If you have ever seen any of those low-budget “Under Review” made for DVD rockumentaries, then you know that they follow a fairly tried and true formula: Almost no music by the group or performer the doc is about, approx 5 minutes of archival film clips in the course of 90 minutes and usually a bunch of crazed loner rock critics you’ve never heard of, yakking it up about their favorite rock groups. Often the interviewees are fairly tangential to the subjects, but not always. The range from awesome (the one on the early days of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention was excellent) to awful.

In The Velvet Underground: Under Review, they managed to nab TWO actual members of the Velvet Underground, Maureen Tucker and Doug Yule—both Reed and Cale, predictably sat this one out—which elevates this way above most of the others ones. Even longtime VU fans might learn something new here. For instance, I’ve listened to the VU for 36 years now and I didn’t know that Maureen Tucker didn’t play drums on Loaded because she was pregnant. Every copy of that album (and the CD) credits her on the back—your copy and mine—but it’s not her drumming, it’s Doug Yule, studio engineer Adrian Barber, a session drummer named Tommy Castanaro and Billy Yule, who was still a high school student (It doesn’t sound even remotely like Mo Tucker on Loaded as I found listening to it the day after I watched this doc). You also hear Mo talk about how she stripped down her drum kit to get a more primitive, less busy, sound. And Yule, who always gets short shrift in the VU saga, gets plenty of onscreen time to discuss his role in the band (How many of you reading this know it’s him singing “Candy Says” and not Lou Reed?). I’ve never seen an interview with him and I was very pleased to see his participation in this film. If you’re a VU fan, this film is absolutely worth your time.

Get it on DVD.
 

 
Lou Reed. P.M. - Pre-Metallica. A Night with Lou Reed, his performance at the Bottom Line, New York, from 1983.

Track Listing:

01. “Sweet Jane”
02. “I’m Waiting for the Man”
03. “Martial Law”
04. “Don’t Talk to Me about Work”
05. “Women”
06. “Waves of Fear”
07. “Walk on the Wild Side”
08. “Turn Out the Light”
09. “New Age”
10. “Kill Your Sons”
11. “Satellite of Love”
12. “White Light/White Heat”
13. “Rock & Roll”

Look out for an air-guitaring front row fan around 51.48 - a portent of things to come A.M.? (After Metallica?)
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

 
A little more from Lou, after the jump….
 

 
Director Darren Aronofsky, whose films Requiem For A Dream and Black Swan oozed visual style, can’t do much to polish the turd that is Loutallica. Grainy black and white, super slo-mo and lens distortion create a nightmarish quality that is undercut by the song’s ludicrous heavy handedness, ending up more silly than spooky.
 

 
Some tellin’ it like it is, spotted in record store.

Previously on Dangerous Minds:

Lou Reed and Metallica mutilate ‘White Light/White Heat’ on British TV November 8
NONONONO Cat reviews Lou Reed and Metallica’s ‘Lulu’
Loutallica: Hot trash video mix - NSFW
30 second shards of Hell: Excerpts from the new Lou Reed/Metallica album

(via reddit)

 
In the mess that is Lulu one song that is generally singled out as having some of the vibe and feel evoking vintage Lou Reed is “Junior Dad.” Last night, during their concert in Cologne, Germany, Reed and Metallica performed the song and, lo and behold, it’s the first live video I’ve seen of the band that actually moves me in a good way.

Reed seems a shitload more engaged with what he’s doing in this video than during his addled performance on Jool Holland’s show from a few nights ago. World weariness has displaced death warmed over.

Is it possible that as Loutallica tours behind Lulu they may actually discover the heretofore untapped magic in their collaboration? Perhaps, if they replace their current drummer with Mo Tucker.

You can visit the Lou Reed/Metallica Youtube channel for more of the Cologne concert.
 

 
Loutallica take another shot at ‘White Light/White Heat’ after the jump…

 
Lou Reed and Metallica in hit and run accident leave White Light/White Heat dead on the side of the highway - rock and roll road kill.

Everything about this is just plain wrong, from Metallica’s dunderhead playing to Reed’s total inability to find the pocket of the song…which is understandable because there is none. What is not understandable is why Reed continues to trash the Velvet Underground’s legacy. Can the surviving members of VU get a cease and desist order?

This is like watching a beloved friend racing toward the edge of a cliff in an out-of-control 1978 Ford Pinto - a sense of helpless dread overcomes you as you avert your eyes and pray for Divine intervention.

Just when you think it couldn’t get worse, Loutallica shows you just how bottomless the pit is. And that Lars fuck should have his hands bound with chicken wire and never allowed anywhere near a drum kit.

“If all this makes you feel sorry for him, then you can compliment yourself on being a real Lou Reed fan. Because that’s exactly what he wants.” Lester Bangs, 1973.

Later With Jools Holland, November 8, 2011.
 

 
WFMU’s Tom Scharpling tweets in realtime about a close encounter with Lou Reed at a Starbucks. Read from bottom.

#LouAtStarbucks

Thank you very kindly, Edward Ludvigsen!

 
Yeah, tell me about it, NONONONO Cat.
 

 
(via Nerdcore)

 
Here’s a reminder of just how cool Lou Reed can be. Consider it a palate cleanser for the shit sandwich that is Lulu.

