Lou Reed's Street Hassle

oops, forgot to nuke the Rock and Roll Diary review. oh well...

The Cello riff on this is just increadible,

yes, bur is it edible?

I dunno, for all the bookishness and the "thought and expression", howcome the Lou I like best is the "I love you susanne" stuff?

Lou likes pop music too.

well, '50s/'60s-style pop music, anyhow.

I dunno, for all the bookishness and the "thought and expression", howcome the Lou I like best is the "I love you susanne" stuff?

...which is why New Sensations is my favorite solo album, terrible production and all.

ideological heterosexuality

haha

yeah, that line jumped out at me, too. christgau can be a funny dude. i may be in the minority, but i think that "Blue Mask" is maybe slightly overrated? I like it, and the band is obviously pretty awesome. But I'm not nuts about the JFK song or "The Heroine" ... The highs are pretty high -- but I think that Quine is my favorite thing about it. His solo on "Waves of Fear" is off the hook. mentioned above, but it would be really interesting to hear rough mixes of the Legendary Hearts album with Quine more prominent. Great story in the Lou bio about Robert smashing his cassette of that album to bits with a hammer. More awesome Quine-age on that "Live In Italy" import ...

The instrumental interplay in the first 45 seconds of "My House" is my favorite solo Lou moment.

Wow, dude did "Caroline Says" on Letterman last night.

Shakey, have you tried the "Rock and Roll Heart" (1976) album yet? I tried that one last night and I think I like it more than even the Coney Island Baby album! Surpisingly consistently great.

http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:emPkzwTRLC63UM:http://ak.buy.com/db_assets/large_images/536/203051536.jpg

I dig Rock & Roll Heart but I'm not really into Coney Island Baby. Street Hassle is up there with the early 70s albums for me though

No shiiiit, what it is!

Probably my favorite Lou solo record, when I heard the news that he died, this was was the record that I reached for

It sounds so weird, so 1977

Now I'm pissed I don't have this on my iPod I want to listen to it right now

Was just listening to "Leave Me Alone", what other major artist would dare to be that bracingly moronic? Perhaps Neil Young ("Got mashed potatoes/ Ain't got no T-Bone"). And three chords? Lou only needs one and a half!

The title track was the song I went to when he died too.

I love how start of this album is like MST3K taking on "Loaded".

The Springsteen part of Street Hassle is so odd. It sounds like Bruce is doing an Elvis impersonation.

Haha I read this thread again and I'd forgotten I'd ever listened to Raven, much less liked it?

i've been tempted to listen to the raven again - there is some good stuff lurking in there.

nearly put broadway song on my ballot

didn't put street hassle on iirc

I did not know this:

Binaural recording

The recording of Street Hassle was notable in that Reed and his co-producer chose to employ an experimental microphone placement technique called binaural recording.[1] In binaural recording, two microphones are placed in the studio in an attempt to mimic the stereo sound of actually being in the room with the performers/instruments. In the case of the recording sessions and concerts that composed Street Hassle, engineers used a mannequin head with a microphone implanted in each ear. Binaural recordings are generally only effective when the user listens to the album through headphones, and do not generally translate correctly through stereo speakers.
Dummy head being used for binaural recording, similar to the setup used for Street Hassle

Reed's particular binaural recording system was developed by Manfred Schunke of the German company Delta Acoustics; Schunke is credited as an engineer on Street Hassle. Lou Reed would continue to use the binaural recording style on two more releases: the 1978 concert album Live: Take No Prisoners and the 1979 studio album The Bells.

Same system was used on a few Krautrock albums. But it helps to explain why it's such an odd sounding record through speakers.

I for one am grateful that the binaural system was used in the recording of Take No Prisoners for it allowed me to hear the carping about John Rockwell in the one ear whilst listening to the kvetching about Xgau in the other.

Same system was used on a few Krautrock albums.

I think it's used on Can's "Flow Motion", which is a lot easier on the old earholes than "Street Hassle"

(xp) Yah!

