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Walk on the Wild Side

WALK ON THE WILD SIDE

 
"Walk on the Wild Side"  is a Lou Reed song from his 1972 second solo album Transformer.  It was produced by David Bowie.  The song received wide radio coverage, despite its touching on taboo topics such as transsexuality, drugs, male prostitution and oral sex.  In the United States, RCA released the single using an edited version of the song without the reference to oral sex.  The lyrics, describing a series of individuals and their journeys to New York City, refer to several of the regular "superstars" at Andy Warhol's New York studio.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 
In 1978, Chris Spedding was a key musician in one of the most ambitious concept albums of all time (and the best selling British concert/cast album ever), Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds.  Actor Richard Burton handled the narration, and the musicians are a virtual Who’s Who of the British rock scene of that era:   Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues, Chris Thompson of Manfred Mann, Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy, bass guitarist Herbie Flowers (that's him playing the prominent bass line on Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side"), David Essex ("Rock On"), and actress/vocalist Julie Covington; she and Essex had been appearing together in early performances of the rock musical Evita.  The album tells the story pretty much as The War of the Worlds was written by H. G. Wells (much of Burton's narration is word-for-word from the novel) decades before Steven Spielberg's film basically did the same; I consider War of the Worlds to be one of Spielberg's best movies and certainly his most disturbing. 
 
(November 2011)
 
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After the Velvet Underground broke up, Lou Reed mounted a decades-long solo career that started with a bang:  "Walk on the Wild Side" is hard to top as an I-can't-believe-what-I'm-hearing song, but it was as irresistible in 1972 as it is today and made it to #16 on the Billboard singles charts.  

 

(December 2013)

 

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But I likely will keep putting out what I call the “Story of the Month” (I have my web pages broken down into short “Items” and longer “Stories” on whomever or whatever I am talking about) that I uncover as I load up the web site. These Stories are on well known (well, better known anyway) songs and albums and rock bands and other topics that are not of the Under Appreciated variety. I started those last year and meant to list the ones in my year-end post last time but forgot, so here is that list from the past two years:
 
December 2013 – The Standells 
 
January 2014 – (skipped)
 
February 2014 – Hasil Adkins 
 
March 2014 – Bobby Darin 
 
April 2014 – Nuggets 
 
May 2014 – The Nerves 
 
June 2014 – The Outsiders (American band)
 
 
 
September 2014 – The Piltdown Man and Brontosaurus 
 
October 2014 – Walter/Wendy Carlos 
 
November 2014 – The Trashmen 
 
December 2014 – John Birch Society Blues 
 
January 2015 – John Mellencamp 
 
February 2015 – Child Is Father to the Man 
 
March 2015 – Dion DiMucci 
 
April 2015 – “Scotch and Soda” 
 
May 2015 – Stiv Bators/Greg Shaw 
 
June 2015 – “Walk on the Wild Side” 
 
July 2015 – “Lola”
 
August 2015 – Bob Dylan the Protest Singer
(Year 6 Review)