NEW GLUE FROM LOU: What do Mayor...

NEW GLUE FROM LOU: What do Mayor Edward Koch, Ollie North, the Trumps, Jesse Jackson, Kurt Waldheim and Morton Downey Jr. all have in common? They are all targets of ire in Lou Reed’s incendiary, surprisingly political new album, “New York” (see Robert Hilburn’s interview on Page 60). Though the album has the raunchy fervor of a street-wise civics lesson, it isn’t all barbed broadsides. Reed displays a tender touch in “Halloween Parade,” a moving AIDS-inspired ballad set at a Christopher Street drag-queen march. The lyrics go in part:

There’s a Greta Garbo and an Alfred Hitchcock and some black Jamaican stud,

There’s five Cinderellas and some leather drags, I almost fell into my mug,

There’s a Crawford, Davis and a tacky Cary Grant,

And some Homeboys lookin’ for trouble down here from the Bronx . . .

This Halloween is something to be sure, especially to be here without you.

Reed is also involved in an unusual reunion project with ex-Velvet Underground cohort John Cale. The duo, who haven’t performed together in nearly 20 years, reunited in New York this weekend as part of a work-in-progress project sponsored by the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Reed and Cale have been commissioned to write a series of new songs as part of an Andy Warhol tribute that the duo will perform this fall--and perhaps release as a live album.