The concept of the album is interesting. You can't do a greatest hits package without a single hit, and someone was really exercising creativity in subtitling the album "classic performances."

But try to listen to the album in its proper context: remember that the late seventies' most enduring contribution to humanity was herpes. And as the liner notes convey, this collection could be justified because it shows Reed coming of age, discovering romance and relfection after years of cynicism. Here we have the seminal influence on punk rock doing love songs and happy music just as the Sex Pistols and the Clash were creeping into the public consciousness.

The most interesting part of this album is that it reminds us that Lou Reed is always going against the grain, and is always more than a bit ahead.

Now, in the mid-eighties, Sid Vicious dead, the Clash has broken up, and people are listening to treacly love songs and talking about getting married (something Reed does quite a bit of on 1980's Growing Up In Public, whose selections are included in this compilation).

The first side of the album is a 1978 live performance from New York's Bottom Line of three songs from Reed's early post-Velvets career. The soulful "Coney Island Baby" is even more soulful live, "Berlin" is more bittersweetly melancholy and "Satellite of Love" gains a full-bodied, joyous harmony and electricity that it lacks on the more sedate studio recording. City Lights is worth the purchase price for these three selections alone, since they're unavailable elsewhere.

The second side follows a lyrical theme of romantic desire and longing for connection, but the music is pure cut-loose rock 'n roll. In fact, most of the sadness and restraint is left behind on the first side. "Senselessly Cruel" is an easy adumbration of the kind of danceable music that Reed has been producing more recently. "City Lights," a reggae-funk tune written with Nils Lofgren, is about looking for love ("Don't those city lights bring us together?/Together") instead of hate in the big city. And "Looking for Love," a rough-and-tumble number, touches on the seamier side of that pursuit.

The album hits its peak when Reed assays the extremes of his emotional range. "Temporary Thing," with its high-pitch backbeat and religious-chant vocals, delves into Reed's usual sphere of bad relationships, bad karma, and bad moods. It isn't pleasant, but it is pure and passionate, and it leaves us with Reed's optimistic message that even the worst of things is just a temporary thing.

But marriage, in Reed's mind, is not a temporary thing, and he conveys this eloquently on the album's closing piece, "Think It Over." Taken from Growing Up In Public, an album noted for being "mature," the song is a marriage proposal complete with an ambiguous response about taking the time to think such a big move over.

As the song peters out, some contemplative notes beckon certainly and an answer, which of course comes later, in Reed's post-nuptial recording career. Which is only the latest in the trail of meteoric Lou Reed incarnations. And for those who like the new Lou and the old Lou, but never took the time to investigate the middle, this album provides an interesting look at the missing link.