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Big Dave 3/3/10 The man who revolutionized rock & roll: Lou Reed turns 68 today! Especially when he was a member of the avant-Gard rock & roll band The Velvet Underground, reed broke new ground for the rock genre in several important dimensions, introducing more mature and intellectual themes into what was considered a largely simplistic genre of music.
Although the Velvet Undergound's music never became a big commercial sell, Lou Reed set the seeds for the growth of underground and alternative music scene from which they sprang.
As a guitarist, he made innovative use of abrasive distortion, volume driven feedback, and nonstandard tunings. Reed's flat, New York voice, stripped of superficial emotions, and like Bob Dylan's, flaunting it's lack of conventional training, was no less important to the music's radical effect.
To hear one of Lou Reed's alltime classic songs performed live, check out this YouTube -
