Lou Reed – Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal (Live) Remastered (1974/2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Lou Reed – Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal (Live) Remastered (1974/2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 40:22 minutes | 893 MB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © RCA – Legacy

Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal is a live album by American musician Lou Reed, released in February 1974 by RCA Records. In its original form, it features five songs, four of which were initially recorded by The Velvet Underground. Reed’s band included Pentti Glan (drums), Prakash John (bass), Ray Colcord (keyboards), and Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter (guitars). (The two guitarists would later form the basis of the first Alice Cooper solo band, beginning on Welcome to My Nightmare, which also features Glan and John.)

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Lou Reed – Rock N’ Roll Animal (1974/2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Lou Reed – Rock N’ Roll Animal (1974/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 40:22 minutes | 892 MB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © RCA – Legacy

Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal was recorded at a live show on December 21, 1973 at Howard Stein’s Academy of Music in New York City. Produced by Steve Katz and Lou Reed, the performance featured several Velvet Underground songs re-arranged into a powerful hard rock set. The album peaked at #45 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart in 1974.

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Lou Reed – Rock And Roll Heart (1976/2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Lou Reed – Rock And Roll Heart (1976/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 37:48 minutes | 830 MB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Buddha Records

Rock and Roll Heart is the seventh album by Lou Reed, released in 1976. It was his first album for Arista Records (now a sister label to his previous label RCA Records, via Sony BMG) after record mogul Clive Davis reportedly rescued him from bankruptcy. “A Sheltered Life” dates back to 1967, when the Velvet Underground recorded a demo of it (available on Peel Slowly and See). The Velvet Underground also performed “Follow the Leader”, and a live recording of it was released on The Quine Tapes.

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Lou Reed – New York (Deluxe Edition) (1989/2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Lou Reed – New York (Deluxe Edition) (1989/2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:54:43 minutes | 3,54 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino – Warner Records

Lou Reed’s 1989 album New York will be given its first remastering in a massive deluxe edition by Rhino, out September 25th.

New York: Deluxe Edition includes three CDs, a two-LP set and a DVD, encased in a hardcover book with liner notes by David Fricke and essays by archivist Don Fleming. It was produced by Laurie Anderson, Fleming, Bill Ingot, Jason Stern and late producer Hal Willner.

The deluxe set consists of 26 unreleased recordings. The first CD makes up the remastered album, the second CD consists of live versions and the final disc contains unreleased early versions of the album’s tracks — including a “work tape” and rough mix of the single “Dirty Blvd,” the Velvet Underground’s “Sweet Jane” and the Transformer track “Walk on the Wild Side.”

The set also includes “The New York Album” concert video, released on DVD for the first time. It features Reed’s set at the Theatre St. Denis in Montreal and includes an audio-only interview with the late musician.

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Lou Reed – New York (1989/2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Lou Reed – New York (1989/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 56:46 minutes | 2,10 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino – Warner Records

New York was Lou Reed’s fifteenth studio album released in 1989. The record was considered one of Reed’s best solo albums, known for it’s great lyrical content, it featured single “Dirty Blvd.” which made it to number one on Billboard’s Modern Rock Tracks chart.

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Lou Reed – New York (1989/2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Lou Reed – New York (1989/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 56:46 minutes | 1,15 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino – Warner Records

New York was Lou Reed’s fifteenth studio album released in 1989. The record was considered one of Reed’s best solo albums, known for it’s great lyrical content, it featured single “Dirty Blvd.” which made it to number one on Billboard’s Modern Rock Tracks chart.

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Lou Reed – New Sensations (1984/2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Lou Reed – New Sensations (1984/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 42:57 minutes | 921 MB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © RCA Records Label

Lou Reed never struck anyone as one of the happiest guys in rock & roll, so some fans were taken aback when his 1984 album New Sensations kicked off with “I Love You, Suzanne,” a catchy up-tempo rocker that sounded a lot like a pop tune. After reaffirming his status as one of rock’s greatest poets with The Blue Mask and Legendary Hearts, what was Reed doing here? Lou was having a great time, and his pleasure was infectious — New Sensations is a set of straight-ahead rock & roll that ranks with the most purely enjoyable albums of Lou’s career. Reed opted not to work with guitarist Robert Quine this time out, instead overdubbing rhythm lines over his own leads, and if the guitars don’t cut quite as deep, they’re still wiry and in the pocket throughout, and the rhythm section of Fernando Saunders and Fred Maher rocks hard with a tough, sinewy groove. And while much of New Sensations finds Reed in a surprisingly optimistic mood, this isn’t “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” by any stretch of the imagination. On “Endlessly Jealous,” “My Friend George,” and “Fly Into the Sun,” Reed makes it clear that happiness can be a hard-won commodity, and when Reed embraces life’s pleasures on “Turn to Me” and “New Sensations,” he does so with a fierce joy that’s realistic, unblinking, and deeply felt, like a man whose signed on for the full ride and is going to enjoy the good times while they last. Like Coney Island Baby, New Sensations showed that Reed had a lot more warmth and humanity than he was given credit for, and made clear that he could “write happy” when he felt like, with all the impact of his “serious” material.