*ear splitting feedback*

Lou: "Isn't that annoying"

*more ear splitting feedback*

Yes, even more annoying, Lou, thanks to the binaural recording system developed by Manfred Schunke of the German company Delta Acoustics

Don't know if it's necessarily the binaural process, but Take No Prisoners is a really good sounding live record.

i've said it before, but c'mon they should be putting out an expanded box set of those shows, like miles' live at the plugged nickel or something.

Do we know if Bruce wrote his spiel or if Lou did or it was something they worked out together? I seem to recall reading something that the recording of it was a kind of a spur of the moment thing...

lou wrote it and said he was having trouble delivering it -- I guess bruce just happened to be in the studio at the time? in that WPIX broadcast lou claims some reviewer thought it was just lou doing a terrible bruce impression.

(which seems crazy, but i guess broooce isn't credited in the liners)

IIRC, Lou was working down the hall from where Springsteen was finishing up DOTEOT, and asked him if he'd do the lines, which already included the wink to "Born To Run".

So the "tramps like us" line was in there before Bruce agreed to record it? I assumed that line was written just for him!

I really like this album, but like Bowie's "Heroes", when there's one song that's clearly the centerpiece of the album, it comes across as "Street Hassle" and "songs that aren't Street Hassle and are less important than Street Hassle" and the rest of the album suffers as a result.

x-post From the '89 Rolling Stone interview:

DF: Bruce Springsteen.

LR: I like him in concert. He's a great live performer. What I really like is the little skits with Clarence and everything, these great spoken introductions.

DF: How did he come to recite those lines on "Street Hassle"?

LR: Because if I'd done them, they'd have come out funny. And when he did it, it sounded real. He was at the same studio, the Record Plant. It wasn't making it with me doing it So the engineer said, "Why don't you ask Bruce to do it? He could really do that" So we asked Bruce to do it, and he rewrote it a little.

DF: The ending of his passage is a clever take-off on "Born to Run" – "There are tramps like us/Who were born to pay." Was that his contribution?

LR: No, that was mine. It had been written with him in mind, but he wasn't there. I was just playing off the title.

Thanks for the info, its a curious little thing that's always fascinated me. I really can't imagine Lou saying those lines.

I did have this realization a little while ago, in part based on that long, chooglin boot vers of "Waiting for the Man" that Tyler posted awhile back, that this era of Lou (76-78) to me it is almost like a bizarro world vers of the E Street Band, w, the horns & back-up singers, et al

totally -- even though they'd both deny the influence, it is curious that post-born to run, both lou and dylan suddenly had sax players in their bands.

OTM, the E-Street Band influence seems fairly transparent on "Take No Prisoners".

Actually Bruce is exactly the kind of artist Lou would like, he's such a throw back to "classic rock'n'roll" ,obviously with sort of grand pretentions lyrically/musically but working within that structure.

kinda think garland jeffreys is the nexus of brooooce/looooou
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RzBZsOeqOQ

Ha, exactly.

speaking of garland, i posted this pic of lou & him at syracuse on twitter, and jeffreys himself popped up to ask where I'd found it! amazing photo:
http://s23.postimg.org/ncakla397/Lou_Reed_Garland_jeffries_at_Syracuse_1962_196.jpg

twee

title track came up on my spotify discover playlist and, not having looked, I thought it was some schmindie post rock thing until the vocals came in.

suggestbanflagpost

but seriously, who sounds like "street hassle" these days?

These people in the US, binaural sound never really caught on, whereas in Japan you can't even get on the Tokyo subway without bumping into someone with a binaural headset.

I had the same experience as someone above, who knew this song previously via Spacemen 3. Without getting into who recorded what exactly when, the two "versions" are almost exactly a decade apart. Which surprised me, as Spacemen 3 always gave the impression that they were mining ancient history. I guess there's some weird nexus of Lou, Bruce, and Suicide that ends up turning into an indie influence a decade later.