Customer Reviews

growing up in public LP

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I own all of Lou Reed's albums, but this is my favorite and most played. While I love his tough guy persona exhibited on so many previous great albums, I feel he literally "grew-up" on this one. It's more personal and reflective than usual. He tackles adult themes with wit, charm, and his most dazzling lyrics ever. I'm not kidding. Try this on for size, from the opening song "How Do You Speak To An Angel":

"A son who is cursed with a harridan mother
Or a weak simpering father at best
Is raised to play out the timeless classical motives
Of filial love and incest"

Or this, from the brilliant title track:

"Some people are into sadistic pleasures
They whet your desires and drool in your ears
They're quasi-effeminate characters in love with oral gratification
They edify your integrities so they can play on your fears"

Not exactly moon/June rhymes, huh? While some of the songs are simpler in nature, most exhibit this kind of intelligent wordplay that's advanced even by Lou's normal high standards.

Before you think it all sounds pretentious - let me assure you it isn't. Along with his tribute album to Andy Warhol (the John Cale collaboration "Songs for Drella"), this is his most heartfelt recording.

Moreover, this thing rocks every bit as good as "Transformer", and he's still singing his songs - as opposed to "talking" them, which he started doing with the "New York" album and continues to do to this day. There's not a bad song here. I want to mention it also contains "The Power of Positive Drinking" - possibly the funniest thing he's ever written, and certainly among the best by anyone on this topic.

Like Graham Parker's "Struck by Lightning" CD, which announced the arrival of Parker growing up and contemplating adult themes - this is Lou's belated "coming of age" album. I can't recommend it highly enough.

I'm not sure why there are so many negative reviews of this album, but I have to disagree with all of the negative ones. This is a great Lou Reed album. I would actually give it 4 1/2 stars but since that's not an option I chose five to counter all the negative ratings and help bring this one up a bit. It's full of great Lou Reed lyrics and the songs are amazing jazzy/rock arrangements that fit the lyrics perfectly and are full of memorable melodies. So, if you like Lou Reed don't hesitate to pick up this one. The only reason I can think that people would give it negative reviews is that they want Lou Reed to make the same album musically on every album he makes. The songs and lyrics are infectious and the lyrics aren't just mindless pop drivel but are for the most part a lot of deep introspecting on Reed's life and life in general. So find this one, you won't regret it.

I used to think this was Lou's worst album, until I decided to listen to it "one last time" before I traded it away. Suddenly, it sounded GOOD. VERY good! Lou's vocals sounded sincere, the music wasn't as bland as I remembered it being, and I decided not to trade it after all! The cover has such a cool pic of Lou on it, too! Probably his best album cover. This isn't as good an album as "Rock n Roll Heart" or "Street Hassle" or "Blue Mask" or "The Bells", all from around the same era, but it's a worthwhile Lou Reed album and worth having. 3 1/2 stars!!!

This is a very literate Lou Reed album, and not one of the critics' favourites. The music tends towards mainstream radio rock, yet it contains great songs like the title track, Love Is Here To Stay and the very catchy Power Of Positive Drinking. My other favourites include How Do You Speak To An Angel, My Old Man and Teach The Gifted Children with its poetic lyrics. The subject matter deals with relationships and the album has more of a warm, human feel than the classic works Reed is best appreciated for. By any other standard than Reed's own, this is a good rock album that has stood the test of time very well.

Lou Reed: Growing Up in Public

New York

This has got to be lou's greatest record. Stripped bare, honest and raw ( I mean, look at the cover!), musically insane , funny, tender, and scarily true , it not only says everythin' about the guy but the human condition full stop. I'm not gonna go into the historical nonsense that it was a turning point in his career. (who cares!). Basically, this is where he was at the time . It's his best work lyrically by a long shot. I don't get the feeling he's talking to you in a room , as has been most peoples comments when they hear lou, but to himself , therefore it gets right into your head, a personal journey which reaches anyone who is not scared to look at themselves face on. It also, even more than 'Ecstacy,' shows lou's love for soul music. You want a wake up call sleepy heads, then beg, borrow or steal this totally neglected gem.

This is the kind of spectacular failure other artists would kill for. David Bowie has no qualms about trashing his own "Never Let Me Down" record. I can admire an artist who admits to error. For some reason Lou doesn't like to talk about "Growing Up In Public" much, falling back on his "Sally Can't Dance" excuse of being too drunk to remember. His picture on the album cover suggests a man who has had a long, unpleasant stay in some sort of institution. It's worth listening to for the disco break-it-down in the middle of "So Alone," but otherwise don't expect more than a (sometimes painful) novelty record.

First off, whatever remained of Lou's punk rock roots are drowned in a choking wash of Michael Fonfara's roaring synthesizer batteries. This sounds more like a musical than a rock album, an aspiration he later achieved with the bizarre looking "Time Rocker" (no record as of yet).

Then there are the lyrics, which range from insipid: "she thinks wating meat's disgusting/he like hot dogs" from the painful march "Love is Here To Stay" to an arythmical jumble of pseudo-literary nonsense, such as my favorite: "they're quasi-effeminate characters in love with oral gratification" from the title track.

This album isn't without it's charms, and I think "Keep Away" is actually pretty successful as an intentionally amusing portrait of a desperate man. The other great moment is at the end of "Smiles" when he urgently revisits the doo-doo-doo's of "Walk on the Wild Side," effectively mocking that part of his past.

