The Loneliness of Robinson Crusoe

So here's the thing about the original, unabridged Robinson Crusoe: the prose is dry, pedantic, and archaic; its Calvinist Christianity is ham-fisted and didactic; the novel's swash-buckling tales of adventure on the high seas merely bookend 100+ pages of rather tedious description of island survival; the colonial/imperialist elements are problematic at best (the first word he teaches Friday is "Master"); the charachter of Crusoe is frankly unsympathetic, for he was first shipwrecked on a slave trading voyage, and though he often repents of his sins, he never evinces the slightest shred of self-awareness by condemning his time as a slave trader, even after being enslaved 2 years himself in North Africa!  Truthfully, I found myself skimming this text more often than reading it closely.

Nevertheless, even a cursory read will still tell you why the figure of Robinson Crusoe still resonates so profoundly 3 centuries later: for under-girding this novel is well of profound, radical loneliness.  It is an abject solitude that even in our hyper-social, hyper-connected age--no, scratch that, especially in our hyper-social, hyper-connected age--one does not need to be trapped on a deserted island to feel...

Ontario, Idaho

"Yeah, that's another thing that bothers me," he said--amiably enough, but with a far away look in his eyes--as his muscular, farmer-tanned arms twisted some stiff metal wires in the blazing sun.  My tire had blown out you see, so violently that the plastic tire guard was torn apart.  The tire was replaced easy enough, but now loose electrical wiring dangled across the rim, waiting to be caught and torn away.

I feared we'd be stranded here in the desert, still so far from home, but the tow-truck driver took one look at it and said, "Oh, I bet we can fix that!  We just need to tie 'em up, tuck 'em back in there.  Here, I got some metal wiring in my truck," and here we were.

But as grateful as we were for his help, his cheerful tone had taken a turn for the morbid: "This ain't event the worst I've seen," he started, "One time, I had to tow a tipped-over U-haul not too far from here.  Seems this sweet old ladies' kids were finally moving her into a nursing home, clear out in Washington or some such.  She'd lived here for something like 50-odd years, raised her kids, buried her husband and everything, right here in Ontario.  Heart-breaking to force her to leave like that, to make her move someplace strange to die...

"Well, they were hardly a mile down the highway when they took a turn too hard, and the truck tipped over.  Boxes fell out, priceless heirlooms spilled all over the road.  The worst of it were the photographs--there were photos scattered everywhere--old ones, black and white ones, irreplaceable stuff, ya get what I'm saying?  I tried to gather as many of 'em as I could, but some were damaged, and some were just lost, blown away in the wind.  That really bothered me."

I had been driving home from college you see, with an old High School friend and a girl trying to hitch-hike her way to Alaska.  When my tire blew out, after a few tense seconds of wrestling the car to the shoulder, I called Triple-A for help, and they asked my location.  "Um, Ontario, Idaho," I said, remembering a sign, but unaware we'd just barely crossed the Oregon border.

"Canada?"

"No, Idaho, Ontario, Idaho."

"Sir, there is not Ontario, Idaho."

"Wait, what?"

"Ontario, Idaho, it doesn't exist."

"No, that can't be right, I just barely saw a sign a moment ago that said, 'Now Leaving Ontario'!"

"I'm sorry sir, I'm just sitting in front of a computer here in California right now, and according to my records there is no such place as Ontario, Idaho."

"What is this?!" I shouted, feeling a mounting panic, wondering what Twilight Zone or Purgatorial Land of the Dead I had just stumbled into outside of all maps, space, and time.

But all that was soon cleared up, and now an hour later, we were in a Les Schwab in Ontario, Oregon, on the Idaho border, and the kind tow truck driver was tying up my loose ends.  "You're lucky, really lucky, that you blew out when you did," he said, "Just a few miles further, and you would have been outside all cell-phone range, and who knows what might have happened to you.

"We may think we're all civilized and settled and such out here, but just a few miles from the freeway, it's still wild country.  In fact, some of the older folks 'round here swear there's still Indians roaming about.  Well, maybe their spirits..." 

"Hey man, we really appreciate your help, here, let me pay you..." I offered, partly in sincere gratitude, but also partly to distract him, because despite his pleasantness he was frankly making us uncomfortable.  But he just barreled forward: "Yeah, that's another thing that bothers me...There's still so much we don't know about this area, even just right in our own backyard!  Why just recently, they found an old skeleton, not too far from here.

