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:: Track list & details
As the man himself confesses in the liner notes here, Lou Reed's career was in the toilet when he made Coney Island Baby. He'd somehow convinced RCA to release Metal Machine Music, one of the most unlistenable albums ever recorded, comprised of more than an hour of feedback, noise and high concept atonal guitar doodling. The album left him bankrupt and almost homeless. But RCA gave him a chance to redeem himself and asked him to make a rock'n'roll record. The result was Coney Island Baby.
At the time of its release, Coney Island Baby seemed atypical, a departure from the emotional black hole Reed usually inhabited, at least artistically. The music was light, with hints of country, blues and folk, and he was actually singing at times, albeit in his usual lethargic, slightly bemused tone. With 20/20 hindsight we can see Baby as a the beginning of a kinder, gentler, more empathic Reed, setting the stage for albums like Rock and Roll Heart and The Blue Mask.
The centerpiece of the album is the title track, a long meditation on the alienation and degradation outsiders face in high school. When Reed first says: "I wanted to play football for the coach" it's hard to take him seriously. You almost laugh out loud, but then, deep down, you know that even the skinniest, most artistic nerds all harbored a fantasy of being a jock, of being able to capture the attention of the school with a burst of pure touchdown-making, cheerleader-banging adrenalin. It's that insight that freezes the smile on your lips and turns it to a grimace, maybe even a wince. The quote from "The Glory of Love" that he chants to end the tune may imply the salvation he and other outcasts found in music, the refuge from the humiliations of the everyday world. It's an amazing song and Reed's understated delivery heightens its drama. "Coney Island Baby" (the song) is an underappreciated classic.
The rest of the album is pretty good too. "She's My Best Friend" and "Nobody's Business" could be old Velvets tunes, full of dark tension and playful, disjointed imagery. "A Gift" is probably the funniest tune Reed's ever recorded, a slight, laugh-out-loud ditty; his poker-faced vocal makes it hard to know if he's kidding or deadly serious when he sings "I'm a gift to the women of the world." "Ooohh Baby" and "Charlie's Girl" are familiar portraits of New York guttersnipes and hustlers, while "Kicks" takes us to a drugged out party, with Reed dropping acidic non-sequiturs that sound alternately profound and trite, just like real party conversations. The song's jittery rhythm and the collaged noise of partygoers in the background snorting coke and babbling incoherently add to the tune's impact.
Like most Legacy editions, the disc includes bonus tracks. The six here include"Leave Me Alone" which finally showed up on Street Hassle, "Downtown Dirt" a dark, jazzy portrait of a dysfunctional relationship that was first released on the Between Thought And Expression anthology, and "Nowhere At All" a short rocker that sounds like a re-write of "Cool It Down." The outtakes are superfluous—a "Crazy Feeling" that sounds rushed, without the swooping slide guitar that makes the more familiar version so charming; a "She's My Best Friend" that's harsher, noisier, and darker than the album cut and a "Coney Island Baby" that sounds unfinished, without the drama of the album take.
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