Our album of the month for July was so exceptional, revolutionary and ahead of it’s time that it was over a decade before anyone noticed how good it really was.  Or, as Brian Eno famously said, it only sold 30,000 copies but “I think everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band”

Lou Reed’s tales of drug deals, addiction, prostitution and S&M so controversial at the time are, with hindsight, wonderfully evocative tales inspired not by a desire to shock but by a love for authors and poets such as Raymond Chandler, Allen Ginsberg and Williams S Burroughs.

Similarly, while many at the time were simply not ready for the screeching viola drones, feedback and  primitive pounding on upended drums, John Cale who had a huge part in arranging the songs on this record, was actually a skilled multi instrumentalist and experimental composer studying classical music in the US on a scholarship.

What came out of the collaboration was a wonderfully alien sounding album, both literate and grimy, raw and cerebral that challenged the notions of what a pop song could be.  In fact, the very same things that made the album unpalatable to a larger audience in the late 60’s have ensured that it still sounds fresh and not entirely like anything else almost fifty years later.

The recordings themselves, made with next to no money in a ramshackle studio over a matter of days at full performance volume, are technically rough around the edges but still sound thrillingly alive, particularly on vinyl, a format perfectly suited to an album as singular and colorful as this one.