Lou Reed, the so-called godfather of punk, whose embryonic sounds of that genre and combinations of avant-garde dirty rock and roll helped propel him to become a legendary artist by way of The Velvet Underground and his own solo projects, has died at the age of 71, according to Rolling Stone. The cause of death is unknown at this time, but Reed had undergone a liver transplant back in May [see Update below].

For the Brooklyn-born Reed, it ends a life that was labyrinthine, filled with color and mayhem, sadness, poetry, tender regret, and razor sharp aggression. Reed took early rock and roll and doo wop, and mixed it with the sounds and styles of the mid 1960s, the Andy Warhol New York City which was crystallized by way of illicit drugs, adventurous sexuality and exploring themes, and going to places unknown; not even The Beatles tread to some of the naked, raw narratives that Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground went to in their songwriting.

Transformer, one of the most popular and adventurous records by Lou Reed the oft-titled “Godfather of Punk,” is now available on MP3 format from Amazon this month for only $5.

Celebrating its 40th Anniversary in November of this year, Transformer surprised everyone by actually bringing Lou Reed into the mainstream of sorts when released. The album hit the Top 40 and almost made the sounds and styles on this record, homosexuality, androgyny, fucked up relationships, decadence and early gothy art, household words. Produced by David Bowie and the late, great Mick Ronson, who sizzles on guitar on Transformer, Lou takes his best playbook from his Velvet Underground days and spills a wild musical ride all over his canvas here. From the catty “Vicious” to the waxing about Andy Warhol on “Andy’s Chest,” the sneering and sarcastically droning yet dripped in a kind of Christopher Isherwood Berlin style “New York Telephone Conversation,” to the well known and powerful dare one say ballad “Satellite of Love” and of course, the top 20 hit road map for the aforementioned styles and lifestyles, “Walk on the Wild Side,” Transformer is a fun ride of many musical sounds and sonic metaphors for that early glam/punk/attitudinal styles that were such a part of living in a certain kind of Max’s Kansas City-esque New York City in the early 1970s.

Browse all 1,000 albums on sale this month for only $5 each.

The Social Blend podcast has released its regular year-end special, The Best of 2011. The episode is a collection of some of the memorable and funniest moments from shows through the year.

2011 was a bit of a challenging year for Social Blend. We’d traditionally followed content at Mixx.com for our show nucleus; but the beginning of the year saw the announcement they were closing down their classic site as they’d been acquired by UberMedia. From there, we created our own social news site, MixxingBowl.com; while the Mixx guys moved on to establish Chime.in.

Last month, the song “The View” from Lulu, the upcoming Lou Reed and Metallica collaboration album, was released.

Now, you can listen to the entire album online for free, as it’s currently streaming at the official site.

The View is already available for purchase through online music retailers, while the full album Lulu comes out on November 1, 2011 in North America (on October 31, 2011 worldwide).

The MP3 album deal of the day over at Amazon today is Note of Hope – A Celebration of Woody Guthrie, a brand-new, all-star tribute to the folk singer, for only $3.99.

This is an Amazon exclusive version being released one day early and includes two extra tracks (14 songs in all) as well as the digital booklet. Songs performed by Jackson Browne, Lou Reed, Tom Morello, Ani DiFranco, and many more.