The blah title; the none-more-black box; it ain’t sexy, but it’s a stark answer to a serious question: How to package Lou Reed, post-Velvet Underground, in a manner that allows its hotly remastered mix (courtesy of Reed and his latter-day producer Hal Willner with Rob Santos) to shine (it sparkles) and gives the collection’s very real scope its due. Because if there’s one thing gleaned from The RCA & Arista Albums Collection’s 16 albums spread across 17 CDs it’s that its breadth includes success and failure, a hard yin-and-yang currently missing in release schedules. No major label today would allow a Lou Reed (as if there could be two) a pricey brass section for the limp noodle R&B of Sally Can’t Dance, clean-but-lame session men for the quirk-less, live Rock N’ Roll Animal or the white-feedback-ing noise of Metal Machine Music. I miss the mess of the ’70s when wrongs were as interesting as rights.
Those rights were more than fascinating, they were brusque and cutting, original and stuffed full with Reed’s crackling dry-ice monotone and deceptively linear lyrical thought process. The triumphs of irked poetry about JFK, Holly Woodlawn and football coaches can be found in smartly literary, emotionally torturous cabaret (Berlin), sensationally tart glam-pop ballads and rockers (Transformer), a tensely wound soul unleashing the errors of his youth (Coney Island Baby), un-merry, discordant waltzes (The Blue Mask), disco mysticism (The Bells), darkly hollowed-out post-punk atmospheric masterpieces (Street Hassle) and audience-baiting Lenny Bruce imitations poured over Scotch-n-soda jazz funk (Take No Prisoners). I miss the mess of the ’70s when rights were as interesting as wrongs.
—A.D. Amorosi
