Hidden Places: Dirty Blvd.

Lou Reed: Dirty Blvd.
[purchase] 

I’m sure that I was listening to some song that mentioned some place that wasn’t in the title when I thought of this theme, but I suggested it so long ago that I can’t remember what song it was. So, when I tried to figure out what to write about, I decided to write about my favorite city. The city that I’ve loved since my father brought me into Manhattan from my birthplace in Queens when I was a little kid, to go to museums, and magic shows, and just to walk around and spend time with him. Where I’d go with him to court, or to hang out in his office. And when I got older, where I’d sometimes come with friends, to go to the theater or museums or restaurants or ball games. Where I went to law school, lived for almost a decade, met my wife and started a family. And where I worked until a few years ago, commuting on the train after moving the suburbs, and loving the excitement and bustle of New York. Except on the night they lit the Rockefeller Center tree, which made my usual 10 minute walk to the train an ordeal. I miss New York, having started working from home back in 2013, and I miss it even more now, when thinking about going to the City raises all sorts of new issues. (Interestingly, in 2013, I wrote about another song from the same album, although strangely as a tribute to my suburban home).

I have a “New York” playlist on iTunes, and the rules, such as they are, are that the song has to mention New York City, or some part of the City, or at least some recognizable location or feature of the City. I’m guessing that I’ve missed a few, but it currently has over 500 songs on it. It’s possible that no artist has more songs on the list than Lou Reed, who was born in Brooklyn and grew up on Long Island, but has long been associated with New York from his move to the City in 1964 to be a songwriter, and especially from his co-founding the Velvet Underground. The Velvet Underground was, of course, part of the New York underground scene around Andy Warhol and his “Factory,” and more than a few of their songs were about the seedy, druggy underbelly of New York, such as “I’m Waiting For The Man,” a tale of scoring drugs on Lexington Avenue and 125th Street in Harlem. 

Reed’s focus on New York continued after he started his solo career, including his biggest hit, “Walk On The Wild Side,” which mentions the city itself, and the Apollo Theater, and also referred to members of Warhol’s clique. Again, Reed focused not on the mainstream, but on the marginalized part of New York, because that was the life he was living and those were the people that he knew. 

For 1989’s New York album, Reed, approaching 50, and thus an elder statesman, put together an entire album of observations of the City. In fact, Reed’s liner notes instructed listeners to listen in one sitting, “as though it were a book or a movie” (although I know few people who read a book in one sitting, but you get the point). It’s a bleak album, about a bleak time in New York. I loved the album, although I have to admit that things for me were the opposite of bleak—I had a high paying job, a nice apartment, and best of all, I had been married to the love of my life for about four months. 

Still, I was able to appreciate Reed’s observations and lyrical wordplay, and the tight, stripped down, music from Reed, guitarist Mike Rathke, bassist Rob Wasserman and drummer Fred Maher (with some guests, including former Velvet Underground drummer Moe Tucker), which was perfect for the songs. The album was critically acclaimed, and the single, and our featured song, “Dirty Blvd.” was a No1. hit on Billboard’s Modern Rock chart. 

“Dirty Blvd.” is not a hopeful song, by any stretch of the imagination, about Pedro, from a poor immigrant family who, because of the city’s (and country's) mistreatment of both those groups was destined to fail. It’s an angry song, contrasting the wealthy at Lincoln Center, only blocks from the rundown hotel where Pedro lives, with the difficulties of his life.  In one of the most memorable passages, Reed sings: 

Give me your hungry, your tired your poor I'll piss on 'em
that's what the Statue of Bigotry says
Your poor huddled masses, let's club 'em to death
and get it over with and just dump 'em on the boulevard 

By the way, guesting on background vocals on the song is another New Yorker, Dion DiMucci. 

Although since 1989 much more of Manhattan, and the other boroughs, are gentrified, and safer than back in the era described in New York, income inequality in the City, and elsewhere, is worse than ever. And the current administration’s anti-immigrant policies even led to one advisor, whose name I will not type, attempt to distance the Statue of Liberty from Emma Lazarus’ iconic verses. The album still holds up, mostly because of the music and lyrics, and also in part as a period piece and in part because of its timelessness. 

New York City has, like most of the country, taken a hit from the coronavirus and the failure of our national “leadership” to take appropriate action in face of the pandemic, but contrary to the recent statement from the liar in chief, it is far from a ghost town. My son and daughter-in-law stood on line for more than two hours the other day to vote, which is a lot of ghosts. In fact, although things are generally not going well, there’s some evidence that New York City is attracting new people, which it always has, from well before the days that my ancestors showed up here from eastern Europe (one, by way of England) before and just after World War I, and whose energy and vitality has always been fed by immigrants from other countries, and from other parts of the United States. 

[I found out late last night that yesterday, October 27, 2020, was the seventh anniversary of Reed's death, which didn't enter into my decision to write this piece.  But if I had known, I would have tried to post it earlier.  Oh, well.]