Lou Reed Solo

HI DERE

Trying to work out the kinks in my screenname. Sorry it took a while.

We saw your Cowboys on TV today
They never let Philadelphia have the ball for a minute

You ought to give other people just a little channce

Hmmm: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/may/20/lou-reed-walk-wild-side-transphobic-lyrics-canada

Discussed here: The Coddling Of The American Mind (Trigger Warning Article In The Atlantic...)

Worth noting that the student group seems to have deleted the original post pretty quickly so this is probably all over nothing much. Possibly, they thought about the lyrics, saw a potential issue, apologized, realized the initial reaction was ott, and moved on.

Interestingly, this column in the trashy right-wing Sun tabloid is the only coverage I see of this in Canadian media, while the mainstream UK press and American conservative blogs seem to have run with it

Oh, I missed it, thanks.

getting into sally can't dance for the first time. lol @ how comprehensively sleazy this thing sounds, lou barely singing above a whisper, everything seemingly half-assed and gross and swaggering at the same time. and then it gets abruptly devastating on the second side with "kill your sons" and "ennui" and "billy"

i can see why ppl thought this album was trash but i find its loucheness alluring

I love that louche Lou mode

Sit yourself down, take off your pants, don't you know this is a party?

"N.Y. Stars" reminds me of the stuff Amon Düül II was recording around that same time...

Lou was v aware of the deep irony of such a lazy half-assed record that generally smothers him also turned out to be his best-seller. These days the only tracks I return to from it are the title track and the aforementioned "Ennui" and "Billy". "Kill Your Sons" I just don't really like the sound of.

The title track is on that "Walk on the Wild Side: The Best of Lou Reed" collection (one of the first tapes I owned as a kid)... I remember loudly singing the bridge lyrics in the middle-school football team locker room, and other kids being like "wtf"

"Walk on the Wild Side: The Best of Lou Reed" collection (one of the first tapes I owned as a kid)

yup me too. lou solo stuff was only intermittently available to high school me. I did fortuitously stumble on an LP copy of Coney Island Baby, which I still have.

"Animal Language" is garbage, "NY Stars" isn't much better and on most of the tracks Lou sounds like he's gargling Largactyls but I like it nonetheless.

Someday I would love to go through all the Lou albums and make my own personal "best-of" playlist... I've never really been satisfied with existing collections.

I've done that

pretty sure Alfred has too haha

we could poll all the albums individually...

I think I still have the solo VU poll results if we wanted to just isolate Lou's tracks

ah here we are. ILM's favorite Lou songs, in order of placement

Satellite of Love
Coney Island Baby
Street Hassle
Perfect Day
Walk on the Wild Side
Vicious
Waves of Fear
Metal Machine Music
Andy's Chest
Style It Takes
The Blue Mask
Kicks
Romeo Had Juliette
I Love You, Suzanne
Halloween Parade
Crazy Feeling
New York Telephone Conversation
She's My Best Friend
Egg Cream
Men of Good Fortune
Dirty Blvd.
Reed the bed
Metallica Junior Dad
The Kids
My House
Underneath the Bottle
Open House
Sad Song
Hangin' Round
Legendary Hearts
Nobody But You
Brandenburg Gate
Charley's Girl
Make Up
Women
Hello It's Me
What's Good
The Last Shot
Smalltown
Wild Child
Big Sky
The Bells
A Gift
Caroline Says II
New Sensations
Set The Twilight Reeling
I Wanna Be Black
I Want to Boogie With You
Families
The Gun

if you just take the top 12 that's a pretty awesome "greatest hits"

Andy's Chest is awfully high.

^ posts taken out of context.

lol (also, "I Love You, Suzanne" is awfully high...)

what's wrong with that
I'd like to know

sorry about the missed edits in the list

Reed the Bed

I came up with these last year.

I wanna hooky wooky with you! I am also partial to "looking for love" and several tunes from the bells…was it somewhere on ILM that somebody was talking about they can't take fretless? Saunders forever! Quine/Saunders/Maher is one of my favorite bands ever; live in Italy is terrific…

was it somewhere on ILM that somebody was talking about they can't take fretless?

*raises hand*

my tolerance of this sound is... limited. Mostly to XTC records lol

Fernando Saunders taught me to love it in limited quantities, like frosting.

Same here, I enjoy his playing on those records.

Chalk me up as another who has little time for the whale song of the fretless.

Generally have no time for them but I like Fernando's playing - would prefer him on a fretted bass though.

Let us do what you fear most
that from which you recoil

"that from which" in a pop song: is this the only instance! I love its formality, for underlining the seriousness of the sentiments being expressed.

or to make it rhyme

MOVE ALONG

and ignore those that lou wronged 🎶

I don’t think he’s trying to force a rhyme there? I agree w/Euler about that line...

the bells is a fucking awesome album

is it weird to find "i want to boogie with you" really beautiful

also some version of spiritualized was hatched out of that song

I love plenty of purportedly unloveable lou e.g. "sally" but the bells is dire

some of the nils longfren cowrites do sound written an octave outside of lou's range

but idk it strikes me as rock and roll heart merged with street hassle, which i'm into, lou having a blast with horns in every fluctuating foot of stereo space. the second side is all really good especially "families" and the title track

Used to be down on The Bells and think stuff on it like “Disco Mystic” was ridiculous, but now I think maybe it is ridiculously great. Seem to remember on one of the WPIX shows, maybe not one that resurfaced, that Lou was asked if it was a negation or everything he had ever done and he said “it’s a CONTINUATION of everything I’ve ever done.”

"lou's range"

Literally laughing out loud right now.

I’m laughing on the inside.

Agree that The Bells splits the difference between a couple of different other Lou albums. It sounds like if he had decided to sing more songs on Take No Prisoners than just “Coney Island Baby.”

I love plenty of purportedly unloveable lou e.g. "sally" but the bells is dire

― she carries a torch. two torches, actually (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi),

"Looking for Love" though. And "Families."

just speaking for myself "Families" is one of the worst songs I've ever heard by anybody so we're gonna have to agree to disagree here

lol