An uncompromising man of vision and talent, who is indisputably important to the developments of rock and pop music over the last 44 years.

The problem is, most of his albums aren't very good.

Yes.
No.

Care for some coffee?

OK, Billy, I'm playing Street Hassle now and trying to get into it. It seems like a mentally challenged version of Bowie. Is that too harsh?

Bowie was the student who surpassed his teacher....snap

I like Bowie.
I love Bowie.

But he never touched me the way Lou did.
I'm really not the person you should consult if you want an objective opinion about Lou Reed. He has tought me more than virtually any other artist.

tought = thaught obviously

My humble opinion :

Velvets - AWESOME

Solo Reed - eh.

I haven't heard SONGS FOR DRELLA i dont think. Is it outta control??!?!


Actually, there are a butt load of Reed albums I haven't heard.

Songs for Drella is probably my favourite Lou Reed album and subsequently one of my favourite records ever.
His guitar-playing on Drella is his best on record - at least for records with more or less conventional songs.
The song 'Forever changed' - sung by John Cale - is one of the best songs ever written. Not a single Dylan song about change comes even close.

Good Lou Reed solo records are: Transformer, Berlin, Street Hassle, The Bells , The blue mask, Legendary hearts, New York, Songs for Drella, Magic and loss, Ecstasy, The Stone: Issue Three (w/ John Zorn & Laurie Anderson).

Records like Sally can't dance, Coney Island Baby (with a superb title track and a great speed-ballad 'Kicks'), Set the twilight reeling are okay-ish but not always very interesting.

Metal Machine Music, The Raven, Hudson River Wind Meditations and The Stone Issue Three are all concept-albums.
Three of them are entirely instrumental, The Raven is a 2,5 hour spoken word-piece with rewritten text from E.A. Poe and a couple of songs - initially it was a theatre play and probably worked better that way.
I like all 4 of them - though not equally and some not entirely - but they are obviously not for everybody.

Lou Reed has a lot of not so great versions of songs with some potential.
A dissapointing solo debut.

I forgot:

- Rock and roll heart: the title track is one of the worst songs I have ever heard. A lot of the tracks are rather dull. 'Temporary thing' and 'Vicious circle' are pretty good.
- Growing up in Public: crap, except for the 2 closers 'Think it over' & 'Teach the gifted childeren;
- New Sensations: his only studio album I don't own (because it's out of print and therefor insanely expensive). I like the songs 'New Sensations', 'Doin' the things that we want to' and 'My friend George'. I've heard the others at one time or another - none stuck in my mind
- Mistrial: often seen as his worst effort ever. The rap-song 'The original wrapper' is okay-ish as is the Springsteen-like rock-protest rant 'video violence'. 'Tell it to your heart' is a great song, but the album version is crap. All the rest is crap too.

Sweeet, I'll pick up the Drellage, especially cuz I'm a big Cale fan. I've heard most of the Reed 1970s stuff, haven't listened to much after that.

Is that a "pm me with the deeds"?

What?

That was my hip slang way of saying I wrote "get copy of Songs for Drella" on my "to-do" list.

And 'pm me with the deeds' was my hip slang for 'should I help you get it?'

sure, we could do an eno-reed swap. we could post that shit here on the board if others are interested. plus then our Iranian friends could download cuz the Grand Islamic Council banned Eno there.