Lulu

It is possible that you are one of the people who enjoyed Lou Reed and Metallica's art-metal album, Lulu, much in the way that it's possible that you could incur bird flu one day, or perhaps play Ultimate Frisbee while sober. If you're one of the few, you'll be excited to know that Lou Reed is embarking on a tour this summer called "From VU to Lulu," which will presumably touch on those songs and the ones in between from his long, long career. It's European only, for now, but if you start an online petition I'm sure Reed will announce U.S. dates soon enough.

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Loutallica

Lou Reed and Metallic are like pizza and ice cream, amazing in their own right but terrible when mixed together.  Their collaborative album LuLu was panned by pretty much everyone with eardrums, but that doesn't mean you've heard the last of them.  "Loutallica" has released their first video, done by Black Swan, The Wrestler, and creepy PSA director Darren Aronofsky,  for the song "The View." Put your speakers on mute and click through to take a look.

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LouReed

Last night, Lou Reed and Metallica appeared on the BBC’s Later With Jools Holland to promote their new collaborative album, Lulu. Here’s some background information on the album: Influential music sites hate it. What it has going for it, however, is the fact that it’s contained within a compact disc or compressed lines of computer code, and that it doesn’t exist in the world of the living. But that changed last night when Lou Reed and Metallica performed in front of a live studio audience in Great Britain.

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Remember when I told you how Lou Reed kept his punk cred by not letting Susan Boyle perform "Perfect Day," but then it turned out that the whole thing just had to do with rights and royalties, and Reed actually did let Boyle record the song as the first single for her new Christmas album? Well now the former father of punk has taken a walk on the totally lame side by directing the video to Boyle's version of the classic. I won't comment on the music itself, except to say that a) I'm not a Boyle fan and b) I worked in a corporate record store during the holiday season when I was sixteen and Andrea Bocelli: My Christmas played on repeat for two months straight. During that time I developed the ability to not hear any X-mas music, even when it's playing at full volume. So when I play this video, I literally don't hear anything.

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Remember a couple weeks ago when I praised Lou Reed for successfully stopping Susan Boyle from singing "Perfect Day" on America's Got Talent? Well, it looks like Boyle laughs last. She recently recorded a version of the song for her forthcoming holiday album, The Gift. "Perfect Day" will be the first single.

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It warms my cockles to hear that former Emperor of Fuck You, Lou Reed, is still fighting for the integrity of the rock and roll soul. TMZ reports that Susan Boyle left America’s Got Talent in tears because the Velvet Underground founder refused to relinquish rights to his song, “Perfect Day," thus saving American eardrums from another string-swollen commercial bastardization of a classic tune.

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"Waits used to scream in closets to mess up his voice"

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I DJed at the Hudson Rise Picnic last night, an amazing benefit proposed to help prevent the construction of a hideous 14-story sanitation facility that’s been approved for construction as early as June 2009 down on Spring and Canal streets, near the river. The city is pushing to construct the building, which will contain garbage trucks, a mountain of salt, garbage fuel, and lots of other stinky stuff that doesn’t seem right next to the water and the Holland Tunnel. The reason I volunteered to DJ for free at this gala was that unlike most groups who gripe about things, these folks are actually offering an intelligent, cheaper, and indeed economically cleaner solution -- Hudson Rise Park, which would connect to the river, cost about $200 million less than the city’s current plan, and still accommodate local garbage facilities. Another reason I DJed was to check out the celebs who were on the invite.

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"So... did you get a pen in the gift bag?" we ask, wondering if we missed out on serious swag at Sunday night's Montblanc-sponsored after-party for Julian Schnabel's latest documentary, Berlin. "No, but the girl at the door checked my name off her list with one." Relief.

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