Lou Reed – Street Hassle

TBH effed up Lou is WAAAY better than clean and sober Lou... had this on cassette back in the day because a German friend had a JVC Boombox with a binaural switch... and about the only two binaural cassettes you can find on the whole planet are Street Hassle and Lou Reed Live Take No Prisoners... so there was a period of time those two releases that were getting played on that Boombox a lot LOL. Have the vinyl, of course, I love this album, even though it really does sound like sh!t... same with the live album on vinyl...binaural did not take off... and it seems like a strange thought to listen to Street Hassle with headphones... a bit too intimate...

Allow me to set the stage for you: With the album being released in February of 1978, the atmospheric feel for the record was drawn from 1977, so HELLO FROM THE GUTTERS OF NEW YORK CITY … the Summer of Sam, a Blackout that caused extensive riots and looting along with the closing of the Financial District, sweltering heat waves, fires burned down much of the Bronx, hip-hop was on the rise, financially the public hospitals, unions and universities crashed to the ground, high fashion and disco were all wiggling their hips to Gloria Gaynor, the city was filthy, the inside of subway cars were so covered in graffiti they looked black, rats were actually attacking ersby, crack and heroin were reaching their apex, and AIDS was poised to waste the world … President Ford told “NYC to Drop Dead,“ while Jimmy Carter said, “New York City, heal thyself.”

I wanted to like this album, I sincerely did, it’s just that as with most of Lou Reed’s work, I find it difficult to find a comfortable place to sit, feeling unsure of where he’s going, and with that in mind, unsure that I want to travel with him.

There are those who live and breathe Lou Reed, they’re obviously hearing something that I’m not, as when someone lays waste to my cognitive thought by saying, “You can’t think cognitively about Lou Reed,” where I’m left standing there with my hands thrust deeply into my pockets looking for a stone to kick. Of course then there are those who profess ideas to the effect that, “Street Hassle, oddly enough, is an emotional confession of failure that becomes a stunning incandescent triumph, the best solo album at the time the man has ever done.”

Of course, like everyone else during that year, I purchased the album based on the strength of the one song that was given airplay, I didn’t realize that I was headed down a rather hazed damp alleyway filled with Lou Reed’s decay, a sleazy underworld of trash, tortured souls on amyl-nitrate, lost innocence, skewed focus and sneering commentary. All of this is seemingly laid out with a breath of casualness, though methinks it’s the sort of casualness one experiences as a tossed match is about to hit a container of gasoline, where third degree burns should be seen as an affirmation that one is still alive. Others have claimed that there’s a sense of urgency to his lyrics, yet all I was ever able to hear was uncertainty and vulnerableness, all laced with an underlining of determination without a com for direction.

What I’m avoiding here is the overt homo-erotic nature of many of his lines, and those that aren’t belay a downright obnoxious dramatic theme of misogyny, and if not misogyny, then he’s either mocking or enamored of the black pimps who were roaming the streets during the summer of 1977 and ’78. Street Hassle appears not to centrally be about the music, more so that the music is only present to carry though the lyrics, like some street preacher on the corner who’s gonna save your soul and lift your wallet at the same time, not for any good or righteous reason, but because he is able. The record is one long manifesto on a self referential concept, a dive into the maddening confused nature of the artist, where a strange eeriness surrounds nearly every phrase, as if Lou Reed has just finished with analysis, yet has not come to with what he’s learned or how to compartmentalize those aspects of his life, aspects that range from homosexuality, transgenderism, drug addiction and his ever-present battle with fame, leaving him to come off as a self-righteous nihilist who wants to slip back in time to his childhood and make peace with a heart dearly wishing to be caressed and nurtured.

The record makes nearly every facet of Reed’s life and those he’s in with seem inconsequential, less than temporary, where everything he desires and wishes for is on the other side of a window, where getting to those things requires breaking the glass, yet in so doing ruins all that looked so tempting and desirable from the grit of the street.

This is not a comfortable album, where since its purchase, I’ve never found myself in a position where I thought playing it would bring me any pleasure at all.

*** Without intentions of slighting anyone, Street Hassle is one of those records where if you were not present and ed for in 1978, you will not have the historic ability to make the conceptual leap toward fully understanding the context of this record.

Review by Jenell Kesler

This album makes me want to take a shower, so grime filled it leaves a film on the room