Track Listing

1. Crazy Feeling
2. Charley's Girl
3. She's My Best Friend
4. Kicks
5. Gift
6. Oooh Baby
7. Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do
8. Coney Island Baby

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #96751 in Music
• Released on: 1989-09-15
• Number of discs: 1

Customer Reviews

Very human Lou
This is probably Reed's most atypical solo album and at first sounds lightweight and subdued, laking the great moments, drama and exciting highlights of his best work. Hard to appreciate immediately, repeated listens reveal Coney Island Baby's lyrical depth and melodic beauty. My favorites include the love song She's My Best Friend, the streetwise Charley's Girl and the sensitive narrative of the title track. Not his greatest album, but valuable as a showcase of Reed's human side in its warmth and simplicity.

Warm And Beautiful Lou
Transformer may be the Lou Reed album that receives all the plaudits but for me Coney Island Baby is Lou's true musical highlight.
There's a wonderfully laid back feel to this album with many of the songs displaying real warmth and beauty. Nowhere is this better demonstrated than on the album's title track which recounts Lou's school days with some wonderful doo wop backing. It would be hard to find a more beautiful song/performance in popular music generally besides within the Lou Reed catalogue.
'Kicks' is probably the other big song on the album and it's the only song that displays any real hint of menace (which is more often than not a Lou Reed trademark).
Songs such as 'Crazy Feeling', 'Charleys Girl' and 'A Gift' seem quite simplistic to a point but they become very seductive the more you hear them. Lou's lazy drawl really does draw the listener in.
The production is also first class - it's wonderfully crisp and uncluttered much like Lou's vocals.
Throughout his career Lou's style has been so varied that for some listeners Coney Island Baby won't represent what they consider Lou's best virtues, perhaps, but for me it's just about perfect.

A return to form - of sorts
By the mid-1970s, Lou Reed had alternately beguiled and appalled his long-suffering fanbase. His debut solo album was a sloppy set of warmed-over Velvets leftovers; 'Transformer' had charm in abundance, incisively shaped by the involvment of David Bowie and Mick Ronson. 'Berlin' was a grimly conceptual affair. The 'live albums offered up heavy metal makeovers of Velvets faves. 'Sally Can't Dance' was execrable. With 'Coney Island Baby', a relatively relaxed Lou assembled perhaps his first solo album that one could say was pretty good, as opposed to being either brilliant or brutal. It contains, in 'She's My Best Friend', a kind of AOR retooling of a (then) unreleased Velevt Underground tune; 'Kicks' seemed almost gratuitously sick, whilst the title track has a warmth and affection that is of great appeal. Plus, like a lot of Reed's most sentimental moments, it clearly shows how much doo-wop was an abiding infuence on him. He's never going to sing the birds off the trees, but at least he sounds like he's trying, if his ability to match music as powerful as his lyrics is notably lacking in one or two places. Well worthy of investigating.