Lou Reed's Street Hassle

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.

Suicide also only a decade removed from S3

As was this album. In the 80s I had the impression (without thinking about it too much) that the sources of Spacemen 3 were much further removed. Anyway, I can definitely see the indie aspect of this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnGSWbISSLs

Never saw this before, Fat Lou ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Rm9rCdF-jU

Shouldn't have a Street Hassle thread without this (used to be a non-Movie Clips clip on YouTube):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VKpd3XEbD8

I'm positive the title song turned up in another movie after that.

Up The Academy before that (I had to google). Jesus, Up The Academy has a crazy soundtrack. I was too young to see it, but was aware that it existed.

What movie had him sing a tune called "Little Sister" again?

"Get Crazy"

(song is "My Baby Sister", played over the closing credits)

I've never actually seen it, it sounds amusingly bad

What's with the album cover

I've never actually seen it, it sounds amusingly bad

I think the song is really called "Little Sister," confusingly so, despite what IMDB says. Wonder if he and Doc Pomus ever discussed this? It is all coming back to me now. Malcolm McDowell was very proud of his performance in this.

given Lou's enthusiasm for binaural recording it's funny how shitty this album sounds (title track excepted)

Well he's also into expensive gimmicky high tech guitars and we know how those sound when he plays them.

yeah, it's weird -- most of it is live recordings w/ overdubs, right? then again, take no prisoners sounds great.

Throbbing Gristle were well into binaural recording about the same time, so, you know, we're not exactly talking Steely Dan here.

super-sloppy performances aside (and there are several of them on this) it's just funny how he used this *revolutionary recording technology* to make a bunch of apparently random and poor production choices. like if the virtues of binaural recording is that it replicates the experience of the listener being in the room with the band, the album decidedly does *not* sound like that given how things are mixed, punched in and out, etc.

this shit looks like it should be the cover of a peter gabriel album or something
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Dummyhead.jpg

This was the Manfred Whatsisname Artifical Head Recording thingummabob? Curiously, "Flowmotion" by Can used it too.

Manfred Schunke.

but yeah, i'm sure if you asked lou for his top 5 favorite recordings, 4 of them would be one-mic doo wop songs. state of the art.

This record sounds amazing you MONSTERS

haha, i mean, i love this record, but it is kind of bizarrely produced