I’ve been revisiting mid 70’s Lou Reed a lot lately. Berlin to Rock and Roll Heart. Vital sounds to me. Back when I was a youngster reading Creem Magazine, you couldn’t get past a Lou Reed reference or photo or mention or quote or article or review for your life. So it’s ingrained in my psyche. I knew my Transformer from Street Hassle from The Bells before I was in High School because he was everywhere you went back then, forever on rock radio talking about Warhol characters repeatedly, on record store posters, even on early MTV. By 1989, New York came out like a flash getting a lot of praise and plays, Lou cashing in on his past with a hipper new sound still ever the modern street-talk prose soothsayer. This was around the time that I first accidently dove headfirst into his performance from December 21, 1973 at the Academy of Music, which encompasses the albums Rock and Roll Animal as well as Lou Reed Live.
My pal Baird and I used to work on a lot of arty projects back in 1988-89…film editing, visual feedback collages, industrial music videos, live band footage. And while we worked long hours on these various projects, we also took breaks for French Cinema, Psychic TV, and deep album listening. One morning while stopping by his Belle Street pad to edit something or other, over endless cups of coffee he puts Rock and Roll Animal on the turntable. Baird could have put anything down to play because that was his nature, from avant-garde to blues to fusion to new wave to punk to funk to alternative, the man was a musical encyclopedia. He was SHOCKED that I had never heard the album. “This is better than any of his studio albums! Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner make Lou sound really heavy. It’s pretty seminal stuff, how have you never heard this?” He proceeded to crank up the stereo, the ‘Intro’ taking over the sunny Texas morning with a bang. It sounded like Mott The Hoople jamming on Velvet Underground songs, which in itself is joyous and irreverent! Every song hit like it was NEW. Baird spun the companion album, Lou Reed Live, right afterwards with Dick and Steve coming out of different speakers as the entire rock and roll onslaught spilled archetypes out of the speakers into the air to my amazement. It was like hearing Lou for the first time again, seeing him under a new microscope, the realization of why every journalist in the 70’s had something to say about him. This is the epitome of ROCK AND ROLL: dirty, loud, contemptuous, driving, insolent, and aloof. How had I never heard this, indeed! They became my favorite albums of Lou’s. His studio works pale in comparison for me now, even listening back now with older wiser ears. That performance on December 21, 1973 is indelibly melted into my sonic life. Today it still sounds perfect to me.
Dancing in the Moonlight of our Existence 