Songs For Drella

The other day I was in a bookstore on Vermont, a rather hip bookstore, and was taken aback by all the images one is confronted with while browsing. The store has a large supply of current magazines: art, fashion, music, film, literary. It was heady and uncomfortable to see all those professional photos, designs, ads staring out at me. In the world at large, how many are published each month? Millions? To what avail? Ultimately selling stuff, or informing the ignorant? What value does a published photo have and what is its life expectancy?

I like images a lot. Merely walking the neighborhood, seeing Liquor store signs, graffiti, half-torn political action posters, hand drawn flyers for lost pets, pasted ads for upcoming concerts . . . well, you get the picture. Lots to look at. But in the bookstore, the images seemed featured in some more hallowed way--not quite a gallery wall, but not stapled to a telephone pole either. Anyway, the sheer quantity of eye candy is kinda staggering. How much input can we take until our brains get overly cluttered and quit paying attention? I think Andy Warhol might have had some ideas on the subject.

Past the magazines and expensive art books were shelves of music books from the 33 1/3 imprint, a collection edited by David Barker for Continuum Books. Each book is about one influential record album, written by one author. Though I've only read a few, they are fun and filled with more contemporary information than I care to research on my own, though I'm glad someone (the writer) is excited enough to do so. They cover some great titles by some interesting bands. I wondered what albums I think are interesting enough which haven't already been covered by the 33 1/3 aegis. One I came up with is SONGS FOR DRELLA by Lou Reed and John Cale. It's essentially a thematic song cycle in memory of their mentor Andy Warhol. The name Drella is a conjunction of "Dracula" and "Cinderella," and was a nickname for Andy Warhol used by intimates (or so I read).

It was released in 1990, but prior to the studio version the songs had been played by Reed and Cale in two live shows in Brooklyn in late 1989, comminssioned by The Brooklyn Academy Of Music and The Arts At St. Ann's. One of the shows was filmed by Ed Lachman, a masterful Director of Photography who has lensed many interesting films and art projects. If you can find it, I recommend the video as a great way to essentially "watch" the album. Years back I had a coveted cassette of SONGS FOR DRELLA which I kept in my car and played over and over. The music is an insight into Andy Warhol's personal life, his career and the myth that he carefully created as an adjunct to his art work. But that alone doesn't make for a great album, the songs themselves and the duo's music is precise, adventurous, balanced, and yet quirky. Cale plays keyboards and viola, Reed plays guitar. Both sing. The songs don't seem like collaborations, but a mixture of two independent voices which remain insistent on their ideosyncratic styles. Of course they played together in the heyday of the Velvet Underground and afterward for a time with Nico, but each had been conducting a solo career since the late 1960's. They also seem to disagree on musical paths, which makes this album so interesting. You can hear the clashing of styles and yet the communion of efforts, one supposes, in deference to the importance of their memorial goal, that being a personal paean to a man they admired and respected, Andy Warhol. I love this album.
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