Lou Reed's New York appreciation thread

Halloween Parade gives me chills

 

One of his best and one of my favorites--and, unfortunately, as relevant today as it was when it was released.

 

There are more, but it has been a while, and they are what came to mind. It is a very emotive album considering it is essentially Lou talking over some guitar chords

 

Absolutely my favorite Lou Reed's album!

 

Love both these records, although Magic and Loss is special to me because of some things that happened to me a while ago. 'Twilight' has one of the best guitar sounds I've ever heard, like liquid metal boiling.

Strangly enough, I catch myself singing 'Images' from 'Songs...' regularly!

 

Absolutely fantastic record. You know how you get a song stuck in your head? Sometimes I get all of New York in mine. Brilliant lyrics and as others have pointed out, 30 years on still relevant to the world we're currently living in. Halloween Parade has to be one of the saddest songs I've ever heard. This was really a golden era for Lou. I love Songs for Drella and Magic and Loss as well. The Raven was also excellent.

1989 was a great year for singer-songwriters making important records:

Lou Reed-New York
Dylan-Oh Mercy
John Mellencamp-Big Daddy
Neil Young-Freedom
James McMurtry-debut

And Lou's old pal and producer David Bowie put out Tin Machine.

 

here is the legendary drag queen speed dealer rotten rita mentioned in the song





heres a funny/terrifying story lou wrote about him in 2000 (from ny times) I copied the whole thing
(rita was presumed dead for years but turns out he passed in 2010...according to wiki)

my first year in ny
When I moved into my first New York apartment, my uncle gave me a cot and a folding chair. I had been working as a copy editor for a divorce lawyer for two weeks to build up rent money. With $200 in my pocket, I quit and got the apartment ($45 a month) with a friend. It was one room with a bathtub. The bathroom was in the hall and unusable. We took electricity from the hall lighting fixture. There was no heat, but there was a window that overlooked the street three floors below.

Much of my income came from selling envelopes of sugar to girls I met at clubs, claiming it was heroin. This led to hours of feigned stonedness with those more gullible than I, watching carefully to make sure they didn't OD on sweets. What happened to the original drugs is another story.

I slept in a used Navy peacoat and did what laundry I had at a dealer's house on East Sixth Street, until a jealous lover shot my friend's leg off with a shotgun blast through the door. This caused some consternation in our crowd, and eventually eight of us banded together and moved en masse to a new apartment on Grand Street. There I slept on a small cut-up mattress that rested on the floor. It made me nervous because we had rats and I worried about being bit. At this point the Velvet Underground had sprung into being. The junkies who lived below us honored our first job by robbing the entire band of everything that was not with us at the gig.

The next apartment was on East 10th Street. This was a real apartment, $65 a month. It had a bathroom. I made the mistake of letting Ondine stay there once when I was out of town and returned to find the apartment flooded with water and a comatose body in the bathtub. Jimmy Smith had taken all my belongings. Rotten Rita had carved a poem on the front door, which hung off its hinges. The amphetamine elves had Magic Markered the walls, and the landlord had left the notice of eviction Scotch taped to the working stove. I still had my guitar and my peacoat and my B.A. in English.


pps mary woronov wrote an amazing book about her days with Warhol and vu worth tracking down

 

New York is a great album, love those lyrics too! I mean, there's so much detail to the imagery.

My latest Lou Reed addiction is Ecstasy! Simply amazing, can't stop listening.

 

Has anybody heard any news as to when or if there will be a re-release on vinyl of New York?

 

Only Laurie Anderson knows the answer to your question.


All I'm asking for is a deluxe edition release of the original New York album: 5.1. sound...demos...live set (DVD, not the Canadian gig that's on VHS. The Palace Theater concert in Columbus, Ohio, March 1989 --- which Lou & co. filmed --- was far superior).


Thank you sooo very moooch, Laurie !!!!! ♥

 

Can't think of another album that deserves more of a deluxe edition than New York, at this time. Would love demos if they're available but a complete NY show would be welcomed whether audio or video or both.

 

The Montreal show that was partially released on video is available in full on the wolfgang concert vault site. Says it can be bought for $5 but I've never actually tried that. I assume it's mp3.

Lou Reed - Aug 13, 1989 Late

 

One of the great rock and roll records of all-time. I lived in New York at the time (actually, 87-05) and fell in love with it immediately. I also saw him play the album, at the St. James Theater on Broadway, March 20, 1989. I agree with the person above, who still got chills from Halloween Parade, though I get teary. All through the album, I get that way, both because of his lyrics (and the dark humor) and the beauty of the music.

The record begins with one of Lou's absolute greatest songs: Romeo Had Juliette

It grabs you from the start, both the gut-simple riff and the words:

Caught between the twisted stars the plotted lines the faulty map
That brought Columbus to New York

And little bits of perfect poetry: "those Italians need a lesson to be taught"

And the closing is brilliant:

I'll take Manhattan in a garbage bag
With Latin written on it that says "It's hard to give a **** these days"
Manhattan's sinking like a rock, into the filthy Hudson, what a shock
They wrote a book about it, said it was like ancient Rome
The perfume burned his eyes, holding tightly to her thighs
And something flickered for a minute and then it vanished and was gone ...

 

Yeah, easily one of his best songs, and that opening triple shot of "Romeo.."/"Halloween Parade"/"Dirty Blvd" (with Dion!) is amazing. I love the sound of the thing, thick as New York City air on a hot, humid day.

 

I always thought the specter of AIDS hangs over this album, and not just on "Halloween Parade". The anger, the frustration, the f**k it New York swagger, the hope for a second chance, the elegiac feeling of some of the songs, regardless what they're about, it's just there.

 

Totally disagree. "The Blue Mask", "Legendary Hearts" and "New Sensations" are Lou at his best. Easily my three favorite.

 

As far as his 80's run of albums goes, you can also put Growing Up In Public on that list, although I know most fans will disagree with me about that one. Also, Songs For Drella was pretty much complete in January of 1989 when Lou and John Cale performed it at St. Anne's. Hell of a run for that decade.

 

I wasn't referring to The Blue Mask......it was more aimed at New Sensations and Mistrial......both leave me cold....now but not at the time when I loved The Original Wrapper----that was my intro back then actually.

 

Understood, and I agree regarding "Mistrial". I absolutely love "New Sensations", however.

 

..... some good stuff in there for sure; keep away, my old man, I love the 'dont give a f***' cover, but its inbetween the bells/the blue mask so it kind of pales....

 

I love all three, and Growing Up... is kind of a personal favorite, but you're right, objectively it's just not up to the level of those two albums.

 

The song The Blue Mask is as good as it gets, imo......it sounds honest. But the New York album as a whole may be his best counting the Velvets.

 

"New Sensations" is a favourite mine.

 

Totally. Plus all the social and political crap that was going on at that time, Howard Beach, Tompkins Square Park, the people murdered by police a few years earlier (Michael Stewart, Eleanor Bumpurs), Jesse Jackson running for president in '88, New York oddities like Morton Downey ... none of it seems outdated to me at all. maybe because the problems are still with us. ... And again, that wry, biting, dark humor ...

Americans don't care too much for beauty
They'll **** in a river, dump battery acid in a stream
They'll watch dead rats wash up on the beach
And complain if they can't swim

 

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Happy Birthday Lou!