I get a new turntable and dust off some old records. Vinyl Tap #46:
Walk on the wild side all you want “but remember that the city is a funny place / Something / like a circus or a sewer / And just remember different people have peculiar tastes…” - and complex artists in contemplation have wide-ranging emotions from which to draw and record. I’m just not sure I ever want to meet the Muse of Metal Machine Music, though.
For the most part, Lou Reed’s glorious 1976 masterwork Coney Island Baby is reflective of his more warmly accessible albums such as his 1972 self-titled solo debut or 1984’s New Sensations. I gravitate to this pop-transformer side of Reed as much as I appreciate his career-spanning hit-and-miss adventurousness and the experimental and audacious streak that distinguishes such works as the raw, stripped-downed proto-punk Street Hassle from 1978, 1982’s provocative The Blue Mask, or the pointed commentary permeating 1989’s New York.
By comparison, Coney Island Baby hits us with a flower as Reed kicks it all off with the floating-on-air “Crazy Feeling,” sounding pretty giddy and gaga in love. After all, “You’re the kind of person that I’ve been dreaming of / You’re the kind of person that I always wanted to love.” Elsewhere, the low-key “A Gift” — in which an inimitably deadpan Reed casually reiterates that “I’m just a gift to the women of this world” — is a sardonic hoot.
If those ladies, they rolled their eyes, maybe it helps to read between the lines: “She’s my best friend / Certainly not just like your average dog or car,” an understating Reed sings in “She’s My Best Friend.” If there’s any question about unspoken sincerity, however — any doubt that “She understands me when I’m feeling… down” — the clincher is in the overarching majesty of the music, the crescendoing of guitar, just like he 's ringing a bell, that sonically and inspiringly stresses the ultimate faith and earnest hope: “if you want to feel, yeah, feel me / Why don’t you just turn around / And by the window where the light is…”
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