Street Hassle is like the sleaziest, filthiest, drug influenced sounding album in Reed’s career. The production on the album is ridiculous in how little effort is put in to make it feel like anything less than that. It is uncomfortable and offensive at times but it’s Lou Reed in the 70s and it’s Lou Reed so who really gives a fuck.
I've got no idea if I've ever heard anything like this before. Will I ever want to listen to it again? How many truly great albums do I really put on repeat and invest a lot of time in?
I'll probably realize this is a dumb comparison the moment I go back and actually listen to them in the first time in several years, but this reminds me of The Go Team. I mean, not really. But something about it kinda does? Also: I'm full of shit!
Listened to this on the way home from work because the band name randomly popped into my head and I'm trying to go back and listen to all of those albums that placed, like #53 on the SOMB year-end list of 200X. I feel like this one surely did but it's a 2008 album and my collection of EOY lists only goes up to 2006. Am I confusing this album with something else?
Lately I feel like I'm listening to all kinds of music and for the life of me I simply cannot understand lyrics anymore. It doesn't matter what kind of music it is. I feel like I'm hearing a complete track without any muffled tones or tinnitus symptoms or any indication that I'm losing my hearing, but I can't understand anything that anyone is singing anymore! Maybe it comes as a relief to hear an album where that's definitely understandable and okay.
I started this thread with the intention of posting, uh, Led Zeppelin albums. But here we are.
I honestly don’t know if I have ever listened to Times New Viking or if was confusing them with Blitzen Trapper. I for sure have listened to at least one album by at least one of those bands.
Ned Braden wrote:I honestly don’t know if I have ever listened to Times New Viking or if was confusing them with Blitzen Trapper. I for sure have listened to at least one album by at least one of those bands.
I don't think they sound anything like Blitzen Trapper? But I'm a man who gets Blitzen Trapper and Frightened Rabbit confused so
I think it was the clever name/album art aesthetic and timeline more than the music for sure. Listening to that YouTube I get strong Sonic Go Team vibes so yeah I could definitely see being down with this. And I don’t recall Blitzen Trapper sounding much like this either.
I know absolutely nothing about the band Dramarama.. but this is fucking great imo.
It’s like… a more polished Johnny Thunders if he were a contemporary of the Lemonheads?
I don’t know if that’s accurate, let me try again:
The kids from Empire Records should have listened to this album to recharge their spirits and get them back on top of their game after a disastrous Rex Manning Day.
Yeah, that’s it I think.
This is from 1985 but it sounds out of time like it could be from any era from the late 70s till the early 2000s. I think these guys are from the U.S.?
I’m only like half way through I hope it stays this good.
I’ve always loved Anything by them. When it comes on, at first I think it’s Samiam, and then I remember that it’s these guys. The singers really have similar voices
My big accomplishment for the month--and I'm not bragging about this, I'm certain this is something that most of you would effortlessly do in a single afternoon several times per week, I just don't have many opportunities to listen to a single album all the way through without any interruptions, and when I do it's usually got to be the sort of thing that I'm already in the mood for--was listening to all of the Jim Morrison-era Doors albums. This has been a huge blind spot for me and one I need to correct.
The Doors are a band that I have never paid any attention to or even been all that curious about until very recently. Playing through their discography, I came across more songs than I was anticipating that I already knew, but somehow didn't know who'd created them. Maybe that's a preposterous claim given that they have a such distinct and well-known sound (or do they?) but every album provided at least few moments of inspired surprise.
My thoughts on one of the best-known and most-discussed bands of all time are barely worth sharing as they're still barely gelled at all. I think I'd need to listen to each of these 6 albums at least 4 or 5 more times each before feeling like I could say I was actually "familiar" with them. I don't know if I'm going to do that. Each album has one or two songs that really annoy me (on average!), but I guess that's not too far from the strikeout average of most bands. The guitar playing is very good and occasionally really inspired. The organ playing is hot! The band is firing on all cylinders, etc. I won't deny that.
I have certain preconceived notions and attitudes about Jim Morrison and very little of that is overtly validated in any of these songs, although if you go in looking for it then you're definitely going to find evidence that he's a "creep" or something. But hey, so am I! Even the notions of his lyrical "pretention" didn't really come through in any of the songs in ways I was expecting. Maybe I was sort of left wanting it to, like I kind of wanted more bullshit like this? Rather than hearing the wailings of an absolute madman like I was expecting, most of the time he doesn't try to defy the Biker Bar blues that the band is playing. And that's a sound they're really, really good at--and are probably taking to places it's never gone before, idk--though it's a sound that I'm never really reaching for and have to be in the right mood to get. Even listening to the Stones' Let It Bleed a few weeks ago, I was sort of surprised by how little I was feeling it and how skeptical I was of the whole endeavor. At times, I had a similar reaction to The Doors.
