I am a big fan of Lou Reed and have been for a few years now. Actually it would probably be more correct to say that I love Lou Reed's music. Even his albums that rock critics dismiss sound good to me. I saw him live in 2004 in NYC and he totally sucked. After that show I didn't listen to music for a few days and then gradually got back into music. Six months later I got back into listening to Velvet Underground and then eventually back into Lou Reed solo stuff again.

What makes his music appealing is the way the he portrays experiences with a sense of irony. It is similar to approaching things with a sense of humor, but different. He sometimes get lumped in with other proto-punk people because of the important role that irony plays in punk music and in his music. But the there is an important distinction to be made here.

Sarcasm is often used by artists as a method of expressing the fact that they think that they are above something. Indeed, the sarcasm is intended as a mechanism to convince others that the sarcastic one is cool. This type of sarcasm is not interesting to me. On the other hand, it is possible to use irony to achieve sincere expression that might not be achievable without it. (Of course the engineer in me wonders why such a circuitous path is necessary, but engineering tends not to be too useful in understanding art and emotions.) I think that the most ironic thing about Lou Reed's music is that he expresses himself sincerely using irony. This is a little bit confusing because the concept of irony is confusing and because it appears twice in the same sentence.

Lou Reed is a mean, nasty, terrible person. I am quite sure of that. He is undoubtedly hyper-critical and a total nightmare to be around. All of his bitterness makes a perfect backdrop for his portrayal of romance. Let's get this straight. Our culture wraps romance in idealism. Idealism is dumb and crippling, so one does well to transcend idealism. But if you're too rational you get cold and can't feel. And if you reject culture and tradition you lose contact with a large component of your identity, like it or not. What Lou Reed appears to have done is abandoned his idealism, culture, and traditions, and then returned to these things later, but as a visitor. He feels things differently than most people. Sometimes visitors see things that residents don't even notice. And sometimes Lou Reed appreciates things that would be difficult to appreciate without some distance. The world is full of frustrated people who in their daily lives have no romance, but are capable of traveling to distant city and getting drunk and meeting somebody and feeling the realest love. You could say that it is not sincere because they are only doing it because they are "away from themselves." I would say that they found what they were looking for. It might be a little inefficient to travel to a distant city to find love when there are plenty of lonely decent people in your home town, but sometimes life is not entirely logical.

Update (December 16th, 2006): I saw Lou Reed perform Berlin at St. Ann's Warehouse last night. It was probably the best rock show I have ever seen. Berlin is one of those masterpieces, like Pink Floyd's The Wall, that I grew up with, and I considered it the solid, frozen embodiment of a flash of genius, like sculpture. But last night I felt they bathed it in steam, made it organic again, and shaped it into something better than it was. The Berlin they performed last night combined a projected video montage with a powerful band including strings, horns, chorus in addition to the usual rock setup. The effect was amazing. It was even more demented and beautiful than then original album. Many performances are about performance and not about the music, but last night's show was focused on the songs they were playing. I actually felt that Lou was even a bit repulsed by some of the stuff he had written in those songs! They closed with three songs not from Berlin: Sweet Jane, Candy Says, and Rock Minuet. I felt like those three songs served as kind of a recap of Berlin, retracing the steps into moral oblivion.