Lou Reed - 9 Album Collection (1972-76) [9CD] {2006 Japan Mini LP Remaster} [repost]

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Lou Reed - 9 Album Collection (1972-76) [9CD] {2006 Japan Mini LP Remaster} [repost]

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Lou Reed - 9 Album Collection (1972-76) [9CD] {2006 Japan Mini LP Remaster}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 2.84 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 980 Mb | Artwork | 5% repair rar
© 2006 RCA / BMG Japan | BVCM-37725~33
Rock / Experimental / Rock & Roll

Cardboard sleeve (mini LP) reissue from Lou Reed. Part of a 9-album Cardboard sleeve (mini LP) Lou Reed reissue campaign featuring the albums "Lou Reed," "Transformer," "Berlin," "Rock and Roll Animal," "Sally Can't Dance," "Lou Reed Live," "Metal Machine Music," Coney Island Baby," and "Rock adn Roll Heart." Lou Reed's solo debut suggests that neither Reed nor his new record company were quite sure about what to do with him in 1972. It would be years before the cult of the Velvet Underground became big enough to mean anything commercially, leaving Lou pretty much back where he started from in the public eye after five years of hard work, and he seemed to be searching for a different musical direction on this set without quite deciding what it would be.

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Lou Reed - 9 Album Collection (1972-76) [9CD] {2006 Japan Mini LP Remaster} [repost]

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While the best tunes are admirably lean, no-frills rock & roll, there are also several featuring tricked-up arrangements that don't suit the material terribly well (at no other time in history would anyone believe that Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman would be a good choice as backing musicians for the guy who wrote "Sister Ray").

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Lou Reed - 9 Album Collection (1972-76) [9CD] {2006 Japan Mini LP Remaster} [repost]

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Lou Reed - 9 Album Collection (1972-76) [9CD] {2006 Japan Mini LP Remaster} [repost]

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Lou Reed - Lou Reed (1972)
EAC Rip | FLAC (tracks+.cue+log) - 235 MB | Scans | MP3 CBR 320 kbps (LAME 3.98) - 93 MB
Genre: rock | RAR 5% Rec. | Label: RCA / BMG Japan | CAT # BVCM-37725 | Mini LP 2006

Lou also didn't appear to have done much songwriting since he left the Velvets in 1970; with the exception of the hilariously catty "Wild Child" and "Berlin," a song Reed would revisit a few years later, nearly every significant song on Lou Reed dated back to his tenure with the Velvet Underground, though it would be years before that band's recordings of "I Can't Stand It," "Lisa Says," or "Ocean" would surface. On its own terms, Lou Reed isn't a bad album, but it isn't a terribly interesting one either, and since superior performances of most of these songs are available elsewhere, it stands today more as a historical curiosity than anything else.

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Lou Reed - 9 Album Collection (1972-76) [9CD] {2006 Japan Mini LP Remaster} [repost]

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Lou Reed - 9 Album Collection (1972-76) [9CD] {2006 Japan Mini LP Remaster} [repost]

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Lou Reed - Transformer (1972)
EAC Rip | FLAC (tracks+.cue+log) - 313 MB | Scans | MP3 CBR 320 kbps (LAME 3.98) - 142 MB
Genre: rock | RAR 5% Rec. | Label: RCA / BMG Japan | CAT # BVCM-37726 | Mini LP 2006

David Bowie has never been shy about acknowledging his influences, and since the boho decadence and sexual ambiguity of the Velvet Underground's music had a major impact on Bowie's work, it was only fitting that as Ziggy Stardust mania was reaching its peak, Bowie would offer Lou Reed some much needed help with his career, which was stuck in neutral after his first solo album came and went. Musically, Reed's work didn't have too much in common with the sonic bombast of the glam scene, but at least it was a place where his eccentricities could find a comfortable home, and on Transformer Bowie and his right-hand man, Mick Ronson, crafted a new sound for Reed that was better fitting (and more commercially astute) than the ambivalent tone of his first solo album. Ronson adds some guitar raunch to "Vicious" and "Hangin' Round" that's a lot flashier than what Reed cranked out with the Velvets, but still honors Lou's strengths in guitar-driven hard rock, while the imaginative arrangements Ronson cooked up for "Perfect Day," "Walk on the Wild Side," and "Goodnight Ladies" blend pop polish with musical thinking just as distinctive as Reed's lyrical conceits. And while Reed occasionally overplays his hand in writing stuff he figured the glam kids wanted ("Make Up" and "I'm So Free" being the most obvious examples), "Perfect Day," "Walk on the Wild Side," and "New York Telephone Conversation" proved he could still write about the demimonde with both perception and respect. The sound and style of Transformer would in many ways define Reed's career in the 1970s, and while it led him into a style that proved to be a dead end, you can't deny that Bowie and Ronson gave their hero a new lease on life – and a solid album in the bargain.

