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VIENNA--In a world of self-consciousness about peace, love, and rock 'n' roll, Lou Reed has the audacity to make people uncomfortable.
His June 4 "Words & Music" performance at Wolf Trap pricked the skin of the audience's tempered apathy and passivity with outspoken thoughtfulness and passion. It's not a feel-good experience. It's better than that.
The former lead singer of the Velvet Underground is one of the last survivors, a remnant from the time when the medium became the message.
But he's not living in the past, and his set list proved it. He did his more popular "Satellite of Love" and "Dirty Boulevard," and Velvet Underground's "Sunday Morning." But he didn't play "Walk on the Wild Side" or "Stephanie Says," probably just to spite those who'd come only to hear them.
What he did play, like "Day John Kennedy Died," proved that he's not about to let us forget the past. "I dreamed that there's a point to life and to the human race," he said.
The poetic honesty silenced the crowd.
In his music, Lou Reed creates a medium in which to think and feel and question. Sometimes, as in "How Do You Think It Feels," he does so by resonating the pressures of life he seeks to express on his guitar, with Z-Tarist Mike Rathke and bassist Fernando Saunders, creating a claustrophobic wall of sound no recording could ever contain.
But then in "Vanishing Act," cellist Jane Scarpantoni ushered listeners into the most aesthetic of aural lounges in which to entertain the thought of "how nice it must be to disappear/ to have a vanishing act always looking forward, never looking back." Then she lost it in "Venus in Furs," scraping violently at her instrument.
Vocalist Antony sat squirming in delight the entire duration of the show, entranced, chirping in with the high notes and melodies Reed's voice is too weathered to hit.
Now imagine Reed's velvet voice reciting a stylized rendition of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" in the darkness of the night sky, and suddenly it begins to pour.
"I love someone who hates me more!" he screamed. Surreal.
--Kate Malay