| Street Hassle | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Studio album by Lou Reed | ||||
| Released | February 1978 | |||
| Recorded | The Record Plant, New York City and live in Munich, Wiesbaden, Ludwigshafen, Germany | |||
| Genre | Rock | |||
| Length | 36:15 | |||
| Label | Arista | |||
| Producer | Lou Reed, Richard Robinson | |||
| Lou Reed chronology | ||||
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Street Hassle is the eighth solo album by Lou Reed, originally released by Arista Records. The album is notable as the first commercially released pop album to employ binaural recording technology.[1] Street Hassle combines live concert tapings (with overdubs) and studio recordings.
The album is also notable for featuring a brief cameo by Bruce Springsteen. All of the songs on Street Hassle were written by Reed, including "Real Good Time Together", a track that dates back to his days as a member of The Velvet Underground.
The album was met with mostly positive reviews, with AllMusic's Mark Demming writing, "Raw, wounded, and unapologetically difficult, Street Hassle isn't the masterpiece Reed was shooting for, but it's still among the most powerful and compelling albums he released during the 1970s, and too personal and affecting to ignore."[2]
Contents |
The studio tracks on Street Hassle were recorded in New York City, while the live recordings were made in Munich and Ludwigshafen, West Germany. Unlike most live albums, the audience is completely muted from the mix during the concert recordings.
Bruce Springsteen contributed spoken vocals during the "Slipaway" section of "Street Hassle". At the time, the singer was under a three-year forced hiatus from recording due to legal disputes with a former manager. At the same time, he was writing and recording his album Darkness on the Edge of Town, which would be released in June 1978. Springsteen was not credited for his performance in the liner notes to Street Hassle, possibly due to his ongoing legal battles.
The recording of Street Hassle was notable in that Reed and his co-producer chose to employ an experimental microphone placement technique called binaural recording.[1] In binaural recording, two microphones are placed in the studio in an attempt mimic the stereo sound of actually being in the room with the performers/instruments. In the case of the recording sessions and concerts that comprised Street Hassle, engineers used a mannequin head with a microphone implanted in each ear. Binaural recordings are generally only effective when the user listens to the album through headphones, and do not generally translate correctly through stereo speakers.
Reed's particular binaural recording system was developed by Manfred Schunke of the German company Delta Acoustics; Schunke is credited as an engineer on Street Hassle. Lou Reed would continue to use the binaural recording style on two more releases: the 1978 concert album Live: Take No Prisoners and the 1979 studio album The Bells.
As was common on early Reed solo albums, Street Hassle contained a track originally written during Reed's days in the Velvet Underground; in this case, "Real Good Time Together", which had been previously released in 1974 on 1969: The Velvet Underground Live.
AllMusic has written that "the title cut, a three-movement poetic tone poem about life on the New York streets, is one of the most audacious and deeply moving moments of Reed's solo career."[2]
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | [3] |
| Robert Christgau | (B+)[4] |
| Rolling Stone | (positive)[5] |
Street Hassle was met with generally positive reviews, including from AllMusic,[2] Robert Christgau of The Village Voice,[4] and Rolling Stone.[5]
All songs written by Lou Reed.
Side One:
Side Two:
Produced by Lou Reed and Richard Robinson Engineered by Manfred Schunke and Heiner Friesz
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