Reed 3c

[Phyliss Berard]

Phragmitesaustralis, the common reed, is used in many areas for thatching roofs. In the United Kingdom, common reed used for this purpose is known as "Norfolk reed" or "water reed". However, "wheat reed" and "Devon reed" are not reeds but long-stemmed wheat straw.

Ancient Greeks used Arundo donax to make flutes known as kalamaulos; this is a compound word, from kalamos (cane) + aulos (flute). At the time, the best cane for flutes came from the banks of river Kephissos, in Attica, Greece. Several kalamaulos tuned differently and tied together, made a syrinx or Panpipes. A. donax is still the principal source material of reed makers for clarinets, saxophones, oboes, bassoons, bagpipes, and other woodwind instruments.[1] The Var country in southern France contains the best-known supply of instrument reeds.

The International Double Reed Society (IDRS) is a worldwide nonprofit organization made up of professional double reed players, students, amateurs, hobbyists, university/college instructors, music teachers, institutions, instrument manufacturers, double reed product retailers, reed makers, and enthusiasts.

Membership in the IDRS is available without regard to race, gender, religion, age, sexual orientation, disability, or national origin. The International Double Reed Society is committed to championing and celebrating diversity, equity, and inclusion in the global double reed community through performance and educational opportunities, grants, and ensuring representation that reflects the richness of our multi-faceted membership.

You might call it moral clarity. Ellen Willis did, writing about the Velvet Underground in her landmark essay on the Velvets, first published the same year Street Hassle came out. Identifying Reed as an "aesthete punk" whose relationship to the urban demimonde he always wrote about was intellectual, stylized and distanced, Willis noticed that because he also really grasped the pain of those shadowed characters he wrote about, he ended up a moralist: a writer primarily concerned with the choices that make up people's lives, choices to hurt or help others, to be safe or potentially self-destructive, to love or to harden the heart. "The point was not to glorify the punk, or even to say f- - - you to the world, but to be honest about the strategies people adopt in a desperate situation."

Listening to Street Hassle, with its songs about feelings no one would ever want to admit, with titles like "Dirt" and "Leave Me Alone," I slowly realized what most of the punk or New Wave rock I loved so much rarely gave me. Clarity! Most music was too earnest, too clever, too deliberately gorgeous or bloody exciting to require what Reed's demanded, which was that a listener sit with the ugliness of a moment and really grasp the fatal mistakes and collapses that go hand-in-hand with the risks that bring humans to life.

Reed's songs are actually often quite pretty, his pop ear well-tuned by the '50s rockabilly and doo-wop he loved as a Long Island teenybopper kid. But he would always show the sweat on the lips of the beauty queens and muscle boys he sang about. The fact that those queens were often in drag, and the boys were paying the rent with their erotic encounters, is in some ways secondary. (In another way it's central, since few other rockers fleshed out those characters, especially the queer ones, the way Reed did.) Reed was just as willing to explore conventional married life unsparingly, as he did on his turning-40 album The Blue Mask, the New Wave crossover hit New Sensations or his late-in-life albums about partnered bliss with his artistic soulmate Laurie Anderson. What matters most in Reed's music is the commitment to what's difficult, whether it's expressed through distorted guitar, lyrics whose exposure of a self or a situation peels deeper with each verse, or the kind of melodic richness that doesn't comfort but instead renders a song's singer vividly vulnerable.

Lou Reed's music takes in and gives us back the whole picture. Describing another one of Reed's signature works, the Velvet Undergound opus "Heroin," Patti Smith once fittingly assessed Reed's breadth of vision. "'Heroin,' to me, is one of our more perfect American songs," she said, "because it addresses a very conflicting subject that has so many stigmas attached to it. It addresses the deeply painful and destructive elements of it, and also whatever is precious about it, just with Lou's beautiful, simple, direct language." Reed himself often explained that he was simply doing what artists in other media do; novelists or filmmakers don't limit their subject matter. Dedicating himself to rock and roll, though, kept Reed committedly exploring the visceral in ways other artists could avoid. In the funky rhythms he borrowed from early rock 'n' roll and especially in the drone and noise that connected him over the years to both minimalist composers like La Monte Young and hard rockers like Metallica, Reed moved through what felt like confusion toward a sense of grace.

