Word: rocks
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Comedy, social commentary--call it what you will--Joshua is mediocre schlock Schlockhas many relatives, easily understood by attaching a prefix to define precisely the derived form's relationship to the tradition. I cite several of the most exemplary: rock-schlock (Spinal Tap), cock-schlock (Porky's has this covered) and lock-schlock (prison classics like the oh-so-shameful The Longest Yard...
...besides having to live up to his own position as a rock 'n roll survivor, Reed is constantly forced to prove that he was wise to leave, and consequently break up, the Velvet Underground. And truthfully, he hasn't done such a great...
...getting back to rock stars, we all know that Jimi Hendrix is the greatest guitarist who ever lived (and died), that Janis Joplin cornered the market on blues, and we dare not challenge their legends. Weren't we all taught not to speak badly of the dead, since they're not around to defend themselves? Instead, we let their sancrosant memories be grappled with and protected by biographers, former lovers and marketing geniuses of all types. And the faces of the long gone past gain the mystique of the unknown--what if they had lived on? --and the privilege...
Which brings us to Lou Reed, who in the age of the legendary dead and dying has the misfortune of being alive and kicking. A misfortune only because, in the tradition of felines and rock stars, Lou Reed must have nine lives. Nine distinct incarnations ranging from junkie to jogger, from wife-beating closet queen to affectionate husband, from Velvet Underground frontman to the man on the Honda scooter who won't settle for just walking. And he's had to watch his various lives fold and unfold in the public eye to varying degrees of interest. But worse than...
While many rock stars who were once heroin addicts have now kicked smack (with an exaggerated sense of self-importance and fanfare) to delve into the pleasures of clean living, none had previously told the story of the vicissitudes of drug-crazed existence quite so blatantly or prolifically as Lou Reed. None wrote a song called "Heroin." None has quit the music business so abruptly, pleading lethal side effects and a litany of near-death experiences...