Read collaborates with actors for spoken word

As a boy, with a boyish imagination, I spent my nights in bed listening to readings of "Moby Dick," "The Chronicles of Narnia," "The Red Badge of Courage" and many others on my mini tape deck. As I think back on those romantic days now, I imagine hearing that famous first line of "Moby Dick," "Call me Ishmael," and I swear that I hear the sound of seagulls swarming around the docks for scraps from the enormous wooden ships and the narrator saying "Argh!" before he delivered his most personal information.\nLou Reed's new album, The Raven, takes me back to those days when my reverie was given a voice to stories so resplendent and profound that it was a wonder I ever fell asleep. Originally, it was conceived as a stage presentation of Edgar Allen Poe's writings with new Lou Reed music and direction by Robert Wilson called "POE-try." Now the music has been released upon the world in two versions. There is a double-CD with two hours of music and Reed's rewrites of Poe delivered by some famous actors, and a single disc, which eradicates much of the spoken word material. \nSo is Lou Reed's rewriting of Poe blasphemy? Hardly, though the language is denser than what Reed usually works with. Since his days in the Velvet Underground, he has been an expert of conveying the stories and images of the little dark corners of the world. Poe, with his lecher limp, strange sexual history and serious drug issues is an easy fit to the world of Lou Reed. The actors, which include Willem Dafoe, Steve Buscemi and the incorrigible Elizabeth Ashley, deliver their lines with fervor and precision, making Reed's words sound effortlessly ancient. \nReed had once said that he wanted to take the idea of a novel and present it within the fun of rock and roll. The Raven is similar to that idea, but like the 1990 album Songs for Drella which he made with John Cale about the life of Andy Warhol, this is something more like a biography. Reed is attempting to educate, shed new light and to once again make the words of Edgar Allen Poe radiate with the intensity they had in the late-19th century.\nWith the spoken word parts alone this album would be a treasure chest of stimulus, but interwoven throughout is some great rock music and a collection of talented musicians to help out. David Bowie shows up to sing with a joyous buoyancy on "Hop-Frog," Ornette Coleman honks along rhythmically with "Guilty" and The Blind Boys of Alabama sing their hearts out in a call and response with Reed on "I Wanna Know (The Pit and the Pendulum)."\nThe album ultimately succeeds because Reed's music does not sound out of place as it exchanges passages with the spirit of the dear, departed Poe. When the unknown Antony sings the Reed classic "Perfect Day" as if someone had gutted his lovers heart and then flows into Dafoe's inhabiting of "The Raven," it seems just right.\nThough the concept screams out with the vain pretentiousness Reed has been accused of in the past, it ends up being a very warm-hearted, yet frightful affair. As he sings with typical bluntness on "Edgar Allen Poe," "We give you the soliloquy the raven at the door/flaming pits the moving walls no equilibrium/No ballast, no bombast/the unvarnished truth we've got/mind swoons guilty cooking ravings in a pot/Edgar Allan Poe/not exactly the boy next door," Reed is aching for his fans to feel the same passion for the writer as he does.