Metal Machine Music

Insomnia is a rude bedfellow. I've been sleeping (or rather NOT sleeping) with it for most of my life, some periods worse than others. Thanks to the latest in a succession of Little Yellow Pills, these past few years have shown me some of the best sleep of my adult life. But once in a while my old adversary squeezes in between Patti and me, and I just have to get up and go to the guestroom and read it out.

What has worked a little bit lately, though, is Lou Reed's 1975 outrage, Metal Machine Music. Coming at the twilight of one his most-inspired creative periods which included Berlin and Transformer, MMM is an intentionally unlistenable brocade of feedback and tape effects, mixed at various speeds and pitches. True noise. There is no melody, rhythm, vocal or structure of any kind. And as if offering it at a time when the critic's spotlight was upon him was not wry enough for Blue Lou, Metal Machine Music is audaciously a 2-record set. Side A1 entirely indistinguishable from side A4.

I've tried white noise and mountain stream loops against insomnia and they've only served to wake me further thru sheer frustration. Metal Machine Music, though-- this might be 'just the thing...'

(if you try this at home, don't use Spotify. Because if MMM does its job and you're sleeping, you might just be jolted awake by "Uranium" by Kraftwerk, which Spotify assumes you want to listen to next. And the beginning of this song sounds much like the Emergency Broadcast System alert tone that we've all only ever heard as 'a test'. And that's not good for sleeping.)