I read my kids The Little House books when they were little. At some point, they got obsessed with the show and I couldn’t help the nostalgia of the theme song and watched a few episodes with them. I kept thinking, “Why do I know ‘Charlotte Stewart’?” Then it clicked. Mary X from Eraserhead!
I happened to find this book a little later and picked it up. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, since I have low expectations for any kind of celebrity or artist autobiography. You get a little behind the scenes on several David Lynch projects and a look into the sex-and-drugs-fueled Hollywood system of the ’70s
Czech sci-fi based on Stanislaw Lem and one of the big influences on Kubrick’s 2001! I enjoyed it, though the mood is something other than Lem or Kubrick. It takes place in 2163, but is wholly about the fallout of WWII. I love the models used for special effects shots. The film had disappeared with only a modified cut in existence until a new one was found. I’ve been listening to a re-release of the music for a few years, but didn’t know about a new release of the movie until I saw it on Criterion.
Two decades ago or so, a couple of friends and I used to crack each other up by quoting songs from this album. We loved it, but some of the lyrics and the delivery would just send us into laughter every time. It’s one of Reed’s most rocking albums. Robert Quine is jagged, yet sublime–one of my all-time favorite guitarists. Fernando Saunders plays Jaco-esque fills and harmonics in his fretless bass lines, and Doane Perry is a solid backbone for the whole thing.
Reed has always seemed like someone who wasn’t interested in crafting songs, but recording them in the old school sense of here is a record of something that happened–it’s done, time to move on. Sometimes you get brilliance, and sometimes you get howlers.
Stephen McClurg 