Celebrating 40: Lou Reed turned a corner with The Blue Mask

The Blue Mask, released on Feb. 23, 1982, was not Lou Reed's declaration of late-blooming adulthood as he approached his 40th birthday a week later.

His previous record, 1980's Growing Up In Public, was the one on which Reed told the world he had found true love with Sylvia Morales and that his days as a debauched rock-and-roll animal were behind him.

A track-by-track look at the VU documentary soundtrack

The Todd Haynes documentary on The Velvet Underground landed on Apple TV+ last Friday, and I reviewed it Monday on our Geezerology Gazette series over on YouTube. Accompanying the movie was a 16-track soundtrack album.

Some interesting things appear on this album, some not readily available elsewhere. VU completists and other big fans certainly will want to add this 2-CD set to their collections. Most casual fans, though, would be well-served to just add it to your streaming library.

A deep dive into Lou Reed's catalog: The stinkers

2011: Reed as frontman for Metallica

Of the 22 studio albums Lou Reed released in his four-decade career as a solo artist, four of them I rate as absolute stinkers -- albums I feel have no value whatsoever to a serious listener. These records might be worth your time if you're the curious type and have a burning desire to hear anything if just once. But if you hope to find some kind of treasure in your exploration, you're probably not going to find anything worthwhile in this basket.

On first glance, four out of 22 might seem like a lot. By the numbers, that would mean that I am telling you that nearly one of every five Lou Reed albums is complete garbage -- a fairly high whiff rate by the numbers. But there is a caveat: Three of these four were the last three albums of his life, recorded long after his well ran dry of artistic inspiration. So factoring that into the equation, that leaves only one stinker out of 19, a pretty good track record if you ask me.

A deep dive into Lou Reed's catalog: The filler material

1983: Back-cover photo for Legendary Hearts

They can't all be gems, right? Thus far, we've gone through the real meat of Lou Reed's catalog of 22 studio albums, past the halfway mark into what I consider his 13 best.

Today, we're going to look at the five I consider lightweight, filler material. These albums are the back end of the bullpen, the taxi squad, the roster fillers. They're good enough to step up in an pinch, capable of delivering now and then when the regulars need a break. But they aren't the sort you want to turn to on a daily basis.

A deep dive into Lou Reed's catalog: The solid middle ground

1992: The Magic and Loss tour

I told you earlier about the albums I consider the four essential, must-listen Lou Reed albums, and I told you about four more Reed LPs I think are great but don't quite reach the Mount Rushmore level.

Now, here are five Lou Reed albums that fill that middle ground, the ones I rank 9-13 in his catalog of 22 studio albums. These are the records that are held in high regard by fans but are going to be hit-and-miss for casual fans and the uninitiated. None of these albums are great, certainly none of them are bad. Most any listener will find a few favorite tracks here. Depending on your tastes, you may very well find a favorite Lou Reed album among these.

A deep dive into Lou Reed's catalog: The best of the rest

1980: Lou and Sylvia on their wedding day

I wrote earlier about the four studio albums I consider the most important of the 22 Lou Reed released in his solo career. I called them essential albums, those that must be heard by anyone who wants to explore Reed's post-Velvet Underground career.

Next up are four albums I want to call the Best of the Rest. Precisely, these are my favorite Lou Reed albums that I do not consider essential listening. If you have listened to the four essentials and want to dive further into Reed's catalog, these are the four that will confirm or deny your compatibility with the man and his music.

A deep dive into Lou Reed's catalog: The essential albums

1973: In Paris during the Transformer tour

Lou Reed released 22 studio albums in his 40-year solo career. Some of them were great, some were awful, most fell somewhere in between, depending on who's leading the discussion. But one of those albums in particular must be at the center of any serious consideration of Reed's place in the history of rock music.

The discussion doesn't end there, but it always will begin at Transformer. That 1972 album, Reed's second after a failure of a debut earlier in the year, dropped a nuclear bomb on the music culture. Tranformer and the hit single it spawned, "Walk on the Wild Side," became instant cultural classics. That's obvious.

A deep dive into Lou Reed's catalog: A preview

2011: Reed in Kent, England, in one of his last performances

Anyone who knew me in the last quarter of the 20th century knew well that I had two real passions -- St. Louis Cardinals baseball and Lou Reed. For a few reasons, I drifted far away from the Cardinals in the mid-1990s. But I did stick around with Lou for a few more years, until I realized in the mid-2000s that he had stopped rocking and become laser-focused on legacy building.

A case of mistaken rock-star identity

The latest entry in the Things That I Did Not Know Until Now list:

Last night I watched a movie on Hulu titled Stardust that purports to tell the story of David Bowie’s attempt to find stardom in America in 1971 following the release of his album The Man Who Sold The World. The movie ends with Bowie finding success as he transforms into the Ziggy Stardust character.

The film begins with a disclaimer that “What follows is (mostly) fiction” so I settled back expecting to be entertained, not enlightened.

Happy birthday, Lou. I still miss you.

2013: A few days before Lou said goodbye

Happy birthday, Lou. Today would have been your 79th had the self-abuses of your early adulthood not caught up to you before your 72nd. But hey, a half-century ago, who among us actually expected you to see your 40th? So all in all, I guess the sobriety and health regimen that drove the last three-plus decades of your life did get you pretty far, didn't it?

Anyway, just thought I'd check in to let you know you're not forgotten. I'm not listening to your music much these days, mostly since your rock-and-roll output stopped around the turn of the century as you turned to legacy-building and your vanity projects.

50 years late to the VU Loaded party

Half a century down the road, I just “discovered” the music of The Velvet Underground.

My journey of discovery and redemption was sparked by a challenge from my blog partner and five-decades-long friend, Scott, a VU and Lou Reed fan long before our first meeting back in the mid-1970s. Scott and I were college roommates who continued our cohabitation as we began our post-graduation journalism careers at the same newspaper. (I was a legitimate news reporter; he wrote about sports. But that’s a discussion for another time).

With the Velvets, it's all about first impressions

1967: Morrison, Reed, Cale, Tucker

It only took about 45 years, but it finally happened. My old roommate Geezer Bob listened to a Velvet Underground album for the first time in his life, and he got blown away.

Bob has known from the first time we met sometime around 1976 that I was a dedicated Lou Reed fanboy. But he never paid much attention, never heard anything from Reed either solo or with the Velvets that captured his interest. I did get Bob to go with me to a theater in Kansas City to see a mulleted and newly bespectacled Reed touring his 1989 LP, New York. Bob was a good sport about it, but as I recall, he wasn't impressed.

Transformer: The beginning of a long friendship

Transformer, released a few months after I graduated from high school, sent shock waves into my system that would reverberate for about three decades.