"Must've been from the old pioneer days.  Whoever he was, he probably died of thirst, and from the way the skeleton plopped down, you could tell from what direction he probably crawled.  And from what we could tell, he could have just come across a hundred miles of desert without finding a drop of water.

"But you know what was only a quarter mile away from where he collapsed?  The conjunction of three rivers.  Ya hear me?  Three!  If he had wondered just a quarter mile to his left, or to his right, or even just straight ahead, a quarter mile, he would've found all the water he needed.  But he didn't.  He collapsed dead in the sun, all alone in the world, but there was water surrounding him.  That sort of thing really bothers me."

All four of us fell silent.  A slight breeze blew, briefly alleviating the searing heat, and we all gazed down the long desert road, still a long, long way from home.

On Liberalism, Generosity, and Freedom

At some point during my BA at BYU-Idaho, I realized that whatever position was taken by all the conservatives surrounding me--on immigration, the Iraq war, torture, health care, "Right-to-Work" laws, Unions, etc--I disagreed with.  Almost every single issue.  Granted, southeast Idaho is so harshly conservative that even moderate Republicans get kinda weirded out by them; nevertheless, in a perverse sort of way, there was something clarifying, even refreshing, about the starkness of their ideologues.  It felt less like I was being pushed farther left than that I learned where I'd stood all along. 


I still remember one English class where the prof, overhearing some female students badmouthing feminism, said, "Look, I hate to be the white dude who has to remind y'all of this, but you do know that the whole reason you ladies can vote, and, you know, go to college and have jobs and pick your own husband and stuff, is thanks to feminism...right?"

It was the Bush years.  It was a simpler time.  (Not better, mind you; just simpler).

What sealed the deal was then getting my MA at the comparatively more liberal University of Utah, where I felt much more at home.  Nevertheless, you can't be a Mormon in Utah and not interact with conservatives, where you of course quickly remember that (leaving Idaho aside) the majority of self-proclaimed conservatives are good, decent, friendly people of diverse backgrounds, who usually have their own good reasons for thinking the way they do.  They are no more homogeneous in their thinking or lifestyles than folks on the left, and are generous and kind, and really what unites us all as human beings is far more than what will ever separate us. 

What's more, the slippery-slope arguments of each group simply won't fly: self-identified liberals under Bush were fond of claiming that the PATRIOT ACT and Guantanamo Bay and Iraq invasion justifications were placing us on the inexorable march towards fascism, while simpletons like Glenn Beck loudly claimed that any attempt at "Social Justice" will inevitably result in Stalinist Russia. 

Now, there are plenty of valid reasons to dislike the policy decisions of Bush and/or Obama; but saying that upper-class tax breaks or a $20-co-pay is on par with the mass-extermination of millions of minorities is not only fallacious reasoning, but frankly disrespectful to the victims of the Holocaust and Holodomor.  Let's try to have a little class: if Stalin is the logical extreme of the Left and Hitler the logical end of the Right, then really there is no functional difference between either extreme (Poland sucked under both, for example).  Our politics are plotted on a circle, not a line.  You may declaim that the difference between Hitler and your least favorite politician is a difference only of degree, not kind, but that difference of degree still matters.

All of which of course gets one thinking: what does it really mean, then, to be liberal, if that is to be a meaningful distinction at all?  Why did I find myself leaning left in Rexburg?  What is it that "liberalism" is supposed to signify, if anything?

I'm in English, and here's where I want to get into the etymology of "liberal": its inital meaning is "to be free."  (The "Liberal Arts" in college, for example, are supposed to be the set of skills and knowledge that enables one to be free from superstition and control).  Now, there is to be free from, and there is also free to do, but there is also to be free with--that is, to be generous.  And I want to offer that these three definitions are not so different.

For I've learned through hard experience that if one is not generous--whether with money, or in gifts, or in service, or in just assuming the best of others--then one is not free, but isolated.  One may also voluntarily check one's self into solitary at a prison in order to get away from every one, but one could hardly call that person free!  Remember how Ebeneezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol held the purse strings, and thus controlled the fates of many (not least of all Bob Crachet), but as the ghost of Jacob Marley warned him, his illiberality (in every sense of the word) bound him in horrid chains.

