For those who don’t know, Lou Reed’s album Metal Machine Music is widely regarded as one of the Top 2-3 Alltime worst Rock albums ever, by both critics and fans alike.
It is 64 minutes of feedback, distortion and guitar runs.
That’s it.
But it is worse then you can possibly imagine.
Reed summed up his feeling about the album in an interview a few years ago, “*Well, anyone who gets to side four is dumber then I am.**”
The record has been out of print for nearly 2 decades and when asked if it would be released on CD, record execs alternated between cringing and laughing maniacly. So imagine my horror when I walked into my local record shop yesterday and saw no less then 5 copies of Metal Machine Music in the Lou Reed section.
I can’t imagine why they’d bother. You can enjoy a bad film, but I can’t imagine anyone enjoying “Metal Machine Music.” Not even Lou Reed, who released it because his contract obligated him to come up with an album and he said, “Screw them.” (Of course, he screwed himself worse – no one took him seriously for years.)
You think that’s bad, check out (if you dare) the album “How to Measure a Planet?” by The Gathering. We’re talking TWO cds of pure aural torture, and they weren’t looking to break their contract, either!
Ok, to be fair, most of it really is music, I suppose, but the deconstructionist 30-minute title track really gives Metal Machine Music a run for its money. The last 14 minutes of that “song” is ONE SUSTAINED PIERCING GUITAR NOTE!!! The trauma of sitting through that whole album forced me to quit listening to music of ANY kind for six whole months…
I enjoy it. I seriously think it’s his best album. (Well, maybe after Transformer.)
When it was first released on CD in the U.S. a couple of years ago, they made quite a production out of it, packaging the thing in a holographic faux-metal slipcase.
Are you sure about that? I heard there weren’t any guitars. Seriously.
I had a college friend with very interesting taste in music, Harry Partch, George Crumb, that sort of thing, and he became briefly enamored of Metal Machine Music.
He found out that another friend of ours had the album, and he asked him to tape a copy of it. So he put it on a 90 minute tape; with sides 1, 2 and 3 on the first side of the tape, and side 4 on the other. And he just let the infinity groove at the end keep running to fill up the whole tape. (So right away there has to be a problem with the CD; no infinity groove.)
This was in the late-80s, when CDs were still taking over, and we used to occasionally debate whether some recorded works would become inaccessible by never being re-released on CD. The debate usually came down to MMM and William Shatner’s “The Transformed Man”.
I met a guy a few years ago who claimed he used to have a copy on 8-track.
I saw Metal Machine Music on CD about six or seven years ago, and I’m pretty sure it was an import. I don’t know if my friend was still devoted enough to buy it.
It’s definately not easy listening. I once used it a long time ago to make up some interesting loops but since then it’s been stuck at the back of my collection.