Unfortunately the vocals occasionally outdo the keyboards in terms of bombast, and his horrendous shouting on "How do you Speak to an Angel" and "Standing on Ceremony" gets tiresome, not to mention downright embarrassing. As on "The Bells" the listener is faced with the impending horror of hearing Lou bust a vein.

For further listening: witness the original opener for this album on the "Between Thought and Expression" box set, a Lou Reed rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" re-titled simply "America." It starts with Fonfara mimicking Jimi Hendrix's famous Woodstock performance of the song, and the band kicks in some rock'n'roll as Lou shouts the lyrics, again with an urgency that's one of the only appealing qualities of his music from this period. Worth a laugh. May offend the deeply patriotic.

Where is Michael Fonfara now? I'd like to know. I also want to know what happened to Ellard "Moose" Boles, the stand-out bass player. The real question here is: Where's the Moose?

Not one of the critics' favourites, Growing Up In Public is a very literate Lou Reed album. The music tends towards mainstream radio rock, yet it contains great songs like the title track, Love Is Here To Stay and the very catchy Power Of Positive Drinking with its bouncy beat.

My other favorites include How Do You Speak To An Angel, My Old Man and Teach The Gifted Children with its poetic lyrics. The subject matter deals with relationships and the album has more of a warm, human feel than the decadence Reed is best appreciated for.

The style is not dissimilar to Legendary Hearts or New Sensations and the song quality is far above Mistrial. By any other standard than Reed's own, this is a good rock album that has stood the test of time very well. It's a must for fans.

This is Lou's sardonic singer-songwriter album. Imagine Woody Allen recording Plastic Ono Band or Blue. Okay, maybe not. At the very least, it's a hell of a lot better than other Lou albums of the period, particularly the horrendous Rock and Roll Heart or the Bells, and I'd say it beats the overrated but worthy Coney Island Baby and the Blue Mask. Check it out.

The '80s didn't start well for Lou Reed, as evidenced by this awkward, misguided album. He toned down the '70s drugs/decadence/bisexuality persona and replaced it with a new literary, more sober, hetero perspective. He figured out how to do this correctly on the great "The Blue Mask." "Growing Up In Public" was the exact opposite. It was bad enough that at the time, many of us felt he was done forever.

What's wrong with the album? The sound, for one thing. His previously interesting jazz-influenced band cranked out high-octane generic rock sounds here that probably wouldn't have been out of place on an REO Speedwagon record. Imagine that behind Lou's talk-singing, which is especially awkward and strained on this album. Sound unpromising? Add lyrics like "a son who is cursed with a harridan mother/or a weak simpering father at best/is raised to play out the timeless classical motives/of filial love and incest." It almost works on paper, but it sounds TERRIBLE in song. Most of these wordy, complex lyrics suffer from the same problem. Lou ended up creating a clumsy album guaranteed to please no one. His diehards couldn't possibly have liked the sound of this record, but the radio wasn't going to touch badly sung lyrics like this. So who was this record for? It's half deeply personal and half a commercial sellout. Clive Davis at Arista must have been pulling out whatever hair he had left after hearing this one. Lou changed labels after this LP...big surprise!

Of course, Lou Reed never makes entirely worthless albums, just because his worst efforts can be perversely interesting. "Think it Over," his proposal to new wife Sylvia, mostly escapes undamaged from the generic music. "So Alone" is not a bad Woody Allen NYC comedy-drama set to music. "Teach the Gifted Children" is a slightly mawkish-but-tolerable plea for humanity copped from "Take Me to The River." Still, there's not a song on this LP you'd ever want to see him play live.

Maybe it's cruel to bash a well-intentioned album. Even Lou knew something was wrong and returned to the stripped-down guitar sound he does best on subsequent albums. It's easy to call this his most forgettable album, though. And in some ways, it's less listenable than "Metal Machine Music."

After creating one of his most personal albums with THE BELLS (1979), Lou Reed seemed to be still on a bit of an introspective kick for the follow-up GROWING UP IN PUBLIC. But while THE BELLS saw Reed hopping trends with disco and fusion, PUBLIC finds Reed returning to matters of the heart---well, almost. The album's set-up is almost similar to that of TRANSFORMER with another close ear turned towards mainstream radio. Unsurprisingly, PUBLIC was not the commercial juggernaut that TRANSFORMER was, but it certainly deserved to be. This album seems to have a concentration for backing vocals as shown on the inspirational "How Do You Speak To An Angel", the darkly humourous and sadly-true-to-life "The Power of Positive Drinking", and the gospel-tinged "Teach The Gifted Children" (featuring a deliberate lift of "Take Me To The River"). As always, the overly commercial sound is weighed down by Reed's highly intellectual and emotional lyrics, which are his most personal since BERLIN. Seeing as how PUBLIC was released in early 1980, just as synthesizers were beginning to become an integral part of American pop music, it's no surprise there's a prevalence of those as well. For someone so hellbent on reaching the American mainstream, Lou Reed didn't hold back, that was for sure. While this album could have brought back the high commercial success of TRANSFORMER, the nearly-40 Reed maybe needed some time off after GROWING UP IN PUBLIC, and he did by taking two years off to get sober and grow up a little. This tumultuous period would be documented on his wonderful BLUE MASK.