To be truly free, one must be connected with others.  This has nothing to do with conformity, or collectives or communism or what have you (few things are more isolating than conformity); rather, a free person is one who is generous with others, both in possessions and in assumptions, as one is with one's self.  ("For with what measure ye judge shall ye also be judged," and "If ye will be perfect, sell all of thy possessions and give to the poor," said one important thinker on the subject).  To be liberal is not only to be free from, or even to be free to, but above all to be free with.  For this reason MLK said that "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"; for if we are all as free with each other as we should be with ourselves, then we are all free indeed.

The Total Noob's Guide to The Velvet Underground

You know how the best math teachers aren't natural math geniuses, but those who once struggled with math themselves?  Same with the Velvet Underground.  I present myself here as a total noob at The Velvet Underground, one who can maybe help fellow noobs access this seminal yet terminally strange act. 

Perhaps you're curious cause all the Lou Reed obits from last October kept referencing his first band like it was some sort of big deal; maybe you keep seeing The Velvet Underground and Nico on all those silly "500 Bestest Albums Ever" lists alongside the Beatles and Bob Dylan; or see its iconic Andy Warhol cover art on overpriced t-shirts from Urban Outfitters; more seriously, perhaps you learned that the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia (which kicked off the trend of naming European revolts after colors) is a direct reference to the band that most influenced Czech dissidents; or perhaps as few people will actually read this post as bought the Velvet's first album in 1967.  Whatever. This essay is as much about processing my own experience with the Velvet Underground as yours.

I do not present myself as some sort of expert, merely as someone who won't judge you for your ignorance, nor overwhelm you with minutiae or fanboying; I do not own any boxsets and haven't read any official bios; I've never shot up to "Heroin" or smoked weed to "Sister Ray" or dropped acid to "All Tomorrow's Parties"--in fact, I've never used drugs at all, and don't intend to; contrary to Brian Eno's famous declaration "only 30,000 people bought their first album, but everyone who did started a band," I myself did not rush out to start an alternative revolution upon hearing them; my total knowledge of The Velvet Underground comes from skimming scattered Wikipedia articles, from a graduate course on postmodern poetry that discussed Andy Warhol's Factory (the studio-collective of artists, activists, and all-purpose weirdos where the Velvets were the house band), and most importantly, from owning their four main studio albums.

But first, a Sub-Wikipedia Summary: The Velvet Underground were an early art-rock band based out of New York City in the late-60s.  It was co-founded by songwriter Lou Reed (a non-practicing Jew who said that his god was Rock 'n Roll) and John Cale, a Welsh, classically-trained, avant-garde violinist.  Sterling Morris played bass and Maureen Tucker was on drums, the latter of whom, decades later, ended up working for Walmart and joining the reactionary Tea Party; which I guess just goes to show that, with all due respect to the Czech dissidents and Brian Eno, revolutionary music will not intrinsically make one revolutionary.  After John Cale left over creative differences, he was replaced by Doug Yule for two albums (or three, depending on what you count as proper VU records), though Yule was left out of their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which I frankly feel was kind of a dick move. 

They are not my favorite band; I do not adore them; but I do really like them, and I am sorta fascinated by them.  Rarely has a band existed so briefly and enjoyed so little commercial success yet still been so influential--or at least claimed as an influence--on so many bands (e.g. I still remember how back when The Strokes' first album came out in 2002, the Velvet Underground comparisons were bandied about like so much confetti by folks who had clearly never listened to 'em).  If a classic, as Mark Twain defined it, is "a book that everyone talks about but nobody reads," then The Velvet Underground is a classic band indeed, one everyone talks about but nobody listens to.

But I'm an English teacher, and actually reading the classics no one else does is kinda my job.  And beyond my fascination with a band that most everyone can name but can't name a song by, is the fact that The Velvet Underground produced four completely different albums.  Their first album is kind of the iconic one (or at least the album art is), but I'm not sure I would recommend it as an entrance point; in fact, which album I'd start you off with would depend completely on what sort of music you like normally.  Are you more of a '60s pop aficionado?  Then start with last album Loaded.  Are you more folksy or twee-Indie?  Then start with their self-titled third album.  Are you more more interested in the origins of Punk or noise-rock?  Then definitely start with White Light/White Heat.  Do you still take a juvenile thrill in "transgressive" lyrics?  Then by all means, start with Velvet Underground and Nico--or at least parts of it, cause it ain't all as transgressive as it's reputed. 

