lou, i'm gonna crap on your grave, but with love

“Lord kill me now.”

—text message from Jes, received roughly fifteen minutes into tonight's Reed/Zorn concert from rear of venue where she had (wisely) retreated moments earlier to salvage ears/sanity and curse Reed/Zorn under breath

A proper summation. Jes came straight out and said (typed, whatever) the precisexact thought residing—like a pitiable mouse—in the honest quadrant of my brain. The other quadrants, Lou’s apologists to the death, meanwhile darted about in shopping mall frenzy seeking viable explanations for this sonic bowel movement, but, perhaps predictably, uncovered nothing—not even a lousy crumb.

Never in my ten years of concert-going experience have I been so baffled by a performance, and I say baffled because in one hour I experienced every single emotion that I’ve ever emoted in rapid-fire succession, finally exhausting all of them (exhaustion—that was the last) at the precise moment Lou disappeared behind the curtain after their encore.

Let me explain.

In the beginning there was Lou Reed and John Zorn (pic above), and the word was with God, and the word was God. They’re greeted with reverent, hopeful applause, and by my quick count 94% of those cheers are for Lou against 6% for John, and half of that 6% only because they like John’s outfit (yellow, lots of yellow). Everybody is there to see Velvets-era Lou Reed and no one will get their wish even though they secretly know it already because we’re living in 2008 and the only reason anyone sees Lou Reed anymore is so they can tell their friends they saw Lou Reed once when he was dead but before he died. That is the great tragedy, and I am as guilty as the next guy because I’ve yet to learn my lesson, five concerts and a number of dollars and man-hours later. He’s tricked me again.

Oh yeah, the performance. These Mozarts kick off le grand concierto by playing their instruments as loudly as they can. John shows us every note on his saxophone, especially the awful ones, and squeals a lot. Pint glasses shatter all over the place. Lou’s hands are shaking so bad that I wonder if he’s even fingering proper chords, and maybe he is and maybe he is not—either way, it’s so loud that we'll never know anyway so good for him. Lou is not really listening to John and John is not really listening to Lou. They are independent, separate, self-serving, oblivious, masturbatory, pompous, impressed (with themselves), impressed (that all the suckers out there with star eyes paid $75 to watch them practice), pathetic.

For a brief moment I contemplate leaving the venue. I really do. No one—‘cept for Lou and John—really seems to be enjoying themselves. Everyone there wants so badly to like the show but nobody does. Lou sounds like a washed-up ass and John’s just feigning creativity.

Ironically, their guest saves the day. Mike Patton—former singer for Faith No More, apparently, and pictured at right—joins about four songs in and beatboxes and screams things and generally acts like a howler monkey. He’s pretty impressive, actually. The two fossils really dig him, so much so that they snap outta their respective amnesias and remove their respective heads from their respective asses, re-learning their instruments justlikethat, a miracle.

Then a strange happening happens. My Lou-directed ire—still an open, pussing sore of a red hatred, even after the above scene—yields to amusement, because I finally get the joke. I’m on the inside. Consider: if Lou plays a flawless, pretty show for me tonight, he’d cease to be the Lou I know and love. Lou's got an image (rock's surly grandfather) to perpetuate. The fact that 85% of this crowd wants to impale him on his own guitar (probably that stupid one without a headstock or tuning pegs, right?) but not before flipping him upside down and shaking to get all their coins back shows that this guy still knows exactly what he’s doing. You think that shithead is gonna die knowing that someone out there finds him inoffensive? No way, man.

Thanks indirectly to Mike Patton, Lou is suddenly and violently welcomed back to Good Graces (never cared all that much for Zorn, quite frankly, so he’s irrelevant) ten minutes after I’d buried him and stomped on the grave.

But I’m giving Lou too much credit, as usual. Jes oughta be a shrink. She sussed him out in 30 seconds flat, whupping me at my own game. I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to figure out what Lou’s all about and whether I even like him and she called all his bluffs before the first song ended. Since I started this thing off with a Jes-ism, I might as well close in a similar way:

“Lou is the most insecure celebrity I’ve ever seen, and it’s because his whole thing is an act—he hasn't learned to be himself.”

-JMY

[ed. 2/25: I was all wrong about Zorn. Shame on me for slighting him here. If I could write this entry again, you better believe I would've granted him his proper due. Live and learn, I guess...]

[ed. 3/22: ^ That said, the show really did suck.]
...