Sometimes what Reed moved through was a minefield. He didn't worry about offending anyone or, preferably sometimes, everyone. Street Hassle, for example, also contains "I Wanna Be Black," a proto-rap unspooling of racist stereotypes that makes fun of white hipsters by forcing a deep wallow in ignorance. Plenty of Reed fans find Metal Machine Music, his 1976 excursion into nothing but guitar feedback, unlistenable. Others feel that way about his theatrical collaborations with Robert Wilson; I myself sat through the time-stopping Timerocker at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1997 and felt every spring in my seat. Even Reed's most accessible efforts proudly bear painful twists: The gorgeous ballad "Pale Blue Eyes" turns on a blunt justification of adultery; my favorite of his almost-pop dance numbers, "Vicious," is a lighthearted account of personal repulsion.

And then there's "Perfect Day," Lou Reed's "Hallelujah." Like Leonard Cohen's irreverent secular hymn, this one has been milked for exultation by many interpreters. Duran Duran covered it; so did the talent show diva Susan Boyle. It was featured in Trainspotting (in a scene that played upon the theory that Reed's perfect imagined lover is heroin, not a person), got an all-star charity remake in the late '90s and most recently, formed the basis for a Sony Playstation ad. It's a song that will live on, both enhancing and apart from Reed's expansive legacy.

But, like the essence of Lou Reed, "Perfect Day" is tricky. In the original recording, Mick Ronson's piano gives Reed's stately melody a French feel, something like an Edith Piaf song. David Bowie's production adds heft: the thing swells. Reed goes along for the ride. The choruses ring, anthemic, but why is Reed singing about how his ideal lover just keeps him hanging on? At the end of the second verse, Reed's voice dips and his diction clips. "You made me forget myself," he nearly whispers. "I thought I was someone else. Someone good." And the song ends in anger, with Reed muttering, over and over again, "You're going to reap what you sow." The soft focus that seemed to dominate the song in its beginning has sharpened. As Lester Bangs, the writer most passionately dedicated to understanding Reed, once wrote, "If 'Perfect Day' is autobiographical, he must be the most guilt-ridden person on the face of the earth."

See, there's the whole picture. Happiness intermingled with self-loathing. Freedom all tied up in dependency. Rage bubbling through tenderness. It took discipline to put all of this into a song, a determination to not soften into earnestness or excuse the hard stuff in the name of romance. "The core of Reed's sensibility is his visceral aversion to corn," the critic Robert Christgau once put it, succinctly. For the last three decades of his life, Lou Reed was a tai chi practitioner; he learned how to move slowly through uncomfortable positions. All the art he's left us will continue to help us learn to do that, too.

Pierce has led a successful legislative campaign to revise Ohio law on compensating people who were wrongfully convicted and currently advocates for new legislation that requires law enforcement agents to record custodial interrogations of people charged with major felonies. Pierce leads policy development focusing on the needs of exonerees and their families and inclusive outreach to people at risk for wrongful conviction. In addition, he creates educational programs about wrongful convictions for community, professional, and student-based education initiatives about wrongful convictions. For inquiries on any community or campus based education please email him at ree...@ucmail.uc.edu .

After graduating from Northeastern University School of Law, Pierce completed a graduate fellowship funded by the Echoing Green Foundation, performing policy and litigation work related to privacy and HIV/AIDS. He was honored for outstanding legal advocacy by the Multicultural AIDS Coalition in Boston.

After his fellowship, Reed worked in two Boston firms practicing appellate, product liability, employment, and insurance law before becoming a career law clerk to former United States Magistrate Judge Joyce London Alexander Ford, one of the first African-American women to serve in the federal judiciary.

When litigation arises, Reed is a thoughtful and strategic advocate for his clients, helping them achieve resolution consistent with their goals and the risks presented. Clients value his willingness and ability to view the matters from both sides and give clear-eyed assessments of risks and opportunities. He represents employers in collective and class action litigation and other complex litigation matters. He also represents employers in single-plaintiff employment litigation and administrative proceedings, and provides advice on employment practices, including through policy audits and advice on statistical analyses.

Reed is a regular author and speaker on labor and employment issues and serves as the regional practice coordinator for the firm's labor and employment practice. In addition, he is a former major in the Army National Guard and a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

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