Cause here's the thing about the Velvets: no matter who you are, they guaranteed made songs you will not like--but they also guaranteed made songs that you will!  It couldn't be otherwise, they were too much all over the musical map to be easily boxed in to a specific sound or style. Which songs are your favorites and which not will depend totally on who you are; they sing "I'll Be Your Mirror" on their first album, and that song is as much a statement of purpose as anything, for how you react to Velvet Underground songs will reveal far more about yourself than about them.

Part of the Velvet's appeal, I think, really is in the freedom of their music, in their insistence on trying everything, from the loudest to the quietest, the most experimental to the poppiest, the darkest to the happiest and everything in between, refusing to be defined and controlled by either the mainstream or the counter-culture.  There really is something just a touch anarchic about their music, as made manifest in their influence on early Punk Rock, or on the dissidents who led Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution, or in the anarchic way they quickly self-destructed (Nico left after the first album, co-founder John Cale after the second, and founder Lou Reed after their fourth, all within five wild years).

But I still speak too much in generalities: let's take each of their albums one by one, evaluating them strictly on the only thing that should matter, the music.

First up: The Velvet Underground and Nico (1967)

Andy Warhol produced their first album, and naturally designed the album art, too, which is relevant to a discussion of its music: for next to the stem of that banana (reminiscent of the Campbell soup can Warhol once painted) you can read "peel slowly and see" in small print; and in fact, that banana can be peeled off, all to reveal...an unpeeled banana underneath.  There's probably some sort of Warholian meta-commentary there about how art reveals no truth more profound than its own superficial existence.  Or something.  It's Warhol.

Warhol encouraged the Velvets to integrate into their band a German model named Nico (another regular at The Factory).  In deferment to their patron, The Velvet Underground graciously let her sing with them, and even wrote a few songs specifically for her, but still made it clear to Warhol that she was not in the band by adding that and Nico to the title.

That instruction to "peel slowly and see" obviously doubles for the album itself, which only slowly reveals itself to you over multiple listens; in fact, when I first listened to it, I was frankly unimpressed, and it was only after several spins that its charms grew on me (this is the only thing that all four albums have in common: they are all acquired tastes that nevertheless reward your patience if you give them a chance).

"Peel slowly and see" also applies to the song cycle, which slowly eases you in to the weird stuff.  I know I can't be the only person who was surprised to find, upon first putting on this disc so renowned for its audaciousness and experimentation, for being the originator and Ur-text for all Punk and Alternative to come, that the first track is this quiet pop number called "Sunday Morning."

The song really is quite sweet, and would not have been out of place on AM Radio of the time; it captures the malaise of a melancholic Sunday morning perfectly (in the grand tradition of Johnny Cash's "Sunday Morning Coming Down"), and I'll totally fess up to having played it upon waking up some lonely Sundays myself.   I'm convinced it was the principle influence for Jimmy Eat World's "A Sunday," right down to the gentle xylophone intro.  But it's hardly the harbinger of the avant guarde that one would expect from an Andy Warhol production. 

But then you peel down a little further, and you are next greeted by "Waiting for my Man."  It's about Lou Reed waiting for his drug dealer.  That's it.  There is no subtext here, no subliminal messages, nothing hidden.  The words are as straight-forward as those 2 chords beating relentlessly into your head.  When you consider how in that same year, The Beatles were accused of sneaking LSD into the title of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," or how Peter, Paul, and Mary took flack for a supposed veiled pot reference in "Puff the Magic Dragon," or how even John Denver's "Rocky Mountain High" was banned from some skittish radio stations, then the blunt obviousness of "Waiting for my Man" is almost jarring, even a little refreshing.

And just in case you still didn't quite catch what that "man" is all about, Lou Reed makes it as clear as he possibly can with the album's centerpiece, "Heroin."  Guess what it's about. 

This would be a controversial song even by today's standards.  Which is weirdly comforting to me--it's like when I taught Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal", written clear back in 1729, with its satirical yet still horrific baby eating.  It's strangely encouraging to know there are certain things that, no matter how much society changes or how much time passes, will never be OK to discuss.  Crossing a line can be reassuring that there are still lines.  But "Heroin" is more than just shock-for-shock-value's sake.

