RIP to a truly great rock artist.

How 'bout some Dirty Blvd...

Pedro lives out of the Wilshire Hotel
he looks out a window without glass
The walls are made of cardboard, newspapers on his feet
his father beats him 'cause he's too tired to beg

He's got 9 brothers and sisters
they're brought up on their knees
it's hard to run when a coat hanger beats you on the thighs
Pedro dreams of being older and killing the old man
but that's a slim chance he's going to the boulevard

He's going to end up, on the dirty boulevard
he's going out, to the dirty boulevard
He's going down, to the dirty boulevard

This room cost 2,000 dollars a month
you can believe it man it's true
somewhere a landlord's laughing till he wets his pants
No one here dreams of being a doctor or a lawyer or anything
they dream of dealing on the dirty boulevard

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

Get to end up, on the dirty boulevard
going out, to the dirty boulevard
He's going down, on the dirty boulevard
going out

Outside it's a bright night
there's an opera at Lincoln Center
movie stars arrive by limousine
The klieg lights shoot up over the skyline of Manhattan
but the lights are out on the Mean Streets

A small kid stands by the Lincoln Tunnel
he's selling plastic roses for a buck
The traffic's backed up to 39th street
the TV whores are calling the cops out for a suck

And back at the Wilshire, Pedro sits there dreaming
he's found a book on magic in a garbage can
He looks at the pictures and stares at the cracked ceiling
"At the count of 3" he says, "I hope I can disappear"

And fly fly away, from this dirty boulevard
I want to fly, from dirty boulevard
I want to fly, from dirty boulevard
I want to fly-fly-fly-fly, from dirty boulevard

I find "Coney Island Baby" to be Lou Reed's most personal and introspective work, set to a slow but steamy tempo in which he laments his high school years spent in the suburbs of central Long Island, a place where "you're all alone and lonely in your midnight hour, and you find that your soul, it's been up for sale." And how years later, he can still recall his then-adolescent longing for New York City, an emotional place of refuge for him, even though "the city is a funny place, something like a circus or a sewer."

At its conclusion, Reed dedicates the song to "all the kids at PS 192," the Brooklyn elementary school he attended before his family moved away from the borough, and also to Rachel, a comely Greenwich Village transsexual who was his lover at the time, and who served as his inspiration for this particular album:

"And just remember different people have peculiar tastes,
and the glory of love, the glory of love,
The glory of love might see you through. [...]
Man, I'd swear, I'd give the whole thing up for you."

I think we're going to dearly miss Lou Reed, a true rock'n'roll pioneer in every sense of the term. And speaking for myself only, I know I'll always treasure his gritty, unsparing musical honesty and insightful urban sensibility.

From 'Magic and Loss' and the "Until the end of the World" soundtrack.

"You loved a life others throw away nightly...
Life's good, but not fair at all"