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Lou Reed - 9 Album Collection (1972-76) [9CD] {2006 Japan Mini LP Remaster} [repost]

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Lou Reed - Berlin (1973)
EAC Rip | FLAC (tracks+.cue+log) - 304 MB | Scans | MP3 CBR 320 kbps (LAME 3.98) - 120 MB
Genre: rock | RAR 5% Rec. | Label: RCA / BMG Japan | CAT # BVCM-37727 | Mini LP 2006

Transformer and "Walk on the Wild Side" were both major hits in 1972, to the surprise of both Lou Reed and the music industry, and with Reed suddenly a hot commodity, he used his newly won clout to make the most ambitious album of his career, Berlin. Berlin was the musical equivalent of a drug-addled kid set loose in a candy store; the album's songs, which form a loose story line about a doomed romance between two chemically fueled bohemians, were fleshed out with a huge, boomy production (Bob Ezrin at his most grandiose) and arrangements overloaded with guitars, keyboards, horns, strings, and any other kitchen sink that was handy (the session band included Jack Bruce, Steve Winwood, Aynsley Dunbar, and Tony Levin). And while Reed had often been accused of focusing on the dark side of life, he and Ezrin approached Berlin as their opportunity to make The Most Depressing Album of All Time, and they hardly missed a trick. This all seemed a bit much for an artist who made such superb use of the two-guitars/bass/drums lineup with the Velvet Underground, especially since Reed doesn't even play electric guitar on the album; the sheer size of Berlin ultimately overpowers both Reed and his material. But if Berlin is largely a failure of ambition, that sets it apart from the vast majority of Reed's lesser works; Lou's vocals are both precise and impassioned, and though a few of the songs are little more than sketches, the best – "How Do You Think It Feels," "Oh, Jim," "The Kids," and "Sad Song" – are powerful, bitter stuff. It's hard not to be impressed by Berlin, given the sheer scope of the project, but while it earns an A for effort, the actual execution merits more of a B-.

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Lou Reed - 9 Album Collection (1972-76) [9CD] {2006 Japan Mini LP Remaster} [repost]

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Lou Reed - Rock n Roll Animal (1974)
EAC Rip | FLAC (tracks+.cue+log) - 341 MB | Scans | MP3 CBR 320 kbps (LAME 3.98) - 115 MB
Genre: rock | RAR 5% Rec. | Label: RCA / BMG Japan | CAT # BVCM-37728 | Mini LP 2006

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). Early-'70s arena rock bombast is often the order of the day, but guitarists Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter use their six-string muscle to lift these songs up, not weigh them down, and with Reed's passionate but controlled vocals riding over the top, "Sweet Jane," "White Light/White Heat," and "Rock 'n' Roll" finally sound like the radio hits they always should have been. Reed would rarely sound this commercial again, but Rock N Roll Animal proves he could please a crowd when he had to.

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Lou Reed - 9 Album Collection (1972-76) [9CD] {2006 Japan Mini LP Remaster} [repost]

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Lou Reed - Sally Can't Dance (1974)
EAC Rip | FLAC (tracks+.cue+log) - 274 MB | Scans | MP3 CBR 320 kbps (LAME 3.98) - 95 MB
Genre: rock | RAR 5% Rec. | Label: RCA / BMG Japan | CAT # BVCM-37729 | Mini LP 2006

On the live album Rock N Roll Animal, Lou Reed showed he'd learned how to give his audience what they wanted, and do it well. Sally Can't Dance, on the other hand, was the polar opposite, a remarkably cynical album that pandered to the lowest common denominator of the market that had bought Transformer and Rock N Roll Animal, and didn't even do it with much flair. Reed's performances here are limited to vocals, except for some sloppy acoustic guitar on one track (this from the man who helped reinvent electric guitar with the Velvet Underground), and the sodden, overblown arrangements sink most of these tunes before they get past the first chorus; much of the time, Reed sounds like an afterthought on his own album. And while Reed's best songwriting ranks with the best rock of his generation, Sally Can't Dance is cluttered with throwaways that reach for the boho decadence of Transformer and come up empty (with special recognition going to the bizarre and truly puzzling "Animal Language"). Side two does offer two worthwhile songs: "Kill Your Sons," a powerful and deeply personal remembrance of Reed's bouts with shock treatment and brutal psychotherapy, which he would revisit in a much stronger performance on 1984's Live in Italy, and "Billy," a witty and surprisingly poignant remembrance of an old friend and how their paths in life diverged.

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Lou Reed - 9 Album Collection (1972-76) [9CD] {2006 Japan Mini LP Remaster} [repost]

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Lou Reed Live is a live album by Lou Reed, released in 1975. It was recorded at the same concert as Rock 'n' Roll Animal ; on December 21, 1973, at Howard Stein's Academy of Music in New York. It features three songs from Transformer, one song from The Velvet Underground & Nico (Reed's former band's debut album) and two songs from Berlin. Between this album and the remastered Rock 'n' Roll Animal the entire show has been released, albeit in a different order than the original concert setlist.

