I recently picked up the VU bootleg tapes release, The Quine Tapes and have been enjoying it since. Scott Colburn of Gravelvoice a long, long time ago gave me a tape of some bootlegs from the 1966 “Exploding Plastic Inevitable” tour, and I have always loved the sounds on it; long droning screechy free-improv rock.

While “White Light, White Heat” features something like this, the live stuff is infinitely better, more listenable. Longform rock is always best when it’s a trance-inducing hypnotic loop of indeterminate virtuosity – if there’s no display of prowess to celebrate or focus on, the listener is forced inward.

Lou Reed’s fantastically simple and solid songwriting is also a huge influence on Dale Lawrence of the Gizmos and the Vulgar Boatmen, the most influential musician of the Southern Indiana rock scene of my youth.

Vulgar Boatman discussion group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vulgarboatmen/

Dale’s label
www.nonostalgia.com

Gulcher Records (Gizmos reissues)
cdstreet | Gulcher Records