Have a Very Velvet Christmas!

The Great God Pan Is Dead wishes all of you a fine Christmas. The image above is the cover of Lou Reed: The King of New York, which my sister gave me as a Christmas present. I think giving books as gifts is difficult, because it relies on getting the taste of the recipient just right. In this case, well done, sis!

Lou Reed was a famously dissolute leader of The Velvet Underground, a drug-fueled 60s band. After Reed split from the band, he had a moderately successful solo career, achieving one solo hit single, “Walk on the Wild Side", which made it to #16 on the US charts in 1972.

I was a teenager when I first heard of the Velvet Underground. What I had heard was “drugs” and “these guys are supposed to have been important musicians.” This was the late 70s, so haunting record stores was a favorite passtime of mine, and my favorite store for this purpose was Half Price Books & Records, then located on Waugh in Montrose. It was a good place to dig through the sediment of pop music to hopefully dig up some gems.

One day, I was flipping through the record albums, I came across this one.

This compilation album was released in 1970, the year the Velvets broke up. I was a big fan of elaborate album cover art—I really liked the cosmic images of, say, Roger Dean. But this cover, with its repeated, high-contrast photo of the band in purple and blue was the right image to greet a newbie like me. It put me in the mood.

I felt satisfied that I was finally going to hear what all the excitement was. I brought me record up to the cashier, a young, balding man. He took the record and then yelled out to his coworkers, “How did this get put out on the shelves?!”

I knew I had made a good choice.

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