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Lou Reed - 9 Album Collection (1972-76) [9CD] {2006 Japan Mini LP Remaster} [repost]

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Lou Reed - Metal Machine Music (1975)
EAC Rip | FLAC (tracks+.cue+log) - 480 MB | Scans | MP3 CBR 320 kbps (LAME 3.98) - 153 MB
Genre: rock | RAR 5% Rec. | Label: RCA / BMG Japan | CAT # BVCM-37731 | Mini LP 2006

One would be hard-pressed to name a major artist who ever released an album as thoroughly alienating as Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music; at a time when noise rock and punk had yet to make their presence known, Reed released this 64-minute aural assault that offered up a densely layered soundscape constructed from feedback, distortion, and atonal guitar runs sped up or slowed down until they were all but unrecognizable. Metal Machine Music seems a bit less startling today, now that bands like Sonic Youth and the Boredoms have created some sort of context for it, but it hasn't gotten any more user friendly with time – while Thurston Moore may go nuts on his guitar like this for three or four minutes at a stretch, Metal Machine Music goes on and on and on for over an hour, pausing only for side breaks with no rhythms, melodies, or formal structures to buffer the onslaught. If you're brave enough to listen to the whole thing, it's hard not to marvel at the scope of Reed's obsession; it's obvious he spent a lot of time on these layered sheets of noise, and enthusiasts of the violent guitar freakout may find it pleasing in short bursts. But confronting Metal Machine Music from front to back in one sitting is an experience that's both brutal and numbing. It's hard to say what Lou Reed had in mind when he made Metal Machine Music, and Reed has done little to clarify the issue over the years, though he summed it up quite pointedly in an interview in which he said, "Well, anyone who gets to side four is dumber than I am." For the record, I did get to side four. But I got paid for it.

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Lou Reed - Coney Island Baby (1976)
EAC Rip | FLAC (tracks+.cue+log) - 417 MB | Scans | MP3 CBR 320 kbps (LAME 3.98) - 147 MB
Genre: rock | RAR 5% Rec. | Label: RCA / BMG Japan | CAT # BVCM-37732 | Mini LP 2006

From 1972's Transformer onward, Lou Reed spent most of the '70s playing the druggy decadence card for all it was worth, with increasingly mixed results. But on 1976's Coney Island Baby, Reed's songwriting began to move into warmer, more compassionate territory, and the result was his most approachable album since Loaded. On most of the tracks, Reed stripped his band back down to guitar, bass, and drums, and the results were both leaner and a lot more comfortable than the leaden over-production of Sally Can't Dance or Berlin. "Crazy Feeling," "She's My Best Friend," and "Coney Island Baby" found Reed actually writing recognizable love songs for a change, and while Reed pursued his traditional interest in the underside of the hipster's life on "Charlie's Girl" and "Nobody's Business," he did so with a breezy, freewheeling air that was truly a relief after the lethargic tone of Sally Can't Dance. "Kicks" used an audio-tape collage to generate atmospheric tension that gave its tale of drugs and death a chilling quality that was far more effective than his usual blasé take on the subject, and "Coney Island Baby" was the polar opposite, a song about love and regret that was as sincere and heart-tugging as anything the man has ever recorded. Coney Island Baby sounds casual on the surface, but emotionally it's as compelling as anything Lou Reed released in the 1970s, and proved he could write about real people with recognizable emotions as well as anyone in rock music – something you might not have guessed from most of the solo albums that preceded it.

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Lou Reed - 9 Album Collection (1972-76) [9CD] {2006 Japan Mini LP Remaster} [repost]

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Lou Reed - 9 Album Collection (1972-76) [9CD] {2006 Japan Mini LP Remaster} [repost]

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Lou Reed - Rock and Roll Heart (1976)
EAC Rip | FLAC (tracks+.cue+log) - 250 MB | Scans | MP3 CBR 320 kbps (LAME 3.98) - 91 MB
Genre: rock | RAR 5% Rec. | Label: RCA / BMG Japan | CAT # BVCM-37733 | Mini LP 2006

Rock and Roll Heart was Lou Reed's first album for Arista Records, and one senses that he wanted to come up with something saleable for his new sponsors. Uptempo numbers with pop hooks dominate the set, the 12 songs zip by in an efficient 38 minutes, and instead of Reed's trademark meditations on the dark side of life, the lyrics are (for the most part) lean bursts of verse and chorus, in which the artist sings the praises of good times in general and rock & roll in particular (then again, on "I Believe in Love," Reed pledges his allegiance to both "good time music" and "the iron cross," a bit of perversity to remind us whose album this is). But if Rock and Roll Heart sounds like "Lou Reed Lite," there are more than a few flashes of Reed's inarguable talent. His band is in fine form (especially Marty Fogel on sax and Michael Fonfara on keyboards). "Banging on My Drum" is a crunchy rocker that recalls his work with the Velvet Underground; "A Sheltered Life" is an amusing bit of VU archeology (the Velvets demoed the song, but this marked its first appearance on record); and the closer, "Temporary Thing," is a bitter, haunting narrative that foreshadows Reed's next album, the harrowing masterpiece Street Hassle.

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