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Lou Reed, Velvet Underground Leader and Rock Pioneer, Dead at 71

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Re: Lou Reed, Velvet Underground Leader and Rock Pioneer, Dead at 71

#4

Post by vezzy-fnord »

cprncus wrote: post #2

I don't see how general celebrity deaths are hacker news. I would like to read about tech and computer news and ideas; if I wanted this, I would read general news sites.

I'd say Lou Reed is a hacker. A hacker of music. His Metal Machine Music was one of the first and perhaps most famous examples of noise music (after Merzbow) which completely challenged all conventions of what music truly is.

There were plenty of others before him, but he had his place, as well.

Even though his later years were not up to par.

Re: Lou Reed, Velvet Underground Leader and Rock Pioneer, Dead at 71

#6

Post by mcphilip »

RIP Lou Reed, one of my favorite musicians. The song Heroin has so much dissonance and noise throughout that it's almost revolting to listen to. Over time it grew into one of my favorite songs in that I learned to find beauty in the clash of consonance and dissonance. At the risk of hyperbole, that mindset of finding something new from the conflict of opposing forces is something that now applies in far more areas of my life than just music, and the VU was the vehicle that introduced me to that philosophy.

Re: Lou Reed, Velvet Underground Leader and Rock Pioneer, Dead at 71

#7

Post by aidos »

ssully wrote: post #5

Damn you Sony and your Perfect Day commercials... I think now's a good time to go listen to Transformer again.

Transformer is every kind of pop wonderful (and I mean that in the best possible way).

No idea how familiar you are with The Velvet Underground but have a listen to The Velvet Underground (self titled - 1969) if you haven't heard it before. Just amazing.

Sad to hear the news that Lou Reed is gone - though, he sure did make sure he experienced everything he could from life along the way.

Re: Lou Reed, Velvet Underground Leader and Rock Pioneer, Dead at 71

#8

Post by guiambros »

cprncus wrote: post #2

I don't see how general celebrity deaths are hacker news. I would like to read about tech and computer news and ideas; if I wanted this, I would read general news sites.

This has been discussed many times, but as you've just joined, here's a PSA:

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. [1]

Lou Reed was an amazing musician, and someone that promoted intellectual curiosity [2], hence the 20+ points. (too bad one of the mods seems to disagree, hence it was flagged to now show up at the front page anymore).

[1] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html [2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFy4kRLCJBU&t=20

Re: Lou Reed, Velvet Underground Leader and Rock Pioneer, Dead at 71

#9

Post by kyro »

cprncus wrote: post #2

I don't see how general celebrity deaths are hacker news. I would like to read about tech and computer news and ideas; if I wanted this, I would read general news sites.

I agree. This submission has taken up about an entire half an inch of screen real estate, and seeing as how Apple hasn't yet offered a Macbook Air with a larger display, I can't really give up that much space. What's worse is the js script HN seems to be running that forces your mouse cursor to gravitate towards links of celebrity news.
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