Yes indeed this is LOU REED'S 4th July party and hootenanny and we are all along to get in the party spirit with Lou. Or not as the case may be.
Well I made the mistake of being early enough to catch most of the support set by BUKE AND GASS who should really be called puke and gash as they are a piss poor couple of what look like Brooklyn buskers who people throw dimes at to make sure they don't starve but baulk at throwing quarters in case it encourages them. Oh they were bad. Tuneless boy girl duo devoid of any redeeming features that I could hear. I may have just seen too much good music recently but they were awful.
Which brings us to the star of tonight's party. Mow it takes something for an American act playing on the 4th July to not make one mention of the day's date, but that's exactly what Lou manages and having been led onstage and looking more doddery than he had just 2 days earlier at the Hop Farm, the band open the set in exactly the same way with Who Loves The Sun, only this time Lou misses several lines of the song as he is too busy picking at a sticker on his guitar strap to sing them!Thankfully the rest of the band sound good enough to forgive that.
They then played a slower and more drawn out version of Senselessly Cruel and this set a precedent throughout the set which was more or less the same as Saturday only longer, slower versions of the songs as if that show had exhausted Lou. Strangely, though, at the same time he sounded powerful and angry spitting out the lyrics of Temporary Thing and allowing the ever repeating refrain to carry them along.
Ecstasy was even slower, played at an almost snail's pace but still sounding really good even if Lou kept wandering about having a go at various band members instead of singing again which was a bit annoying as I'm sure most of us hadn't noticed any errors. Smalltown sounded great and was again a highlight only with the proper lyrics throughout. Hurrah!
Lou again treated us to his version of Mother and I have to say it's growing on me somewhat. It was also the first song of the night to get a fair sized ovation at the end as much for the viola solo as anything. It was followed by the first song of the night that wasn't played at the Hop Farm bash and it was a good version of Venus In Furs only spoilt a bit again by Lou spending too much time sending signals to the band rather than concentrating on singing the lyrics. Still, it sounded great even if his delivery was somewhat wayward.
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Sunday Morning and Femme Fatale followed as the (almost) acoustic section of the show and of course went down well as did a coruscating Waves of Fear that had the two guitarists in the band letting rip with Lou adding the odd flourish here and there whilst having an argument with the guy working his teleprompter for not keeping up. Blimey Lou don't you know the words to your own songs anymore? Still it also saw him communicating enough with the audience to get us all out of our seats and on our feet finally.
They closed the set with Sweet Jane. Again it was the Rock and Roll Animal version with this time a more extended intro and solo parts. It sounded awesome and guaranteed the sold out crowd went and then spent the best part of 10 minutes cheering and clapping to get Lou back out.
Well the encore gave us only the second song of the night they didn't play on Saturday and for me it was the one song that made going to this show more than worthwhile as for the first time in 27 years of seeing Lou play live at every opportunity I finally got to hear him play The Bells. Hell yeah! And this band really did a great job of building up the tension and the waves of noise as here come The Bells, one of those songs that I've always wanted to hear live and finally Lou has a band more than capable of delivering it even if his vocals sounded rather shaky tonight. Either way we stood cheering for a long time after Lou left the stage but to no avail. That was our lot and somehow Lou had managed to play for 45 minutes longer than Saturday while only adding 2 songs to the setlist!!
I hope Lou's voice holds out for the rest of his European tour and if you like this setlist then this show is well worth seeing at least once!
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