This is the second event of this year's Cultural Olympiad I've attended and it's one of this year's American entrants selected by Anthony Hegarty who earlier in his career had been Lou Reed's backing singer and so was all the better to select which categories Lou would be performing in.
The suggestion was that LOU REED should go for the biggest Curmudgeon and the most crowd displeasing song choices. He looked a good choice for both categories and had qualified much earlier in his career for his athletics anthem Run Run Run as well as his Footballing antics in Coney Island Baby and of course for Finish Line: his mid 90's marathon running anthem. With an honourable mention for the photos of his early ball playing career (taken by Doug Yule) which appeared in his book '69 on the road and show Lou playing wide receiver to Moe "The Arm" Tucker's quarterback.
Due to the very high ticket prices for this show, it made it more expensive than going to see Soundgarden, Iggy & The Stooges and Cold Chisel and twice as much as his old team mate John Cale is charging for the same venue, this show didn't sell out. But to make it appear sold out, tickets were given to Olympics games makers and anyone else they could find to fill the seats as judging by conversations around me lots of people had never seen Lou before. A bit of a shock for someone with that dedicated a fan base.
Lou's current tour is From The Velvets to Lulu and on walking into the Royal Festival Hall, he's getting us all ready by having them play his Metal Machine Music Trio's album over the PA. When he comes on, he has the same band as last year's Greatest Misses tour with the addition of a backing singer with the unenviable task of singing harmonies with Lou. A tough job for a young woman, however resourceful she may be.
Lou stood centre stage taking his ovation for coming on and encouraging us to cheer more before he had played a note. His assistant handed him his acoustic guitar and he ambled to the microphone and spoke/sung into the microphone "I would cut my legs and tits off, when I think of Boris Karloff and Kinski, In The dark of moon," while strumming at what was either an out of tune acoustic or played so badly as to sound out of tune while the crowd hooted with laughter and Lou stared back with what at this distance looked like derision. He preoceeded to play some more bad acoustic guitar and signalled the band to come in as he continued singing Brandenburg Gate, the opening song on his much hated recent collaboration with Metallica.
Even with his own band this sounded like a turgid chug along of a slow ponderous riff with all sorts of bad lyrics that made no sense. As a song it was frankly awful and I was wondering if Lou was going to play the whole album. Thankfully, after muted applause I heard the magical first notes to Heroin and was cheering as the band slowly chugged and wound there way into one of The Velvet Underground's darkest songs, with the bonus of Lou singing every word more clearly than I've heard him singing in years. It was brilliant to hear him singing this with a band more than capable of bringing out the highs and lows of being a heroin addict.
I'm Waiting For The Man was the next classic to get the chug treatment with Lou slowing his vocals down and all the musical action taking place between the chugs as they grind away sounding a lot like Soundgarden. Yet, damn, this was good. Then they played one of the highlights of last year's shows Senslessly Cruel, which of course is a perfect song for a band that likes to chug with the Sax player going all out demented on his solos as Rob Wasserman's Bass and Tony Thompson's drums seem to fuse into this slow slow rhythym as Lou gets into trading vocals with his backing singer and is at times almost like a soul singer.
But then Lou made the announcement that rrom then on would be greeted with less and less applause. "This next song is from Lulu," he said drily, before they set everything to bludgeon with a chugging metronomic sledgehammer while Lou kept singing about how he wanted to see your suicide on The View. It was unsettling and tough to get through and saw a mass exodus for the bar. They followed that with the true endurance test that is Mistress Dread. Gee Lou, I guess I never want to hear you sing that "I Am The Table, I'm a woman!" ever again. The band were chugging and trying to make this sound like it was released on Southern Lord and in among the discordance it was just painful. I was glad when it was over.
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It couldn't be? Could I really be hearing the opening notes of Street Hassle? Yes, our reward for having to hear Mistress Dread was to hear Lou's great collaboration with Bruce Springsteen who isn't here to sing his part so Lou plays both characters in this tale of drug oblivion in 3 parts and the backing singer does all the linkages perfectly! It was incredible to hear him play this so well.
Then it was time to give Cremation from Magic & Loss the Lulu treatment as he has reworked this already difficult song to make it sound like it is perfect for Lulu. it was a painful version and nowhere near as good as when he played that album in it's entirety back in the 90's. It saw another flood of folks dashing to the bar as a result.
They then played the one and only quiet song of the night, an almost lullaby version of Think It Over from Growing Up in Public. Wow this band doesn't only chug and what a song choice! I would never have expected that one, especially following on from Cremation. They followed that by pleasing all the non hardcore fans by playing a really good version of Walk On The Wild Side that benefitted from having an actual girl to sing the Coloured Girls part although Lou no longer uses "Coloured." Still it sounded great and the sax solo at the end was perfect.
Sad Song sounded quite wonderful and really soared. It was by far the most upbeat this band sounded all night as Lou sang that "Someone else would have broken both of her arms," they sounded joyous and happy and the girl traded vocal lines and the chorus with Lou brilliantly. It was almost as good as hearing it with the full choir and Orchestra at the Berlin shows a few years ago.
They then closed the set with another song from Lulu, this time Junior Dad. It has to be the worst song on an awful album and it was wince-inducingly bad, sounding worse than on the album. A really bad way to end a gig. The applause that followed was muted and lots of the casual fans were streaming out while Lou introduced the band as they all took a bow and left.
They came back for an encore and did a super chugging version of White Light White Heat wherein Lou messed up the vocals several times but it didn't matter as it's always good to hear this classic and they did a pretty good job as the guitarist was soloing like crazy over Lou, Tony and Rob's chugathon before they took another bow and Lou thanked every member of crew whose name he could remember.
After they left we heard they had gotten a bronze in Biggest Curmudgeon as this set had far too many great choices to elevate him any higher not even putting the metal Machine Trio back on the Pa's ass. We left could help his medal bid and he only put down one heckler with a mild insult. and he got a Silver for Most Crowd Pleasing song Choices as literally no one had even dreamed he would play Cremation from magic and Loss: a bona fide left field odd choice.
On the way out I missed out getting the new Book that accompanies the re-issue of The Raven (with all new artwork) and didn't buy any of the posters that were frankly quite disturbing. I did however invest in a copy of Lou's Martial arts DVD "Final Weapon" that he stars in with Guangyi Ren and Mike Woods. The thought of an action movie with Lou's songs on the soundtrack makes it worth a watch. I hope.
So all in all both a great and an awful Lou Reed gig. From song to song you didnd't know which Lou will show up, but the current band are well worth seeing even if you may need the odd break to avoid the low points.
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