heroin doesn't jive with glam, not speed either (too grungy), it's pure cocaine music. "Wild Side" is alright as a novelty thing I guess plus ATCQ flipped it pretty nice.

I think it's just this - it's mediocre...QUOTE]

Surely mediocrity is a much greater failure than making a record that polarizes people?

 

[zhao]

i'm not a lou fan now, but it's fair to say that as a teenager back in the late 70s, i (and many others, i assume) was led down the path to more challenging/underground music by him, so i owe him props. maybe you couldn't find really hardcore underground shit in the record sections of suburban department stores like kmart or sears, but you COULD find "transformer" and "berlin." and that was a revelation for a 15 year old.

now, now. i see a gap in logic here: we owe him props because more quality material was not available?

not just more "hardcore underground", but there are better people who did what he did: song oriented stuff, back in the 70s. for instance the deceptively harmless Leonard Cohen RIPS this guy to shreds in song writing with a casual puff on his pipe (did Cohen smoke a pipe? if he didn't he should have )

ok that may not the best example... like comparing a tiger with a dung beetle. but still. Reed is just altogether mediocre and poseur-ish. like Tom Waits.

 

[reeltoreel]

Yeah - but if you're standing in the record section of Sears in 1978 and you've got a copy of Boston's second album in one hand and Transformer in the other, which one is more likely to be mind-blowing?

I mean, yes, we owe him props because more quality material was not available. Absolutely.
While his flaws were many and varied, and his music wasn't very good some of the time, he managed to create albums that were strikingly different from anything widely available and get them into places where people could buy them.

Which brings us back to the shop floor at Sears. With the scent of velour and nail polish in your nasal passages and the distribution revolution still twenty years in the future...

 

[wonk_vitesse]

the history of noise is ground well covered, no? futurists - dada - concrete - etc. etc.

but still must mention people like Eliane Radigue, Pierre Henry and Pierre Schaeffer here... so many Noise (by all definitions) recordings made by them and many others like them in the 50s. saw Henry perform a few months ago, non eventful, and only just for sake of able to tell my grand kids, should i ever have any, and should they by chance become music nerds like us.

reich's pendulum music is a very elegant piece. sculptural on both physical and aural levels... michael you saw the original performance of it in the late 60s?!?!?! WTF?

i guess there were other 60s conceptual pieces like this one that turned into noise, thanks for reminding me, really post Cageian in essence, i see MMM as something very different to Russolo & other noisy Twentieth century composers and music concrete, all very composed. Was thinking about Brotzmann's Machine & Coltrane's 'Free Jazz' they still seem to be in the jazz instrumental tradition however mental.

MMM and the industrial noise mvt was a shift away from any kinda of formal structure and about subverting all musical genres. The noise scene in London is quite buoyant still as it happens.

 

[Ness Rowlah]

Reed is just altogether mediocre and poseur-ish. like Tom Waits.

I'll stand up for the old Tom. Waits only started sucking when he became "quirky" and student friendly and an artiste singing from the inside of a concrete blender. Before that he only had 154 fans (to paraphrase a piece in a Norwegian rag when he became slightly more known).

The late 70s/early 80s stuff like Waits' "Nighthawks at the Diner", "Foreign Affairs", "Blue Valentine", Chuck E Weiss' "The other side of town" [edit:just put this on, it's merely OK compared to Waits/Jones] and Rickie Lee Jones' "RLJ" /"Pirates" makes for excellent late night listening. Hell I even like the "One from the Heart" soundtrack.

There's a strand of American soul/blues inspired "big city" music that I've got a soft spot for - ie the guys mentioned and also David Johansen's "In Style", some Springsteen, Moon Martin, Southside Johnny, Mink de Ville, Bob Seger etc. Not trendy, not revolutionary in any shape or form, often ignored (because Bob Harris likes this kind of stuff?), just solid and good (and sometimes sublime).

MMM - I haven't listened to it for 20 years and won't now either. I wasn't impressed back then, I think it was more of a joke (but not a fun one) than any sort of serious take on (pre-)industrial music. I'd rather listen to airplanes taking off.

 

[Sick Boy]

I can't even begin to fathom how anyone could talk shit on Tom Waits' career. Yes, his pre- rum-soaked king-of-the-junkyard bum/pirate shit was good (epecially Nighthawks At The Diner) but really? NONE of those albums afterwards? Swordfishtrombones? Rain Dogs? Frank's Wild Years? Bone Machine?

Shit, you may not like the guy, but to find no value at all in these? Or to call him a "poseur"? A lot of this thread seems like certain people being willfully contrarian to make an obnoxious point.

"He was good back when he only had 154 fans"
Yes, I get it. You were one of them. Get out of here.
I mean, if we're gonna talk about posing here.

 

[Mr. Tea]

bum/pirate

Tom Waites a bum-pirate, well I never.

Rain Dogs is a gem, no question.

 

[Ness Rowlah]

NONE of those albums afterwards? Swordfishtrombones? Rain Dogs? Frank's Wild Years? Bone Machine?

It's not what I wrote. I said he started sucking as in going downhill, that I like his barfly stuff better than his more progressive stuff is preference.

Shit, you may not like the guy, but to find no value at all in these?

It's not what I wrote is it? You are putting words in my mouth.

Or to call him a "poseur"?

Not addressed to me I guess. I think he did what he had to do, not because he was posing.

"He was good back when he only had 154 fans"
Yes, I get it. You were one of them. Get out of here.
I mean, if we're gonna talk about posing here.

Fair point (and taken), I shouldn't have put that one in there.

 

[petergunn]

It sounds pretty harmonic to me and that's the link with Cale and ultimately La Monte Young, but it goes onto be alot more noisy & dissonant.

Is this the first 'noise' record or did someone do something before this ? Maybe that's why it's of note rather than it being a great record.

yeah, for sure... overtones and whatnot... i like the anologness of it, and the fact that it's really not THAT grating, like it had been compressed... i like it... it reminds me of watching bad olf sci fi shows liek Buck Rogers as a small child and hearing the computers talk...

Lou Reed is fucking great... he is a totally hilarious bitch, what is not to like?

he is a GOAT for the velvets alone, but Transformer, Berlin, and his s/t are all great, too...

actually, anyone who doesn't like Transformer must hate rock and roll...

john cale is cool and all, but do you really walk around humming his songs like you do w/ Vicious or Satellite of Love?

 

[nomadthethird]

Lou Reed is fucking great... he is a totally hilarious bitch, what is not to like?

Especially pre-2000s Lou Reed. There's nothing not to like about what a totally hilarious asshole he was.