Listen up you uncultured swine! (the music of The Velvet Underground)

Cultural literacy, to me, is a dangerous concept because it implies that there is a cultural "language" of people, events, and ideas that you have to know about in order avoid becoming an uncultured loser. To tell someone what they need to know about in order to be culturally literate is kind of a balancing act, which if unsuccessful, leaves you drowning in an ocean of pretentiousness. While on the subject of things that are sometimes misunderstood as being pretentious, I'd like to talk about the music of The Velvet Underground. The Velvet Underground was an American rock band that embodied the late sixties New York City underground music scene. The Velvets were one of the first groups to start making Noise Rock music. They often blurred the line between music and pure noise via screeching guitar feedback, which was usually set to simple solid song structures. Their lyrics, written by singer and poet Lou Reed, often detailed the events of no-income New York City life, including tales of transvestites, drug deals, murder, prostitution and other savory subjects that your grandparents probably don't want to talk about. Although late sixties rock music is sometimes thought of as a colorful psychedelic sing and dance along, The Velvet's music is more like a black and white movie about a sexually ambiguous criminal, who is actually really nice. The combination of a game changing musical style, and real raw lyrics, result in music that is strange but beautiful and kind of makes you realize that the world is a scary place, and that your parents are just trying to protect you until it's too late and then you're on your own, and that you don't really know what you are doing, you could totally get killed at any second by anyone, and come to think of it they're probably in your room right now. Did you check the closet? No? It's too late now. This is how it ends. All alone at your computer, tablet, fablet, (nook? Kindle fire? Kindle fire HD?) or mobile cellular device, reading my blog. Was it worth it? I hope so.