ear. Binaural recordings are generally only effective when the user listens to the album through headphones, and do not generally translate correctly through stereo speakers. Reed's particular binaural recording system was developed by Manfred Schunke of the German company Delta Acoustics; Schunke is credited as an engineer on Street Hassle. Reed would continue to use the binaural recording style on two more releases: the 1978 concert album Live: Take No Prisoners and the 1979 studio album The Bells. Songs and composition As was common on early Reed solo albums, Street Hassle contained a song originally written during Reed's days in the Velvet Underground—in this case, "Real Good Time Together," which had been previously released in 1974 on 1969: The Velvet Underground Live. "Dirt" is allegedly about his ex-manager, Steve Katz. AllMusic editor Mark Deming has written that "the title cut, a three-movement poetic tone poem about life on the New York streets, is one of the most audacious and deeply moving moments of Reed's solo career." Biographer Anthony DeCurtis describes the album as being largely motivated by and representative of the end of Reed's three-year relationship with Rachel Humphreys, a trans woman who is believed to have died of AIDS in 1990 and been buried in a Potter's Field on Hart Island in the Bronx. DeCurtis summarizes the title track as "something of a requiem for Reed and Rachel's relationship." In a 1979 article for Rolling Stone, Mikal Gilmore refers to Humphreys as the "raison d'être" for the album as a whole. Critical reception Street Hassle was met with mostly positive reviews, such as from Rolling Stones Tom Carson, who called the album "brilliant" and "a confession of failure that becomes a stunning, incandescent triumph—the best solo album Lou Reed has ever done." Robert Christgau of The Village Voice, however, gave the album a lukewarm reception, observing that "despite the strength of much of the material," he found the album's "production muddled, its cynicism uninteresting, [and] its self-reference self-serving." Tim Lott of the Record Mirror said, "Lou Reed has been a musical corpse for years now. Street Hassle is a creative nadir." In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Mark Deming noted that while "time has magnified its flaws," Street Hassle was "still among the most powerful and compelling albums [Reed] released during the 1970s, and too personal and affecting to ignore." Track listing All tracks written by Lou Reed. Side