DOWN FOR YOU IS JEFFREY MORGAN’S MEDIA BLACKOUT #290!

The Beatles – Hate (Apple Corpse) :: You get what you pay for, so it’s not surprising that this free conceptual remix inversion of the Love album falls flat in several spots. But when it does work, as evidenced by such radically remade tracks as “Revolution 23” and “Horny Pie,” the effect is unsettlingly unsound.

The Beatles – Hell (Apple Corpse) :: Meanwhile, this sulfurous sequel is almost worth the price of admission alone just to hear what an amusing phonetic difference digitally removing the “p” from “Help!” makes. Bonus points for including such scabrous hit singles as “Hell Terskelta” and “Helleanor Rigid” and “Hell O’ Goodbye” and...

SIZZLING PLATTER OF THE WEEK: Lou Reed & Metallica – Lulu (Warner Bros.) :: In a world of woefully sterile and stagnant laptop manufactured music where nothing shocks or surprises anymore, Lulu is the most creatively daring and challenging Lou Reed album since he had the mental wherewithal to create Metal Machine Music—and make no mistake: despite the dual album credit and sporadic duet, this is a Lou Reed album from bottom to bottom.

Metallica’s inclusion as Reed’s backing band makes this the most brutal album of his career, much in the same way that the earlier presence of Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter made Rock n Roll Animal heavier than the Weimar weeper Berlin. Here’s how Lou accurately assessed both albums when I interviewed him in 1976 during a three hour liquid lunch at Trader Vic’s:

MORGAN: It’s [Rock n Roll Animal] a great guitar album.
REED: That’s what it is.
MORGAN: It’s a great rock album.
REED: For what it is, for that kind of thing, if you go for that, it’s probably up there with the best. Like, that’s why I like the Lou Reed Live album, because of the Hunter-Wagner duel on “Oh Jim.” I think that’s superb. But “Heroin,” y’know, with that intro... But it’s great for heavy metal nonsense. It’s like being in a time warp.
MORGAN: The first time I heard Berlin was on a Saturday night at two in the morning—
REED: And you felt sad and guilty and you want to put it off on me?

On a musical volume and lyrical content level, Lulu makes both Rock n Roll Animal and Berlin sound like a quaint Folkways record by comparison. It’s a harrowing album that opens with a brief allusion to Universal’s monochromatic movie monsters before quickly transforming into an unreasonable—but never unreasoning—bludgeoning brute of a beast that’s been graphically stitched together in the goriest color-saturated Hammer Films tradition.

Lulu is one of those rare albums that actually asks you to think; that asks you to work at understanding it. What, at first listen, seems to be an utterly impenetrable quagmire only becomes clearer with each successive listening—and even then you’ll find that you’ve barely set a foot past its threshold of severe loss and pain. But don’t let that stop you from taking another step. Be brave.

Be seeing you!