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Music in Time: 'New York' (Audio)

Jun 22, 2022

Few synergies between artist and place are as enduring as the one between Lou Reed and the city of New York. From his days with the Velvet Underground through his decades as a solo artist, Reed’s ability to shine a light on the dark corners and hidden characters that give the Big Apple its pulse earned him unofficial status as the city’s poet laureate. But while much of the attention to Lou Reed’s connection with New York often reinforces the idea of an exceptional or even exotic place, there were moments when Reed’s songwriting begged listeners to see the city as something less esoteric and more broadly meaningful. In this broadcast, host Evan McCormick will focus in on one of those moments: January 1989, when Lou Reed’s acclaimed album New York hit record store shelves while the Big Apple pitched and rolled in the wake of the brutal 1980s. Depicting a city battered by the AIDS epidemic and ethnic tensions, and wrestling with social problems from drug addiction to pollution, Reed’s New York invited listeners to see the drama of city life as an urgent parable. Reed’s portrayal of a growing divide between disciples of “Greed is Good” capitalism and those who sought some improvement through collective action turned out to be a prescient statement on American national politics down to today. Not for nothing did Lou sing/warn in 1989: “You better hold on / There’s something happening here.” Reed’s relationship with the city and its people, and other historical moments resonate with the album’s core idea that New York City matters beyond the five boroughs. The broadcast features interviews with Reed’s longtime publicist and friend, Bill Bentley, and Heather Lember, an archivist at the New York Public Library responsible for processing Reed’s archive. Note: Selections from Reed's collection are featured in a public exhibit at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, entitled "Caught Between the Twisted Stars," a line drawn from the opening track of New York.

Playlist
1. Dirty Blvd. - Lou Reed
2. Romeo Had Juliette - Lou Reed
3. Hold On - Lou Reed
4. Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment - The Ramones
5. Sick Of You - Lou Reed

Music does not just exist. It exists in specific times and places, and in the sonic world of each individual listener who engages with it. That’s the basic idea behind "Music in Time," which explores the social and political context in which songs and albums emerge, are listened to, and reflected on over the years. Each broadcast will focus on a single album, detailing the social and political circumstances surrounding its release and moments in time that made certain music resonate anew. How is music shaped by these historical moments, and, in turn, how does it shape the histories that we remember?

By day, Evan McCormick is a historian at Columbia University, where he is part of the Obama Presidency Oral History project, interviewing a range of people — from cabinet members to ordinary folks — about their memories of the Obama years. By night McCormick is a music lover and singer-songwriter, recording under the stage name Egan Caufield. For most of his life these two worlds remained separate, but after relocating to Catskill, in 2020, he chose to bring history and music together over the airwaves, and Music in Time was born.