Lou Reed and John Cale, Songs For Drella (1990)
Okay, here’s an album I owned on tape and then CD and now vinyl…there are a few like that, where it’s never enough…it’s always gotta be there. But also, with this one, check it out: A good friend buys me a copy of this as a birthday present. I haven’t heard the record in years, I’ve lost my previous copy…the burglary this year takes my iPod that had a version of the album on it…so I’m chuffed to have a copy once again – and to have it on vinyl. For it really is a sit-down-and-listen album. And though I worry, just slightly, that it might not work 25 years on from release, it’s still very much an album to listen to all the way through. So that’s great. Then, another friend tells me he’s jealous, would love a copy if he can find one. So I have a look about and I find one, just a week or two after getting given this. I stash it. Waiting for that friend to visit. He does – just recently – and he is chuffed to have the album. We sit down and talk about it, our shared history with the record, how inspiring it had been to both of us, and how it continues to be. He’s a painter. He sits and works to that album. He painted my favourite piece of work  – which comes directly from this album. What’s even better, that painting hangs in my kitchen. I pass it by every day. I think about what it says. It’s a bit part of the reason I keep turning up here. It’s also the best Lou Reed and John Cale collaboration, better than The Velvet Underground reunion. By such a long way.

Sample Track: Hello It’s Me
The Vinyl Countdown is a document of every LP I listen to, brand new discoveries and old-old favourites; extremely pre-loved, previously abandoned or with the shrink-wrap having just been removed it’s all here at The Vinyl Countdown