I’m probably not alone on Progarchy in feeling the loss of Lou Reed.  His death reminds me that there was a time when the wider world considered rock’n’roll the domain of the artless, or that its limits were Dylan’s increasingly obscure folk-based lyrical flights over standard electric blues workouts.  Lou Reed changed this, and along with others like Jim Morrison, Iggy Pop, and Arthur Lee virtually created the idea of rock music as a postmodern art form, a concept so outrageous it was called punk.  His band, the Velvet Underground, harnessed both an essential primitivism and a cultivated, even academic, new music approach, backboning lyrics of doper despair, sun-drenched love odes with dark clouds hanging ‘round, and downtown cool cruelty. His solo work, hit and miss as it is, never smacks of giving up.  He was an uncomfortable icon, combative with fans and critics, yet his humanity had a profound impact on his words, his music, and the countless musicians who followed him.  He was inspired, and an inspiration.

If his wasn’t an art, I don’t know what is.