Ha, I too, liked that turn at the end, Bill. And you do pass on the feel of the time for you…
Doug
> On Apr 19, 2016, at 9:10 PM, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Thanks Andrew, Max. I passed this poem to someone else who had a similar
> experience with this album. They recalled the black spidery suicidal font
> of the lyrics in the 12 inch booklet. Poets can look and maybe sniff at
> Reed's weirdness and clunk, things like rhyming 'vial' with 'vile' but I
> still play 'Men of Good Fortune' and 'Lady Day' with a form of pleasure. I
> must be a sucker for gloom on some level.
>
> Bill
>
> On Wednesday, 20 April 2016, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
>> Even without having heard Reed’s Berlin then or later,
>>
>> I have a strong sense of its impact on you in
>>
>> the contrasting circumstances of a safe Melbourne then.
>>
>> Nicely rounded off at the back lawn, Bill.
>>
>> Max
>>
>> On Apr 19, 2016, at 14:58, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]
>> <javascript:;>> wrote:
>>
>>> Berlin
>>>
>>> In Berlin by the bed in the afternoon, 1975,
>>> Lou Reed slowly, with piano and violin and voice,
>>> shook the teenage willies out of me.
>>> This was like no other new record listen. I lay
>>> on the bed with curtains fully closed, mind astir.
>>>
>>> In suburban Melbourne, after a morning's work
>>> at a city department store, I'd popped into One Stop
>>> Records at Princes Gate, picked up the imported gatefold
>>> copy, with corner snipped, cheaper for being so far from
>>> the original acetate and not selling well enough to re-press.
>>>
>>> Lou's lost-sounding intonation, the story of the doomed
>>> violent, drug-raddled couple, the hotel with its 'greenish walls/
>>> a bathroom IN the hall', as though it squatted mid-corridor,
>>> sounding so slimy, so decadent. So far from sun and from
>>> the back lawn Dad wanted me to mow that afternoon.
>>>
>>> bw
>>
Douglas Barbour
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https://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuations 2 (UofAPress).
Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
Transforming once reasonable human beings into gullible idiots is one of the biggest businesses we have.
Charles Simic.
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