See, here's the thing: when I was a young missionary in Puerto Rico, I did in fact encounter real life heroin addicts.  There is nothing romantic about heroin addiction--I saw those poor wretches hide under dark bridges at night, melt down their smack on cut-out aluminum soda-can lids over lighters, then inject it while still boiling hot directly into their veins with a dirty needle, which was a sight that always made my heart sink.  I remember seeing one addict stumbling zombie-like in the sun, and as I biked past him he suddenly leaned left and my shoulder collided right into his head.  I stopped and said "Perdoname, perdoname!" but he just kept on walking by, as though nothing had happened.  It was the most heart-breaking sight ever.

And maybe...I should've heard this song before my mission, in prep for that sight, I wonder?  Seeing these addicts would've been just as heart-breaking, but I at least would've understood why they were willing to suffer such a crippling, tragic addiction, what wells of emptiness drove them to such a brutal drug.  Cause while I don't think Lou Reed romanticizes addiction here, he does illustrate its euphoria, and thus its attraction to the desperate.

Over John Cale's quiet violin drone, two sparse chords are strummed slowly, repeatedly, then pick up in tempo to emulate the experience of getting high, then slow down again as he crashes.  It's a story of a man trapped, desperate to feel good again, yet the very thing that "saves" him (for he "feels just like Jesus' son") is also what is destroying him.  The song doesn't make an ethical statement on heroin use, but then, Reed's point isn't to preach, but to show that he understands.  Everyone needs to feel understood, everyone needs empathy, even (maybe especially) heroin addicts.

But lest you think this is just some druggie album, I assure you, these two tracks I've played are far from representative!  We have more straight forward '60s pop ("There She Goes Again", "Run Run Run", "Femme Fatale"), the original electronic drone ("All Tomorrow's Parties"), a violin-driven ode to sado-masochism ("Venus in Furs", a book I also had to read in grad school), and finishes with a self-destructive guitar jam ("European Son", which punctuates its anarchy with a sound of glass shattering), among others.  You don't have to like all these songs--I don't even like all these songs--in fact, I don't think you're supposed to like all these songs!  Again, this band is just so all over the map, that it's nigh impossible to make any sort of comprehensive statement about any of it.

The Velvet Underground and Nico is very much a product of its time and place; it's a time capsule that could only have been produced in the late-60s, a postcard that could only have been mailed from New York: in fact, when I visited NYC for the first time in ages a few months ago, I put on this album while waiting for the subway.  Suddenly the restless, anxious energy of the album made perfect sense: it is the same restless, anxious energy of New York City itself.

Next up: White Light/White Heat (1968)

And now, in the words of Monty Python, for something completely different (which you wouldn't even think was possible after that first album!).  For whatever reasons, the Velvet Underground had parted ways with Andy Warhol, and left Nico behind, too--the band was already starting to disintegrate.  As if to underline that disintegration, the Velvets recorded their loudest, most abrasive record, "White Light/White Heat".

You have maybe heard how Velvet Underground had an incalculable influence on Punk and other alternative genres (which, again, is perhaps why "Sunday Morning" so confused you, as it did me); well, this album is what you were hearing about.  It is fast, it is distorted, it is strange, it is experimental (that darkly comic short-story spoken-worded by John Cale over Lou Reed's wailing guitar is like nothing you've heard), it is simple in structure yet wild in execution, it is turned all the way up--that is, it is everything Punk would try to be.  It finishes with "Sister Ray," a wild 15 minute jam based around an ecstatic, repeating guitar riff, one that makes "European Son" sound juvenile.  (According to legend, influential 80's punk band The Buzzcocks first formed to perform a cover of "Sister Ray").

Some might tell you to start with Nico and then "peel slowly and see" until you reach White Light/White Heat; but frankly, if early Punk is why you're interested in the Velvets to begin with, then this album should be where you start.  But if not...

Then Try: The Velvet Underground (1969)

And once again, something else completely different: Are you folksy?  More Indie-acoustic, perhaps?  Are you more into the quiet, the introspective, the gentle?  Did you find the aggression of White Light/White Heat off-putting?  Well then the Velvet Underground still have you covered, because their self-titled third album is the exact opposite of their previous.