I think this is from the mid-70s. Anybody know?

Update 11/1: The clip is from Jimi Hendrix directed by Joe Boyd and John Head in 1973. Thanks to DM reader Steve.
 

 
Before there was a Velvet Underground, there was Lewis Reed, Lewis Allen Rabinowitz (aka Lou Reed), who in 1962 recorded a couple of self-penned tracks for indie record mogul Brent Shad. “Merry Go Round” and “Your Love” were written a year before Reed’s residency as an in-house songwriter for Pickwick Records.

‘Merry Go Round’ sounds like most teen pop tunes of the era. The only thing that distinguishes it is the unmistakable voice of Lou Reed. Kinda sounds like Dion on white crosses.
 

 
Unofficial video for “Frustration” from the Lou Reed/ Metallica album Lulu.

The pain shoots through my body
A sword between my thighs
I wish that I could kill you
But I too love your eyes

You’re feeling less whore but you stimulate
The hatred smolders in your eyes
I’d drop to my knees in a second
To salivate in your thighs

But all I do is fall over
I don’t have the strength I once had
In you and your prickless lover
And his easel in his eyes

I feel the pain creep up my leg
Blood runs from my nose
I puke my guts out at your feet
You’re more man than I
To be dead to have no feeling
To be dry and spermless like a girl

This is NSFW. You’ve been warned.
 

 
Here are some 30 second excerpts from all of the tracks on the new Lou Reed/Metallica album Lulu.

What do you think?

Though it’s hard to judge an entire album based on 30 second clips, some of the bits sound to me like the highly amplified rumbling sludge of a lower intestinal tract infection fronted by the guy who works the complaint desk in Hell. Muddle machine music.

Track two, “The View,” is presented in its entirety.
 

Lulu (30-second Samples) by Lou Reed & Metallica

 
When the 1965-1968 core Velvet Underground lineup of Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison and Maureen Tucker reformed for a 1993 European tour, I was excited but worried that a VU reunion couldn’t help but to be a disappointment. I didn’t want to spoil my image of the band, but when the live recordings of the Paris shows (mostly the second evening of a three night stand, a show described by John Cale as a “home run”) was released as Live MCMXCIII, I thought they pulled it off admirably, even if it’s not an album I’d ever think to pull out to play when I felt like listening to the Velvet Underground…

Cale and Reed fell out again during the shows in Europe (which included the Velvets opening for.. U fucking 2?), so a US tour never took place. Fans left distraught to have been shut out of the reunion shows had to satisfy themselves by watching the live concert video taped at L’Olympia. That material is now on YouTube in very good quality. Watch the opening numbers, “Venus in Furs” and “White Light/White Heat,” below:
 

 
I was prepared for the worst but nothing quite as bad as the song “The View,” from the upcoming Lou Reed/Metallica collaboration. If this track is indicative of what’s on the rest of the album, it will end up embarrassing everyone involved. This will satisfy no one…not Lou’s fans, not Metallica’s.

As music, it’s intolerably bad, sounding like some hellish noise cooked up in the basement by a 10th rate metal band and their loony uncle and the lyrics read like something scrawled on the back of a goth kid’s composition book. A sample:

I WANT TO SEE YOUR SUICIDE
I WANT TO SEE YOU GIVE IT UP
YOUR LIFE OF REASON
I WANT YOU ON THE FLOOR
AND IN A COFFIN YOUR SOUL SHAKING
I WANT TO HAVE YOU DOUBTING
EVERY MEANING YOU’VE AMASSED
LIKE A FORTUNE

OH THROW IT AWAY

FOR WORSHIP SOMEONE
WHO ACTIVELY DESPISES YOU

As a long suffering Lou Reed fan, I was hoping that my gut feelings that this project was going to be disastrous would be proven wrong. If the rest of the album is as shitty as this track, it could go down in history as one of the most misbegotten musical couplings of all time.
 

The View by Lou Reed & Metallica

 
I’m as big a Lou Reed fan as there is, but based on the video below (from the 2009 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame show), I’m not sure a Reed/Metallica collaboration is such a hot idea. I’m keeping fingers crossed that what appears to be a marriage made in hell may end up surprising me.

David Fricke of Rolling Stone magazine has heard the album and wrote:

The record, not yet titled, features 10 songs composed by Reed with significant arrangement contributions by the band that suggest a raging union of his 1973 noir classic, Berlin, and Metallica’s ‘86 crusher, Master of Puppets.

Fricke’s description confuses me. I’m even less clear as to what the album sounds like then I was before reading it.

And Metallica’s James Hetfield doesn’t help:

Lars and I listened to the stuff,” Hetfield says of Reed’s demos, “and it was like, ‘Wow, this is very different.’ It was scary at first, because the music was so open. But then I thought, ‘This could go anywhere.’ “

Knowing the songs were composed by Reed based on Frank Wedekind’s play Lulu, which was written in 1895, puts this into the category of Reed’s work I generally don’t like: the pretentious and forgettable concept album.

Lou Reed thinks the album is…

... maybe the best thing done by anyone, ever. It could create another planetary system. I’m not joking, and I’m not being egotistical.

We will soon find out on Halloween, the day the album is released.