Wednesday, February 16, 2011

LR - 1983-02-26 - New York (early show)

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Dr. Forrester said...

Lou Reed New York 26 February 1983 early show audience recording

Bottom Line
New York
26 February 1983
early show

01: Sweet Jane 4.43
02: I'm Waiting For The Man 4.05
03: Martial Law 5.08
04: Vicious Circle 3.41
05: Sally Can't Dance 5.15
06: Don't Talk To Me About Work 3.00
07: Women 5.02
08: Waves Of Fear 5.11
09: Walk On The Wild Side 4.39
10: Pow Wow 3.03
11: Turn Out The Lights 4.20
12: Underneath The Bottle 2.24
13: New Age 5.26
14: Betrayed 3.45
15: Average Guy 4.09
16: Charlie's Girl 3.48
17: Kill Your Sons 7.49
18: Satellite Of Love 7.01
19: White Light White Heat 5.09
20: The Last Shot 4.19
21: Sunday Morning 4.21
22: Rock And Roll / Sister Ray 10.21

Lou Reed: guitar, vocals
Robert Quine: guitar
Fernando Saunders: bass, vocals
Fred Maher: drums

lineage: TDK cassettes - (Wavepad) - wav - flac (level 8) - you

original recording engineer(s) unknown
transfer to wav August 2008 by lurid_uk
uploaded to Dime August 2008 by lurid_uk

The "comeback" shows:

Bottom Line, New York 25 February 1983 (2 shows)
Bottom Line, New York 26 February 1983 (2 shows)
Bottom Line, New York 28 February 1983 (2 shows) (filmed and subsequently released by RCA Records on VHS/DVD as "A Night With Lou Reed")
Bottom Line, New York 01 March 1983 (2 shows)
Studio 54, New York 08 March 1983

Two and a half years after announcing his "retirement" from the touring circuit, Lou returns with a 4 night residency at his favourite local club, the Bottom Line, located at the corner of West 4th and Mercer. This was the early show on the 2nd night, and Lou's parents were in the audience, sitting at a table with his wife. The set list is almost unchanged, with the major variation being the inclusions of "Charlie's Girl", a very nice arrangement of "Sunday Morning", and a quick thrash through "Sister Ray" as a coda to "Rock And Roll". A great version of "Kill Your Sons" is extended to over 6 minutes with some superb lead guitar, presumably by Quine. Strangely enough, "A Gift" is dropped - maybe Lou was having trouble keeping a straight face while he was singing it....

These shows got very good reviews in the press, although I always thought they were more workmanlike than inspired. The booking was originally only for 3 nights - the shows on 1st March were added later. Quine's guitar playing was often singled out for praise, apparently to the eventual detriment of his relationship with Lou. Bockris alleges that Lou always resented sharing the limelight with his lead guitarist, to the extent that he (Lou) completely remixed "Legendary Hearts" to minimise Quine's input. (I have to say that I've heard the "original" mixes of that LP and Lou was kidding himself if he thought that ANY amount of remixing could have saved that miserable effort from mediocrity!)

"Legendary Hearts" itself got fairly bad reviews, in the UK press at least, and didn't exactly race up the sales charts.

I have compiled this show from 2 different sources: tracks 1 - 10 and 12 - 20 are (marginally I think) better quality, but are from an incomplete recording. Tracks 11, 20, 21 and 22 are from a different source which contained the whole show.

Included with torrent files:

#1: RCA Press Kit for "Legendary Hearts"
#2: Review of 26 February early show by Laurie Paladino, Creem magazine, 1983

The eagle-eyed among you will notice that the biographical information in the press kits for both "The Blue Mask" and "Legendary Hearts" is based on the same excellent essay by Ellen Willis. This essay was written in 1979 or 1980 for the Arista 2LP compilation "Rock And Roll Diary": the RCA PR team obviously knew a good piece of writing when they saw it - they used it again for "New Sensations" in 1984.

February 16, 2011 at 9:34 AM

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