In fact, I dare say that this album is perhaps the most relevant to the alternative music of today, of now.  All those manifold Indie acoustic acts out there, your early Iron & Wines and Sufjan Stevens, your Elliot Smiths and Shins, your Him and Hers and Kings of Convenience and Swell Seasons and countless others of their ilk?  This album just might be their original example, their great-grandfather, their progenitor and first template.  In fact drummer Maureen Tucker, singing on "After Hours," sounds like the first twee female singer, 30 years ahead of the rest, and model for all her daughters after.

I almost didn't bother picking up this particular album--frankly, I'm kind of tired of all these twee, Indie acoustic acts cluttering up the scene. Too many wannabe-artists seem to think that just cause it's easy to strum a few chords, that it must therefore be easy to write a good song.  (For what's impressive about the Velvet Underground or Bob Dylan or the White Stripes or what have you isn't that they're arrangements are simple, but that they can do so much with so little!  They do what even ancient Israel could not, make bricks without straw; but too many acts seem to think that that must mean anyone can get by without straw.)  Hence, when I learned that this was the Velvet's "folksy" album, I considered passing it up.

But good thing I didn't, for then I would've missed out on some of their most tender songs.  Opener "Candy Says," about a young woman who hates her body, only resonates more today.  "Jesus," I initially feared would be some blasphemous rendition from the same folks who brought you "Heroin."  But instead, I heard this genuine, authentic, unironic, pleading to Jesus Christ to "help me find my proper place," to "help me in my weakness," to return to grace.  Consider this, all you maudlin and unremarkable "Christian Rock" groups: a drug-addled alternative band from New York fronted by a Jew wrote a better Christian rock song than you ever will!  But then, a heroin addict would understand better than anyone the need for redemption, wouldn't he.

In fact, you might think that Lou Reed was at last in a better place based on this album: "Jesus" is followed by the uplifting (and tellingly titled) "Beginning to See the Light" and "I'm Set Free."  But those three songs, beautiful as they be, are but the build up to what is easily, hands-down, my all-time favorite Velvet song: "The Murder Mystery."  What that says about me I don't know, and I don't even know (or care) if you like the song either; but after years of only casual fandom, this is the song that finally made me understand the hype about the Velvet Underground.

The song starts with a simple guitar riff that's at once menacing and euphoric, soothing and anxious, understated and expansive; on the "verses" (if you can call them that), all four members speak at once and speak different stories, in a dazzling cacophony that perfectly captures the fragmentation of modern life, with our myriad distractions that tear apart our attention in every which direction.  Band co-founder John Cale had left the band by this album, and I kinda wonder if the centripetal forces that were pulling apart not only the band, but the human psyche itself in our hyper-media age, are on full display here.

Try and look up the overlapping texts if you must (that is what the internet is for), but I doubt there is anything to decipher: the "Mystery" perhaps refers less to a crime than something like the mysteries of the Catholic Church, the incomprehensible miracles that you simply must accept to be a true believer.  That this mystery is "Murder" perhaps speaks more about the existential dangers of this modern age than the lyrics ever will.

I think this is the song the marketers were referring to when they said The Strokes sound like the Velvets; but as much as I love The Strokes (or at least their first album--and one song off their second), they will never sound as perfect as this one song.


Last up: Loaded (1970)

This record was the Velvet Underground's sincere stab at making an actual commercial success--the title supposedly comes from MGM asking the band to deliver an album "loaded" with hits (though the obvious double and triple entendres are also obvious).

Of course if you were alive in 1970, you know full well that not a single one of these songs became a radio hit--but that's not for want of trying.  Album opener "Who Loves the Sun" sounds like a lost Beach Boys song from Brian Wilson's later "Smile" period, complete with sunny harmonies and "bom bom boms".  Third track "Rock and Roll" near-perfectly captures that naive yet empowering feeling we all once felt in our youth, that Rock 'n Roll really can save you life.

The closest I can compare that feeling to is of being a teenager discovering Classic Rock radio for the first time, and falling in love with these old songs like they were new, blissfully unaware and uncaring that these tunes were already played to death a million times before you found 'em and will be a million times more after you're sick of 'em.  But the songs on Loaded have NOT been played to death yet--in fact, they may never be.  That is, on Loaded, it is still possible to be swept away by the joyous romance of an old Rock song.

