Lou Reed Rca

In 1972, Lou Reed was a minor cult hero to a handful of rock critics and left-of-center music fans who championed his former band, the Velvet Underground, but he was unknown to the mainstream music audience. By 1986, Reed was a rock & roll icon, widely hailed as a master songwriter and one of the founding fathers of punk, glam, noise rock, and any number of other vital rock subgenres; he even scored a few hits along the way. If you want to know what happened during those 14 years to make such a difference, the answer can be found in The RCA & Arista Album Collection, a 17-disc box set that brings together nearly all of Reed's recorded work from this period…

In October 1990, Lou Reed interviewed Vaclav Havel, playwright, poet, president of the newly emancipated Czechoslovakia, and – surprisingly? – a Velvet Underground fan. During the course of their conversation, Havel handed Reed a book. "These are your lyrics, hand-printed and translated into Czechoslovakian. There were only 200 of them. They were very dangerous to have. People went to jail." Nobody will go to jail for owning Between Thought and Expression, but Reed's lyrics remain dangerous – not, as in Communist Czechoslovakia, for what they are, but for what they say…

Live At Alice Tully Hall - January 27, 1973 - 2nd Show captures Lou Reed’s New York City live debut as a solo artist, at the Lincoln Center venue during his Transformer tour. He was backed by The Tots, a tight, funky, twin-guitar combo whose gritty bar-band approach offered an energized accompaniment to Reed’s material, whether that was the Velvets (“Heroin,” “Sweet Jane”) or songs from his first two solo albums, Walk On The Wild Side and Vicious. Mixed from the original multi-track tapes by Matt Ross-Spring, these fourteen live tracks are available for the first time, released first on RSD Black Friday on two LPs pressed on burgundy vinyl and packaged with a new essay by Ed McCormack, rare pictures and memorabilia.

Lou Reed - Different Times, Lou Reed In The '70s (1996) {RCA 66864-2}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 432 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 183 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 20 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1970's, 1996 RCA Records / BMG | 66864-2
Rock / Rock & Roll / Psychedelic Rock / Art Rock

Lou Reed is very much an album-oriented artist, and those who think they may develop a serious interest in his work are better advised to seek individual titles than compilations. If you just want some of his best songs around the house, though, this is a well-chosen, economic 17-track survey of his best material from his best period as a solo act (the early to mid-'70s). Drawing most heavily from the Transformer and Berlin albums, this has his most famous/notorious early solo works ("Walk on the Wild Side," "Vicious," "Satellite of Love," "Caroline Says"), some inferior but notably different remakes of songs he recorded with the Velvet Underground ("Lisa Says," "I Can't Stand It," "Sweet Jane"), and other high points like "Kill Your Sons" and "Coney Island Baby.

Walk on the Wild Side: The Best of Lou Reed was the standard record company "hits" compilation surveying Reed's five-year, eight-album sojourn at RCA from 1972 to 1976. Its 11 songs included two from Lou Reed, three from Transformer (among them, of course, this album's title track, Reed's sole chart hit), one from Berlin, two from Rock N Roll Animal (one of which is "Sweet Jane" minus the introductory fanfare), and the title tracks from Sally Can't Dance and Coney Island Baby, plus the previously non-LP B-side "Nowhere at All." It was a bulletproof selection, as unimaginative as it was dependable, which oddly was why it worked so well. Reed's solo career had seen some extreme tangents, and this album caught them, from the Dylan-ish "Wild Child" to the glam pop of the Transformer material…

In 1974, after the commercial disaster of his album Berlin, Lou Reed needed a hit, and Rock N' Roll Animal was a rare display of commercial acumen on his part, just the right album at just the right time. Recorded in concert with Reed's crack road band at the peak of their form, Rock N' Roll Animal offered a set of his most anthemic songs (most dating from his days with the Velvet Underground) in arrangements that presented his lean, effective melodies and street-level lyrics in their most user-friendly form (or at least as user friendly as an album with a song called "Heroin" can get).

On July 3rd, 1973, David Bowie retired Ziggy Stardust, his most famous alter-ego, in front of 5000 stunned fans at London’s Hammersmith Odeon. Now, the fully restored film and soundtrack will be released for the first time for the 50th anniversary of the show. Renowned filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker (Monterey Pop, Bob Dylan - Don’t Look Back, Depeche Mode - 101) captured the momentous event by filming Bowie and The Spiders From Mars backstage and onstage. The digital 4K restoration of the new version of the film has been overseen by his son, Frazer Pennebaker with remastered audio.