Probably the biggest revelation here was "Riders on the Storm," which you've probably heard 100 times but somehow escaped me. A fantastic way to go out (although RYM is informing me that the band disbanded in... 2013??) and a nice bookend to a discography that begins with "Break On Through (To the Other Side)."
I'm sure it's a heated contest but this has probably been my most worthless posts in many moons.
When I was in middle school I knew nothing at all about this guy or about "the blues" but I happened to stumble across this Stevie Ray Vaughn tribute concert on PBS and I was starstruck by all the cool guitarists so then I probably found this CD with jams from it at the mall or something and I sort of loved it but then I never actually dug into any of the primary source material.
And honestly, over the years since I've barely scratched the surface of any of these artists or really much of anything else blues-wise, and I'm absolutely neglecting literally everything in between Robert Johnson/Skip James and the 1970s, which is enough to put me up against the wall tbh. Half of what I have heard hasn't done a whole lot for me. What do you do when you're 16 and you're like "oh yeah, Robert Cray is probably legit I'm gonna go get some of his CDs from the library" and then they just don't do shit for you? And all the blues that you do try to get into, good or bad whatever, feels like some fake legacy version of a real thing that you're pretty sure exists but increasingly starts to feel like a "you had to be there" sort of thing? (Howlin' Wolf is right there buddy, it's not hard just listen to him already it's never been easier.) I have no idea if this makes sense, I'm just boarding and we'll see how it goes.
So for 25 years (?) I just kind of took this dude for granted and knew almost nothing about him except that he had some really dope hats and that "The House Is Rockin'" used to be a jock jam but might have lost that status over the last 2 decades. So yeah, let's just get into his first album and see what it's actually like.
And this thing has me shaking my ass like I never thought possible? wtf
This isn't even one of the best songs on here but it's a perfect opener and he just gets into it and I'm tapping my feel like an absolute bitch, shit he's got me already
It's been a while since I've heard music that just makes me feel this happy. There's just no other word for it and I don't want to complicate it any further.
Any words I could reach for to describe this feel like ones that I, or anyone else, could use to describe almost anyone's competent, reverential, skilled, "emotional" blues guitar playing. But I want to use those words here to a degree that I have never wanted to with anyone else's playing that I've heard before. He's playing from the heart, it feels "genuine," it really FLOWS, etc. Pretty insightful stuff, I know!
Sitting in my chair, or the driver's seat of my car, I simply cannot hold still as this plays. Kind of feel like this was the reason God invented the guitar? I love the drumming on this, and all over this album tbh, and that's just never something I seem to notice or particularly appreciate any time I'm listening to a blues song. That's probably on me much more than it is on most drummers.
End credits on this unofficial upload from 14 years ago says this is a Buddy Guy song. Makes me wonder how much of this album is original and how much of it are standards. I'm actually afraid to find out because I, um, don't care? And then I'd feel like I need to compare and contrast these with the originals and I'm already in this mode where I'm paying attention to the inevitable reality that, once again, so much of my favorite black music is being made by white dudes but I don't need to get into that today. I'm on vacation.
Maybe it's just the effects he's playing through but this sounds like The Durutti Column? Or maybe The Durutti Column was always reaching for something like this but just couldn't get it because... how could he? Aside from how unbelievably pretty all of these licks sound, overall this song is just going places that I really love and there's some really beautiful counterpoint (?) between the guitar and bass and it's just not the sort of thing I encounter in this kind of music very often. And once again, that speaks more to my lack of curiosity than anything else, I'm sure, but you've gotta start somewhere!
He's a good singer and never sounds like he's putting on a fake affect, unlike some dudes, but ending this album with such a contemplative instrumental just caps the whole thing perfectly.
That being said, every modern version of the album is padded out with bonus tracks, 3 live tracks that actually fucking rule and a little "SRV speaks" treat that feels ripe for sampling. I don't even know this dude but I might love him.
This isn't even the go-to Stevie Ray Vaughn album, there are others that are more acclaimed? This feels like all you'd ever need but I'm excited to be proven totally wrong about that. Absolute HOT SHIT that might stand a chance of pulling me out of this funk and making me feel like there's something beautiful intrinsic to the mind and heart of the human race that can still be salvaged!
Your enthusiasm for this album made me check it out this morning. One big hurdle for me is the production, It’s too clean. For an artist that did a lot of heroin and wore kimonos on stage, I expected more grit. I like the playing but what I like from the blues is seedy atmosphere and grit and this album does not have either. But it’s not because of the playing or the songs, it’s how they sound… just not for me. Great Player though and his live sets are killer in my opinion.
Also, to answer your question, he was not using effects on that song. Maybe a little amp reverb, but that might even be natural room reverb. His tone is all amp and guitar, seemingly dialed to a very mid range frequency, a tad on the high end.
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