There’s this band called Deerhunter out there, you probably own all their stuff. I’m still proud to say that I skipped your set at the ’09 Lollapalooza in order to see them. Bradford Cox was hilarious. Between belting out classic fuzz songs in the pop contour, he’d say things in a nasal, andante, emphatic voice, like “I can’t see any faces, all I see is a haze of eyes and ears.” I was with these friends who, though I love them, didn’t happen to know thing one about music, and so I was forced to leave No Age’s set, to go with them. I would have skipped you to see No Age, too.
But they’re in their prime. You weren’t. It had been 40 years since the album with Nico. And yes, I’m going to join the masses and say that that was your greatest musical achievement. Nobody on your side, people spitting on you, calling you whatever, gay, douche bag, mama’s boy, you were the outsider. You don’t have to tell us. It’s all in the music.
The music that it took over 30 years to really catch on. All of a sudden you’re a walking, living museum. How did that feel? I bet you liked getting back to your hotel room every night, to your pasta and Yerba Mate. I bet it felt alright, though the air’s a little more polluted now than it used to be.
You son of a bitch, you didn’t even make it to this upcoming mayoral election. All the candidates on the ballet propose to raise taxes. I find this interesting, and cool, hope our federal government follows suit.
See, it’s the principle. 2002, when Rolling Stone ranked The Velvet Underground & Nico among its Top 100 Albums of All Time, was still 15 years after New York: “I’ll take Manhattan in a garbage bag with Latin written on it that says / ‘It’s hard to give a sh** these days.'”
Did anyone ever really give a sh**? And if they did, did they survive? You’re going to get a lot of people “giving a sh**” about you now, when they should be listening to Deerhunter, or getting No Age tickets, or touting Speedy Ortiz, or pushing to have rock and roll music taught in public schools, with all this new tax money New York is going to have. New York, the birthplace of hip-hop, which I know you’d like, because it’s a distinctive new genre of music all its own, by way of depletion of public school funding, removal of musical instruments, leaving only the turntable. But, see, that’s something, you know.