TS: 1970's Lou Reed vs 1980's Lou Reed

No contest. Lou in the 80s.

Another great song from New Sensation: Doing The Things That We Want To

It was all downhill after New Sensations. Tasteful guitar licks and topical lyrics are not what I want from Lou, anyway.

I couldn't make a best-of compilation from the 80s that could touch Berlin, Coney Island Baby, Street Hassle, the Bells, or even Transformer (which I agree is overrated, though not nearly as overrated as the Blue Mask).

(But you gave an interesting description of the '80s albs, so I should search them down and give a relisten one of these days.)

Their over-familiar because they're great songs that have been played to death BECAUSE their great songs. Tonight, someone who is a pretty big Lou Reed fan had never heard "Street Hassle," and I actually had to think for a while to tell him which album it was on (had it going from Between Thought and Expression). There is a good reason why the 80s albums are forgotten on the whole: their uneven and usually not worth the time. Isn't New York Lou Reed's best 80s album? And how does that compare w/ the 70s output? OTM whoever said that any 80s Lour Reed mix couldn't touch a handful of 70s Lou Reed albums.

Good pick, though. Way to keep us honest.
i

So, umm, yeah. The Blue Mask is good, but Transformer is about a million times better - that the WOTWS bassline has been played to death doesn't diminish "Vicious," "Satellite of Love," etc.

Wow. I though I'd get more endorsements for the '80s stuff. This is shocking. Every one of the songs Suzy mentioned is great but I'll agree with Lester Bangs that a lot of them need better homes than the albums on which you'll find them.

also, "legendary hearts/tearing us apart" is perhaps the worst opening couplet in the history of song

"Bottoming Out" however is fabulous I must admit

The only Lou album which bores me to death is Magic & Loss.

The Bells has some wonderful songs. I offer: "Families," "Looking For Love," (great guitar work from Lou on that one) and the title song.

Still, I think that the best Lou Reed record ever is "New Sensations." Most humane, catchiest, clearest. I don't mind some of "Blue Mask" or that one that had "Don't Talk to Me about Work." After "Sensations" I lose interest totally. I got a copy of "The Raven" for my birthday a couple years ago, and I do listen to it--good comedy record. Because I never expected anything but cheap fun from Lou to begin with after those Velvets albums. And I like his one guitar riff he owns, too.

OTM!!!!!!!

OTM.

Fernando Saunders and his fretless bass!

I'm a fretless bass player and have heard my share of the instrument, and I will say that Fernando's playing on these three albums is some of the best that you'll hear in a rock setting. He manages to take simple strong structures and apply bass lines to them that are interesting and tasteful, as well as upfront in the mix, and super funky! He's got a great tone too.

Lovers or haters of those albums, listen again for the bass. You don't find that kind of playing in music anymore, unfortunately. I'd put him up there with Percy Jones, Mick Karn, and Pino.

Hating fretless bass = no soul.

The only other improv-originating patronise-the-workers music kollektive from the '70s I remember is Redbrass, which was basically the Mike Westbrook band without Westbrook but with young Annie Lennox on vocals.

Reviews of Legendary Hearts and New Sensations. Jess underrates the latter, methinks.

dunno, that review pretty much fits in with my view of those records. I do find it interesting that you (and a few others in this thread) are such New Sensations boosters, Alfred -- i need to revisit it, I guess. I always preferred Legendary Hearts and Blue Mask (and maybe even Mistrial!) to it ... Was always curious to hear the original, more Quine-centric mix of Legendary Hearts -- apparently Lou mixed him way down w/o his knowledge.

Was always curious to hear the original, more Quine-centric mix of Legendary Hearts -- apparently Lou mixed him way down w/o his knowledge.

COUGH

(be warned, while his parts are mixed better on this, his playing is more subdued than it is on The Blue Mask)

Funny, I misread this thread as starting in July 2025, not July 2005.

Nothing like being 18 and a smart kid when New York came out, sounding like a live recording, with each band member in the same spot in the mix for the whole album (loved the back-cover liner notes about this too).

whaaaat birdistheword thank you!!!

Awesome!

Will listen later.

Must have said this before but have often found it useful to compare Lou Reed's relationship with Quine to that of Richard Hell.

New Sensations still rules imo

I got my mace and you got your knife
You gotta protect your own life

I have not spent much time with Legendary Hearts apart from “the last shot” which I love immensely.

xps you're welcome!

