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Who's best: Lou Reed or John Cale?
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handofdave
handofdave
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Re: Who's best: Lou Reed or John Cale?
Apr 24, 2010, 13:15
Lou. Lou is a bona fide inhabitant of the rock and roll god pantheon. Like with Brian Eno, I like the idea of John Cale better than I actually like John Cale. That is to say, they are both great, don't get me wrong, but I always feel like Eno is a better producer than a writer or performer, and Cale's stuff is equally constrained by some sort of art-school self consciousness.
Reed and Warhol were a good match because they both came out of the factory art scene... Warhol the commercial illustrator, and Reed the creator of prefab teen dance tunes. There's something more immediate about their art... When Cale talks about what Reed talks about, it's affected by an academic understanding of music. Reed's approach is more from the gut and his writing is less couched in abstraction and more focused on stories... like with Bob Dylan's song-stories, there's a warmth to them that the relatively icy and detached work of Eno and Cale don't have.
I think the Velvet's catalog speaks for itself... and tho Lou's had some duds in his solo career there's some great records in there too.
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