You Always Remember Your First Time

  • By Mike Dewey
  • October 29, 2013
  • 389
                        
SUMMARY: When Mike Dewey considers loss, he takes it very seriously. You might appreicate his take on Lou Reed, JFK and all that blood ... or not. OK, kids, it’s time for a little history lesson. And don’t look at me as if you’re being forced to watch the Zapruder film over and over and over again. I wouldn’t do that to my worst enemy. That’s hideous, bloody murder on an autumn afternoon in a city that shall remain ever nameless and shamed, at least in my little universe. Oh, you can count on a lot of TV specials “commemorating” the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination, most of them regurgitating the same old crap: it was the CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, etc., a massive conspiracy involving everyone from J. Edgar Hoover (nice dress, BTW) and LBJ (fine job ending the Vietnam thing) to Carlo Trafficante and Marilyn Monroe and the ghost of John Wilkes Booth. Give it a rest. What you ought to be thinking about as the milestone nears is the pain, the shredding of a human being’s life as the bullets struck our leader. Will anyone grieve anymore? Sure, those of us old enough to remember that Black Friday will pause, perhaps light at candle and reflect on how many years have passed since we had even a semblance of a leader of his caliber. Most folks, though, won’t even care. Death, especially on that kind of grotesque scale, desensitizes the masses; to some, it’s as if JFK was taken yesterday ... to most, it’s more a matter of let’s attack (metaphorically) his ideological successor. Forget that dither. You think you’re invulnerable? Good luck with that kind of hubris. There are those who mean you deep harm. You just don’t know it. Yet. But let’s move on: enough of my paranoia in this age of supposed enlightenment. I GUESS I JUST DON’T KNOW how many of you were saddened, shredded, by Lou Reed’s untimely death a few days ago. What? What’s that? Who was Lou Reed? You might as well ask why the Sixties devolved into the Seventies, because the truth of it is that Lou saw the darkness on the horizon and had enough courage and wisdom and humor to hold up a mirror to our shallow society and smirk. See, Lou got it. Mostly, he didn’t care if you did or not. He wasn’t going to be held back from simply saying, “Here I am ... there you are: nothing’s stopping you from turning it up.” Lou Reed – and here’s the heart of it, the reason I’m writing this piece – was the first actual rock ‘n’ roll artist I ever saw in concert. As a senior in high school, I had grown up through the British Invasion, had grappled with Acid Rock, had witnessed the Singer/Songwriter pushback and, I suppose, was influenced by death. Like the Doors? See you, Jim Morrison. Into Janis Joplin ... sorry. A Jimi Hendrix fan ... woops, gone. Back then, death was as common as life and we all looked for something that might last, though I never imagined that it’d be the Velvet Underground (no hits, no radio play, no nothing) would emerge as a refuge. And Loud Lou Reed came to my little town in 1973, four decades ago, and he was the first rock star I ever shared the same room with, and that matters. We all look back at our firsts. Date ... dance ... kiss ... well, you know that progression. They never lose their immediacy, their potency, their power. AND LOU WAS LOUD and proud and nearly happy, as I recall him, walking onstage and letting us know that even though we were few in number, he appreciated us. This was right about the time that a single called “Walk on the Wild Side” was hanging around the top of the charts, being played on AM stations despite its rather, um, salacious lyrics. That track had it all: a thunka-thunka bassline, a snarling lead guitar, a syncopated drum sound that invited a kid to dance, even though he couldn’t ... and, to me anyway, lyrics that demanded answers to important questions. You know what I wish? That Lou had unplugged his guitar and quieted his crack band and just said something like, “Man, I’m in this small Ohio town and I see a bunch of high school kids out there ... what do you want to know?” Of course, that didn’t happen. What did happen was that for the couple of decades, anytime Lou put out an album, I bought ... and then CDs happened and I still kept up the habit. Nothing lasts forever, but the memories of that night in that college gymnasium, with those cymbals shining and the sound washing over me like a mad tide, well ... I’m happy that it was Lou Reed who introduced me to the power of a live band. But it wasn’t just the sonic blast: beneath the bombast, there was a peculiarly vulnerable and, dare I say it, confused artist. By 1973, the Velvets were long gone and junk was everywhere on the AM radio and Lou must have been bewildered. And now, he’s gone. But between those two points on the axis/grid there’s a road waiting to be walked (on the wild side, probably) and a sense that should you decide to follow Lou’s aural descent into what makes us all human, you’ll come out OK. “I just wanna play football for the coach” .... this from a jaded New Yorker who once extolled heroin as “my wife and my life.” But who am I to distinguish between satire and somnambulance? Losing Lou isn’t complicated. It’s just life. And death. His music lives on, though, so long as we have the ability to hear a poet’s voice amid the madness of rock. Mike Dewey can be emailed at CarolinamikeD@aol.com or snail-mailed at 6211 Cardinal Drive, New Bern, NC 28560. You might also like his Facebook page.


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