Leelah Lou Dahlin

This 3CD/DVD/2LP Deluxe Edition of the legendary artist’s Sire Records debut features newly remastered sound, unreleased studio and live tracks, plus the DVD debut of “The New York Album” concert video. This limited edition and exclusive bundle also comes with a cassette version of the New York album.

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…

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…

Lou Gramm had been recording with Rochester, New York based band, Black Sheep, since the early 1970s. Releasing two LPs for Capitol, Lou Gramm met his future bandmate and songwriting partner Mick Jones in 1975 when Black Sheep opened for Spooky Tooth in Rochester. Mick Jones was looking for a singer for his new band in 1976, and Black Sheep having split at the end of 1975, Lou was free to audition for Mick’s new group, Foreigner. Releasing their self-titled album on Atlantic Records in 1977, and featuring solid gold rock classics as ‘Cold As Ice’ and ‘Feels Like The First Time’, Foreigner were an instant worldwide smash. Going from strength to strength, the band hit a commercial peak in 1984 with the “Agent Provocateur” album and the chart topping power ballad, ‘I Want To Know What Love Is’.