136 - The Lou Reed Archive with Laurie Anderson

The Kitchen Sisters Present

The Kitchen Sisters & Radiotopia

Society & Culture

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 25 February 2020

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Lou Reed—music icon, poet, photographer, Tai Chi master, vital force in the cultural life and underworld of New York City. Lou died in 2013 and left not a word of instruction about what he wanted done with his archive of
recordings, instruments, gear, his Tai Chi swords, jackets—from his days with The Velvet Underground, through his solo career and last recordings. He left everything to his wife, artist and musician Laurie Anderson. Over
the next six years Laurie and a team of Lou’s “keepers” created a vision.

In March 2019, on the occasion of his birthday, The Lou Reed Archive opened to the public at the New York Library for the Performing Arts with parties, friends, family, fanfare and a drone concert at the largest cathedral in the world. During that week and beyond we spoke to many of Lou’s archivists, family, and friends — Laurie Anderson, Curator Don Fleming, Jason Stern and Jim Cass who worked with Lou, drone wizard Stewart Hurwood, Producers Tony Visconti and Hal Willner, Carrie Welch from the New York Public Library, Curator Jonathan Hiam and a devoted crew of librarians and archivists at the New York Library for the Performing Arts, and Lisa Shubert at Cathedral of Saint John the Divine. Many thanks to all.

The Keepers, stories of activist archivists, rogue librarians, curators, historians and collectors, is produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva) in collaboration with Nathan Dalton & Brandi Howell and mixed by Jim McKee. Special thanks to story interns Sydney Stewart and Josh Gross.

The Kitchen Sisters Present is part of the Radiotopia Podcast Network from PRX. Support for The Kitchen Sisters comes from Radiotopia, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Grammy Museum Foundation, The Marin Community Foundation/ Susie Tompkins Buell Fund, Cowgirl Creamery, The Kaleta Doolin Foundation, The Robert Sillins Family Foundation, The Robert Lee Hudson Foundation, the TRA Fund and listener contributions to The Kitchen Sisters Productions.

“These are really terribly rough times and we really should try to be nice to each other as possible.” Lou Reed.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Radio Tophia, welcome to the Kitchen Sisters Present.
0:04.0	From PRX.
0:05.0	We're the Kitran Sisters, Davia Nelson, and Nicki Silva.
0:09.0	The Kitchen Sisters Present as part of Radiotopia from PRX and right now it's our annual
0:16.5	fundraiser.
0:18.3	Radiotopia is a non-profit media company that supports independent creators like us. It takes time and money to create
0:25.2	this kind of audio. Your support means that our team can make the exact show we want to make.
0:31.2	Our goal is 1,000 donors and we know we can do that.
0:35.0	Join today, make your contribution, go to radiotopia.
0:39.5	F.M slash donate.
0:41.8	We'll send you a curated playlist from all of the radiotopio producers as a
0:46.7	token of our thanks. That's going to be a pretty good one I'll tell you because
0:50.4	there's some great music people in this collaboration.
0:54.0	Go to radiotopia.FM slash donate.
0:57.6	Thank you so much for listening and for sharing with your friends. rock and roll icon. When Lou passed in 2013 he left not a word of instruction of what
1:17.1	he wanted done with his archive, his recordings, his guitars, cameras,
1:21.8	jackets, his fan mail,
1:23.8	Tai Chi swords, and record collection.
1:26.7	Lou left everything to his wife,
1:28.8	the musician and artist Lori Anderson.
1:32.0	Over the next six years, Lori and a team of Loose Keepers created a vision of how to share
1:37.3	lose life and legacy.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Kitchen Sisters & Radiotopia, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Kitchen Sisters & Radiotopia and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.