Before I get to the Lou Reed events, ongoing at the VIFF Centre, I have to give an RIP to Cris Derksen. I am saddened to learn that she was taken from us, far too young, in a traffic collision in Alberta yesterday. I wish I'd seen her live more often. I no doubt have caught her as part of some ensemble VNM or jazzfest event but never in a front-and-centre capacity. My deepest association with her playing is the cello on Bison's "Wendigo Pt. 1: Quest for Fire" -- though I don't think I ever saw her join Bison onstage for that (I would have remembered!).
What was that Eric Dolphy quote? (It was appended to a recording of a late, but not actually the final, performance of his, as suiting the context of a posthumous release): "When you hear music, after its over, it's gone in the air. You can never capture it again." My condolences to those who knew her or worked with her.
That said, I've come to write about Lou... Note also there are a couple of significant errors in my Straight article about Aram Bajakian's presentation of two nights of Lou Reed, apropos of night two, which is tonight: I say that the performance of the music this evening, as with last night, comes before the film, but that is not so. If you wish to see Wim Wenders' Faraway, So Close! (which is included with the cost of the ticket), you have to get to the theatre THIS AFTERNOON at 3:30, before the live music (which starts at 7:45). I've never known the VIFF to do it this way -- usually the movie plays AFTER the music -- and confess that I simply did not read the blurb. The error has remained in the article, since my editor is literally on vacation. If anyone ends up feeling cheated out of the Wenders movie, my profound apologies!
Also, it was Stellar Regions, not Interstellar Space, that Bajakian referenced, or the non-extant portmanteau of "Interstellar Regions" that saw print, which again was 100% my bad; Bajakian said it right, and I thought he meant the other album, and "fixed" it, but bungled my own fix. The error was caught and noted, with the aid of Tim Reinert, but again, my editor is sipping Suntory and posing for shots at various Shinto shrines, so as the Japanese would say, "shikata ga nai." (The equivalent of "It can't be helped" or the more Beckettian "Nothing to be done", sometimes also given as "sho ga nai"). I have no direct access to the Straight website, unlike this one, so if there's a fuckup, there's not much I can directly do.
Sho ga nai.
Aram Bajakian and Lou Reed, 2011-2012?
I do think it's going to be a very special night of music this evening; I'm quite excited to take it in, especially Bajakian's reading of "Street Hassle", in particular, which is a Lou Reed song I am still in my early acquaintance with, but find really moving. Bajakian explained the inclusion of that song in particular thusly: "When I got the gig with Lou, there's a really good friend from elementary school whose parents were, I think, hanging out with the Velvet Underground in the 1960s, and then they moved to this small town outside of Boston, and that's how I met him. And he was like, 'Oh, you have to play "Street Hassle".' 'Okay, I'll check it out'. And we worked on it. I think with 'Street Hassle' and also 'Sad Song' from Berlin, they were really hard songs to play live because of the lyrical content. Like, they're so dark. I'm wondering what Vancouver audiences will make of it..."
The lyrics to "Street Hassle" are here. To say nothing of the harrowing story told, Reed's delivery on that track is going to be pretty challenging to replicate, I suspect! Lou does that deadpan/ doesn't scan spoken thing where he jams extraneous syllables into a line that he can just bluster his way through, because he's Lou, and anything he does will count as "the way Lou does it," but someone covering the tune is in a different position! It will be interesting to see how Bajakian negotiates that.
About the range of what Reed does, Bajakian's comment, which didn't make the Straight piece, was "he writes these beautiful, delicate songs, that have R&B influence, that have pop influence, that sometimes have cheesy lyrics, that sometimes have lyrics that just break your heart. But there's this whole other side. I look at this as a part of a complete artist's work, and for me, especially given a lot of music today, Lou wasn't afraid to show these different aspects of his output. He would have his Tai Chi master doing Tai Chi onstage with him. That was also part of his work. And so I think that's how I would see it."
Appropriately, we can expect a range of different songs tonight; the night is not *just* songs from Street Hassle -- there will also be music off Magic & Loss, Lulu, and... I don't now what else! I deliberately did not ask Bajakian what his bandmates tonight picked; I want to be surprised.
Aram Bajakian by Art Perry last night
I hope it's a much fuller house tonight. I assume everyone who came out last night will be there again. It turns out Metal Machine Music, live at the VIFF Centre, was much easier to listen to than I had anticipated: droning, trance-inducing, sculpted feedback that reminded me more of seeing Tony Conrad or Pauline Oliveros or even an Indian raga than listening to Lou's infamously abrasive album. I was girded for torture, expecting Swans-level volume and throbbing eardrums afterwards; I even packed extra earplugs and contemplated whether it might not be wise to double-up, which Reed's friend Art Perry, who I brought as my guest, also quipped about before the show. Instead, I was transported and soothed. This is not a complaint, but it was a surprise!
Art Perry and I agree on all that, note. He described the performance as "a wondrous night of meditative audio metal magma ...Lou lives on and he's still shaking the fat of the bourgeoisie." The band had begun playing as we were ushered in, and continued for about an hour. The performance had some drama to it, in seeing the musicians (mostly the seated Bajakian) shaking and waving their instruments in front of their amps to modulate the feedback produced, but mostly it was about deep listening. People listened pretty intently (even that worrisomely shitfaced dude who could be seen gobbling gummies while staggering about in the lobby, like he wasn't intoxicated enough: I gotta give him credit, he proved a better listener than I expected, though I do suspect he was the dude who gave a single rock-concert "Whoo! Yaah!" at one point, no doubt drawing some stinkeye from those seated around him. (To that dude: Grumble as you might about people on their high horses, man, you were not looking like a promising audience-mate; I'd be anxious just riding a bus with someone as obnoxiously loud as you were in the lobby, nevermind your colliding into me or trying to hug me like we were friends. My friends are better-behaved than that! But thanks for not being an issue once the performance started).
About my own "transport": I let the music take me where it would, and that ended up a sort of deep-listening trance that, uhh, some people might describe as, errrm, "falling asleep." Which is often taken as being an insult or a criticism, but it's not: my consciousness was profoundly altered and I let it happen and, I mean, I probably drooled into my chest a little, but "drool-inducing" is also not an insult when it comes to drone: I came, I slept, I drooled. (Note: I mean "came" in the sense of "I attended the event"). The closest sonic experience of recent years that I can relate it to was listening, when recovering from my surgery a few years ago, to LaMonte Young on headphones while I was opiated. Fell asleep then, too, but it's a different quality of sleep with that in your ears. My only regret/ fear about zoning out last night is worrying afterwards that I might have snored? I'm sure Art would have nudged me if I did.
Art said afterwards that he contemplated taking my picture alseep but chose not to. He could have, I wouldn't have minded, and I would post it here, if he had done. I hope he comes again tonight!
(By the way, you can see one of Art Perry's candid photos of Lou here, cuddling his pooch).
It's going to be a good night! Tickets still available
by Art Perry
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