Epilogue

Lou Reed left the band shortly before Loaded was released (according to lore, Reed was surprised to even see the record on the shelves later).  There's a fifth album called Squeeze that came out after, but without Lou Reed it isn't considered canon, and sold poorly even by Velvet Underground standards.  I've heard of late some critical reassessment of it, that taken strictly on its own merits Squeeze ain't so bad; but life is short and art is long, and there's too much other art to invest my time and energy and money in, so I haven't bothered with it--nor with any of the live albums or anthologies or etc.  I am content with the canon.

Lou Reed went on to finally find bona fide commercial success with his career-defining solo record Transformer, as "Walk on the Wild Side" became a genuine radio hit, and a mainstay on Classic Rock Radio to this day.  "Perfect Day", from the same album, is now used in PS4 commercials, which just goes to show once more how everything edgy becomes safe in the end.

But although Lou Reed went on to become respectable enough for a New York Times obit, his first band can still sometimes feel as eclectic and dangerous today as they surely did in 1967.  And though we may smile at the naivety of a band that sings about how Rock and Roll can save your life, the Czech dissidents who led the Velvet Revolution didn't think that very naive at all.  Now, there wasn't a political bone in the Velvet's body (all due respect to Maureen Tucker), but then, to be free from politics is to be free indeed, and there is nothing more politically destabilizing to the powerful than a free mind. 

I'm not going to tell you (like so many diehards) that the Velvet Underground was the greatest or most important band ever or whatever (that will always be the Beatles); but I will say that, musically, if nothing else, the Velvet Underground were indeed free, and for that reason alone they deserve your attention.

...But That's Not a Party

When I was younger and more self-conscious, I held with those that said that my preferred form of "partying" is to simply hang out with friends and enjoy a laid-back, stimulating conversation.  And indeed, to this day, one of my greatest pleasures in life is to be in the company of kindred spirits and converse happily well into the night.

...but that's not a party.

And I still meet full grown adults today whom I suspect have not quite overcome the self-consciousness of their youth, who insist that they don't like dancing, that when they go to a party, they prefer to just kick back with a few drinks and "unwind."  And indeed, in our terminally high-speed postmodern society, few things are more necessary than to deliberately slow-down and "unwind" every so often.

...but that's not a party!

And I still get invitations to events advertised as "parties," that invariably mean mingling while eating snacks, or sitting down around various board games, or laying down to watch a rented movie, or blasting music for the primary activity of holding a drink aloft and speaking loudly.  And yes, yes, I rush to agree with you, food is delicious, and meeting new people is wonderful, and board games can be fun with the right group of people, and it's better to watch movies with friends than alone, and sometimes it's nice to just obliterate all conscious thought through loud music or worst.

...but none of those are parties!

Here's something that I actually had to grow up to understand, that I fear far too many folks in my demographic still do not, and that is that in a party, one must go wild!  One must lose one's self!  In an all-too-rare real party, one must dance--even if you dance badly--especially if you dance badly!  You must let loose all of your inhibitions, all of your self-consciousness, all of your debilitating social fears of looking ridiculous, in short, of your pride, your ego, your self-importance.

Parties, you see, are absolutely essential for your mental health, to end your isolation and feel part of the larger human community, to no longer be beholden to the past or the future, to release your anxieties, to give full expression to your mind, your body, and your soul, all at once, as you're entire self feels united and free and alive. 

Please don't misunderstand me, I speak not of decadence or narcotics or over-consumption of alcohol or other forms of gross self-indulgence, those aren't parties either, but still more sorry substitutes (and boring ones at that) that alienate us off from others, not unite us; that pettishly guard and gratify our fragile egos, not obliterate them.  After a true party, you should feel more alive, not deadened; you should feel more free, not isolated (an important distinction, I've learned); you will feel more connected to yourself, as your conscious and sub-conscious reconcile, and you will dream good dreams at night.

Guys, let me be clear: I totally want us all to continue to have long, enjoyable conversations late into the night, and to meet and mingle, and enjoy good food and drink together, and watch good movies and play board games...but guys, let's also remember to actually party, and not make the grievous mistake of confusing any of the former for the latter!