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Lou Reed – Mistrial (1986/2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Lou Reed – Mistrial (1986/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 39:14 minutes | 841 MB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © RCA Records Label

Released in 1986 and prouduced by Lou Reed and Fernando Saunders.

Between 1982 and 1984, Lou Reed put together the best band of his solo career, recorded three superb albums, and left behind a fine live double after two rapturously received world tours — not a bad track record from a guy who had been so inconsistent throughout the 1970s. One might well have argued that Lou was due for a disappointment, and Mistrial certainly filled that bill. On Mistrial, Reed opted to handle both lead and rhythm guitar parts as he had on New Sensations, but with a few shades less precision, and while Fernando Saunders once again did yeoman work as a bassist, as a co-producer he didn’t fill out Reed’s sound especially well. The decision to use a drum machine on most of these tracks gives the album a stiff feeling, and a texture that captures what was least fortunate about ’80s rock, but most importantly Reed didn’t have an album’s worth of top-shelf songs on tap. “No Money Down” and “Tell It to Your Heart” are smart and funny sketches on the difficult art of romance, while “Mama’s Got a Lover” is an unexpectedly sweet character study and “The Original Wrapper” is a game stab at hip-hop from a 44-year-old white guy. But “Outside” and “Spit It Out” are just filler, and “Video Violence” is a pretty strange attack on the media from a guy who tried to bring the mindset of William S. Burroughs and Hubert Selby, Jr. to rock & roll. Mistrial wasn’t one of Reed’s worst albums (it’s hard to imagine Sally Can’t Dance ever being deprived of that honor), but it certainly lowered his batting average as he seemed to be on a hot streak — as if his longtime fans needed to be reminded that he was fallible.

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Lou Reed – Magic and Loss (1992/2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Lou Reed – Magic and Loss (1992/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 58:29 minutes | 2,38 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino – Warner Records

Magic And Loss is Lou Reed’s sixteenth studio album. Produced by Lou Reed and Mike Rathke, it was released on Sire Records in 1992.

With 1982’s The Blue Mask, Lou Reed began approaching more mature and challenging themes in his music, and in 1992, Reed decided it was time to tackle the Most Serious Theme of All — Death. Reed lost two close friends to cancer within the space of a year, and the experience informed Magic and Loss, a set of 14 songs about loss, illness, and mortality. It would have been easy for a project like this to sound morbid, but Reed avoids that; the emotions that dominate these songs are fear and helplessness in the face of a disease (and a fate) not fully understood, and Reed’s songs struggle to balance these anxieties with bravery, humor, and an understanding of the notion that death is an inevitable part of life — that you can’t have the magic without the loss. It’s obvious that Reed worked on this material with great care, and Magic and Loss contains some of his most intelligent and emotionally intense work as a lyricist. However, Reed hits many of the same themes over and over again, and while Reed and his accompanists — guitarist Mike Rathke, bassist Rob Wasserman, and percussionist Michael Blair — approach the music with skill and impeccable chops, many of these songs are a bit samey; the album’s most memorable tunes are the ones that pull it out of its mid-tempo rut, like the grooving “What’s Good” and the guitar workout “Gassed and Stoked.” Magic and Loss is an intensely heartfelt piece of music, possessing a taste and subtlety one might never have expected from Reed, but its good taste almost works against it; it’s a sincere bit of public mourning, but perhaps a more rousing wake might have been a more meaningful tribute to the departed. –Mark Deming

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Lou Reed – Magic and Loss (1992/2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Lou Reed – Magic and Loss (1992/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 58:29 minutes | 1,22 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino – Warner Records

Magic And Loss is Lou Reed’s sixteenth studio album. Produced by Lou Reed and Mike Rathke, it was released on Sire Records in 1992.

