Lou Reed T-ShirTS

Velvet Underground T-ShirTS

Lewis Allan "Lou" Reed (born March 2, 1942 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American rock singer-songwriter and guitarist.

Lou Reed first found prominence as the guitarist and principal singer-songwriter of The Velvet Underground (1965 - 1973). The band gained relatively little notice during its life, but is widely considered by some to be one of the seeds of alternative rock music. As the Velvets’ principal songwriter, Reed wrote about subjects such as sadism and masochism ("Venus in Furs"), transvestites ("Sister Ray"), drug culture ("Heroin", and "I'm Waiting for the Man"), and transsexuals undergoing lobotomies ("Lady Godiva's Operation"). As a guitarist, Lou Reed made use of distortion, volume-driven feedback, and nonstandard tunings.

Lou Reed began a long and eclectic solo career in 1971. Lou Reed had a hit the following year with "Walk on the Wild Side", though for more than a decade Lou Reed seemed to wilfully evade mainstream commercial success. One of rock's most volatile personalities, Lou Reed's work as a solo artist has frustrated critics wishing for a return of the Velvet Underground. The most notable example is 1975's infamous double LP of recorded feedback loops, Metal Machine Music, upon which Lou Reed later commented, "no one is supposed to be able to do a thing like that and survive." By the late 1980s, however, Lou Reed had won wide recognition as an elder statesman of rock.

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The Velvet Underground (sometimes shortened to The Velvets or The VU) was an American rock band first active from 1965 to 1973. The Velvet Underground's best-known alumni are Lou Reed and John Cale.

Although never commercially successful during their time, The Velvet Underground have been regarded as one of the most important and influential groups of their era. A famous remark, often attributed to Brian Eno, is that, while only a few thousand people bought a Velvet Underground record upon their initial release, almost every single one of them was inspired to start a band. The Velvet Underground was one of the first to experiment with rock structures, and their sound influenced many later punk, new wave, and gothic rock performers.

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