Lou Reed: Looking Back

Lou Reed: Looking Back

Sunday, October 27, 2013, was a most Perfect Imperfect Day. Everyone had gotten the news. Lou Reed songs were playing everywhere. I walked to my poetry feature at the Parkside Lounge listening to the banana album. I always listened to the banana album - it had been injected into my bloodstream in 1967, and it had never stopped flowing through my veins.

I was backed up at my feature by Joff Wilson on guitar and Danny Ray on sax; Walter Steding, the violinist who was closely associated with Lou Reed, Andy Warhol and the Factory, was out of town or would have been playing with us. After the poetry set, they closed with a sing-along to Sunday Morning and Pale Blue Eyes. As always, they were my brilliant and simpatico crime partners. Strangely, I had, earlier in the week, decided to do an old Velvets-inspired poem, Shiny Banana, a piece that I had never before read in public. The previous month, I had written a new piece, Riding With Heroin, directly inspired by Lou Reed, and we did that one, too, as well as some Coney Island poems. The guys ended the set with Sunday Morning and Pale Blue Eyes.

One of our friends in attendance, "Bicycle Joe" Tomasello, was kind enough to video some of our performance and post on his youtube page:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm95S5VvZPA

Check out Bicycle Joe Tomasello's page for more videos.