With 1982’s The Blue Mask, Lou Reed began approaching more mature and challenging themes in his music, and in 1992, Reed decided it was time to tackle the Most Serious Theme of All — Death. Reed lost two close friends to cancer within the space of a year, and the experience informed Magic and Loss, a set of 14 songs about loss, illness, and mortality. It would have been easy for a project like this to sound morbid, but Reed avoids that; the emotions that dominate these songs are fear and helplessness in the face of a disease (and a fate) not fully understood, and Reed’s songs struggle to balance these anxieties with bravery, humor, and an understanding of the notion that death is an inevitable part of life — that you can’t have the magic without the loss. It’s obvious that Reed worked on this material with great care, and Magic and Loss contains some of his most intelligent and emotionally intense work as a lyricist. However, Reed hits many of the same themes over and over again, and while Reed and his accompanists — guitarist Mike Rathke, bassist Rob Wasserman, and percussionist Michael Blair — approach the music with skill and impeccable chops, many of these songs are a bit samey; the album’s most memorable tunes are the ones that pull it out of its mid-tempo rut, like the grooving “What’s Good” and the guitar workout “Gassed and Stoked.” Magic and Loss is an intensely heartfelt piece of music, possessing a taste and subtlety one might never have expected from Reed, but its good taste almost works against it; it’s a sincere bit of public mourning, but perhaps a more rousing wake might have been a more meaningful tribute to the departed. –Mark Deming

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Lou Reed – Lou Reed (1972/2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Lou Reed – Lou Reed (1972/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 38:57 minutes | 798 MB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © RCA Records

Lou Reed’s eponymous debut solo album was released in 1972 and produced by Richard Robinson.

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Lou Reed – Live: Take No Prisoners (1978/2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Lou Reed – Live: Take No Prisoners (1978/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:38:29 minutes | 2,13 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Arista – Legacy

“I do Lou Reed better than anybody, so I thought I’d get in on it,” Reed says at one point during this double live set, and that seems to sum up the album’s theme quite well. Recorded during a week of shows at New York’s Bottom Line in 1978, Live: Take No Prisoners presents Lou Reed the Standup Comic, doing schtick on Patti Smith (“F*ck Radio Ethiopia, man! I’m Radio Brooklyn!”), political activism (“Give me an issue, I’ll give you a tissue, and you can wipe my ass with it”), and the agony of playing “Walk on the Wild Side” (“It’s not that I don’t want to play your favorites, but there are so many favorites to choose from!”) while occasionally pausing to play a song. As a comic, Lou is no Lenny Bruce or Bill Hicks, but he’s funny by fits and starts (and he plays guitar better than either of them). On the odd moments when Lou is focused enough to actually perform a song from start to finish (such as “Pale Blue Eyes” or “Coney Island Baby”), he’s in fine form, sounding loose but enthusiastic, but those moments don’t happen especially often, and this album plows through a mere ten songs in close to 100 minutes, which gives you an idea of just how far he stretches out here. If you’re a fan who wants a look into the mind of Lou Reed, comic or otherwise, Live: Take No Prisoners certainly fills the bill, but if you want to hear Lou actually play his music, you’re better off with Rock N Roll Animal or Live in Italy. But then again, as Lou himself points out, “What’s wrong with cheap dirty jokes? I never said I was tasteful.” –Mark Deming

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Lou Reed – Live At Alice Tully Hall (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Lou Reed – Live At Alice Tully Hall (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:21:18 minutes | 2,89 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © RCA – Legacy

It’s Turntable Tuesday…because life is too short not to listen to great music! Turn that TV OFF and listen to some music on your local speaker! Take a break from all that holiday stress and spin some wax! You need to dance a few hours away from all that winter reality! It’s Turntable Tuesday!

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Lou Reed – Legendary Hearts (1983/2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Lou Reed – Legendary Hearts (1983/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 38:15 minutes | 809 MB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © RCA Records Label

Released in March 1983, Legendary Hearts was dedicated to Lou Reed’s then wife, Sylvia, who also created the concept for the album’s cover.

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Lou Reed – Growing Up In Public (1980/2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Lou Reed – Growing Up In Public (1980/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 36:40 minutes | 827 MB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Buddha Records

Growing Up in Public was a transitional album for Lou Reed; it was his last set with his long-running road band (dominated by keyboardist Michael Fonfara), and while the fleshed-out arrangements are of a piece with Reed’s work on Rock & Roll Heart and The Bells, the lyrics of the best songs anticipate the directly personal, emotionally naked songwriting that marked the two extraordinary albums that would follow, The Blue Mask and Legendary Hearts. “How Do You Speak to an Angel,” “My Old Man,” and “Standing on Ceremony” deal with Reed’s family issues with a direct force he hadn’t summoned since “Kill Your Sons” (we’ll leave it to others to debate their accuracy), and “So Alone” and “Keep Away” both offer a trenchant but heart-rending look at modern relationships. And “The Power of Positive Drinking” is amusing, but rather surprising coming from a guy who would give up alcohol and drugs a year after this was released. Growing Up in Public didn’t get much notice on its initial release, but all these years later it sounds like a dry run for what was to be the most creatively fruitful period of Lou Reed’s solo career.

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