Lou Reed – New York

I've had an on again off again relationship with Lou Reed for a very long time now ... embarrassed that this great artist once thought he should become a parody of David Bowie, became too cool, or too arrogant to even speak with, and put out much too much music that sounded like he was trying much too hard. Never the less, there was never one album that didn't possess a song or two of sheer brilliance, so when I stumbled on this cassette for a quarter, I snatched it up, figuring that I had nothing to lose.

To my surprise, I found New York to be a jaunty sounding album, filled with laid-back rock, a taste of jazz, a spattering of blues, and it's all wrapped around a steady rolling backbeat accompanied by Lou's lyrical wisdom. But don't take New York on face value, Lou's spinning on about the seamy underbelly ... more apply he's creating an apocalyptic vision of New York City that could easily be mistaken for Calcutta, or any one of a dozen cities on the Thailand coast, riddled with political corruption, welfare hotels, drugs, racial violence, AIDS, child abuse, elder abuse, crack, and the homeless; causing one to wonder how people can live with so much wealth among so must strife and lack of the simple necessities.

The album goes on for nearly an hour, yet seems far shorter with his fiery poetic journalistic sense of justice that's sustained and spurred on by a dynamic four piece band that at times are nothing short of ferocious with sonic fuzzed guitars ... yet manages to do so without walking over your face. It seems that times have changed for Mr. Reed, as it does for all of us as we age, where this electric animal of excess and romantic squalor no longer finds strength in drug soaked scenarios and indulgences that lunged him on during the 70's, and now haunt him. What Lou has managed to do is to put aside the detachment that devastated all of us during the Ronald Reagan years, realizing that if we don't take care of each other, then no one will. And therein lies the beauty of New York, it's an elegant resounding prophetic statement saying that he's heard the wakeup call, and with a sonic distillation for the streets, embraces all that New York is and should be, if we would simply take a collective look around.

And to that end, Reed creates a dynamic sound that carries this weight like a feather on the wind, without force, pulling back the blinds on the last great dirty hidden secret of our time ... social class.