Ordinarily, I find Chuck Closterman tedious and irritating. His remembrance of Lou Reed in Grantland, however, is completely fucking spot on.

I love this bit in particular, about Metal Machine Music:

In 1975, Reed released Metal Machine Music, a four-sided 64-minute collection of itchy guitar feedback with no words or melody. In the original liner notes, Reed claimed no one he knew had ever listened to the entire thing, including himself. If you purchased it on vinyl, you eventually realized the fourth side concluded with a “locked groove.” This meant that — if you didn’t manually lift the needle off the record — it would never stop playing (thereby subjecting its listener to an endless, joyless squeal). Basically, he made an album that sounded terrible on purpose and then figured out a way to make it go on forever. It assaulted the people who supported him and exasperated the label that paid him to create it. Now that he’s dead, it’s tempting to argue that the mere existence of Metal Machine Music is cool and subversive, almost as if the only thing that matters was the idea. But it’s not just the idea. It’s not just that Reed thought it would be funny to do this.* It’s not a parody or an urban legend. Metal Machine Music is a real thing. You can hold it. You can drop it on the floor. It’s a tangible document that illustrates the militant fringe of what can be produced with the rudimentary tools of rock and roll, designed by someone who never adequately explained what his original motive was. It’s not merely cool that it exists. It’s amazing that it exists. It’s wonderful, regardless of the notes. And while thousands of lesser mainstream artists could have easily produced an album with similarly unlistenable sounds, only Reed actually did so. Only Reed made this album, sold it to 100,000 people, and moved on to something else entirely.

* Although this was probably part of it.