Sunday Morning: pondering peeling my banana

This record seems fitting to start my day.  I am glad to finally have it on vinyl.  It has been reissued so many times in so many ways it was kind of hard to choose what to buy.  I finally settled on a more classic reissue on black vinyl.  Now I have the odd question of whether or not to peal my banana?  I know what is under there and I'd rather keep the record in good shape, but it is sssooo tempting.

I am not a huge Lou Reed fan and am pretty happy with just this record and his Transformer album.  I appreciate their place in Rock history and feel both these records are magical.  I don't find I connect as strongly with anything that came after.  

I want records I want to play repeatedly in my collection.  When I make the odd mistake of buying one that I don't know if I'll ever play again, I will try to find it a better home with someone that will love it more.  


These two records are unquestionably going to be played and played and played..... They are touchstone records that marked a beginning and an ending.  Someone telling me they don't like these records equates to them saying they don't like oxygen.  How can you breathe anything else, somehow these records have affected what you are listening to whether you like them or not.  Like Noah's Ark they took in everything that came before, carried it around awhile, and once it was over everyone dispersed to populate the earth carrying pieces of their influence in variable sizes.    

I guess you can actually say that about several records and artists.  Velvet Underground and Lou Reed are not unique in having influence on a large and sometimes unaware number of music lovers.  But we are talking about them today and the others shouldn't be slighted or diminished.  

Of course there is such a story behind the formation of Velvet Underground.  It couldn't have happened in any other way than the way it did and the fact that it happened at all is amazing.  The story has been told and I'm not retelling it.  It is just so much more than the usual story of bands forming in high school or college or connecting through music publications, etc.  There was so much happenstance in the forming of Velvet Underground.  It was like a purposeful accident.

Then again what do I know.  I didn't live it.  I wasn't there.  I am relying on what others have said and depending on their memories that may or may not have been under the influence of drugs.  Still the music exists and is just as good whether the story is factual or fiction.  


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