Strangely, "The Last Shot" (which may be my favorite off the album as well) isn't on that cassette of alternate mixes. The alternate "Home of the Brave" is pretty cool, but I have to repeat the disappointments others have expressed elsewhere - these mixes don't seem that different than what Reed ultimately released.

Aside from the longer "Home of the Brave" that is.

yeah, i heard the alt mix legendary hearts a little while back and wasn't sure what Quine was so upset about when he heard Lou's version ... not like there are a ton of crazy guitar solos on there. but maybe there's *another* alt mix????

Have been listening to 1974 Lou recently and enjoying Sally Can't Dance a fair bit, enjoyment which I think is partly to the dissonance between it being a Lou Reed album yet it sounding like just any old 70s American muso band doing what they would normally do in a studio. Blood, Sweat & Tears sans blood, sweat or tears. Lou's just taking these numbers straight as a singer and letting the professionals crack on with conjuring a shiny R&B sound - like Bowie in the 80s a bit. But then the gravel is surfaced for "Kill Your Sons" which a) is awesome and silver and electrical b) does sound like a forerunner to The Idiot (shoutout to whoever I saw write that years ago because the impression stuck).

Rock 'n' Roll Animal is, err, well it's good for similar 'man slightly out of place' reasons - a Reed album to wow at the solos and jamming like you might an Allman Brothers record.

Yeah, but also I did think that album's version of "Lady Day" was better than Berlin's, which had too much monotone ballast, though he may have been going for "dramatic understatement," Jim Morrison in restraints and sedation. The live version actually gets him to shouting a bit, maybe egged on by the band and/or the occasion.

I still haven't heard all the albums from either decade, but think of The Bells as the cusp, where he brought in his early interest in progressive jazz, combined with VU-based guitar rock, proto-"post-punk," which, as mark s always says, was already a thinglet or several before punk per se as official-beyond-early-Creek-trend: what he saw in "the downtown crowd," as he called them, heading toward him, New Music's Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca already coming toward him, some line-ups of Material too---also he kept trying for that swirly particulate 70s Noo Yawk atmospheric sound--echoes of his own arena rock as well, coz he was headed back there, you could tell---as a hipper Springsteen, if you check some of those pro-shot concerts of the 80s---

I used to love all of it, dunno what I'd think now, except that at the very least it's all a good faith effort, he doesn't sound sedated etc. just to get him(self?) to do it, and what he's going for was timely as hell, still associated with a lot of excited, exciting memories, of this and other music.

early-CREEM-trend, I meant!

Lou Reed and Don Cherry Live - 25.11.1976: Charley´s Girl

Coney Island Baby - Lou Reed & Don Cherry 25-11-76; CIVIC AUDITORIUM, SANTA MONICA

decadent jazzy stuff goes thru sordid rock

Lou Reed - Sister Ray - 11/6/1976 - Capitol Theatre

Gettin really sideways on a rainy day

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tGrxO9LD2s

THE BAND: Lou Reed, Don Cherry, Michael Fonfara, Chuck Hammer, Moose Boles, Stuart Heinrich, Michael Suchorsky, Marty Fogel

Back to the groove, marching etc-band is said to be same as above; a poster adds:

On this track, Don Cherry is playing the dousinguni, which is a low-end African stringed instrument (the first instrument that comes in before the bass and drums and continues jamming throughout the song). Marty Fogel, Lou's 70s sax guy, is playing the repeated soprano sax lick. There are some band intros towards the end of the song that confirm this.

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

Never knew he toured with Cherry!

vintage soto in the op

You're welcome!

Would've killed for a Don Cherry-Lou Reed take on "What Becomes a Legend Most."

i've always been fascinated by this collab, two of my favorite artists of all time but have never been able to access the point at which they overlapped, always seemed to me like the only thing they had in common was a love of heroin. but i will try again with these vids

If I recall correctly, Marty Fogel knew him. He saw Don in an airport and asked him if he wanted to sit in.

Marty Fogel: I’d see Don all the time, and we would say hello. But then one day in 1976, we had just arrived at the Los Angeles airport, just kinda hanging out, waiting for a limousine. And I’m standing by this phone on the wall, and Don Cherry comes walking up to where the phone is. We said hello and started talking, and then he left. Then we were getting ready to go, and I said to Lou, ‘Man, I just ran into Don Cherry out there!’ He says, ‘Go get him! Go get him! I love him!‘”

And then Don sat in with Lou that very night in Santa Monica.

cool. i meant that i have a hard time appreciating the work they made together, but i appreciate this context