LOU REED 1975-07-29 Melbourne, Australia (upgrade from the Waz From Oz archive)

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LOU REED 1975-07-29 Melbourne, Australia (upgrade from the Waz From Oz archive)

Post by schnittstelle » 10 Feb 2019 08:40

LOU REED 1975-07-29 Melbourne, Australia (upgrade from the Waz From Oz archive)


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Lou Reed

1975 Australian Tour

Festival Hall
Melbourne, Victoria
Australia
29th July 1975

One Off The Master Cassette

01. Tuning Up
02. Sweet Jane
03. Coney Island Baby
04. Leave Me Alone
05. Satellite Of Love
06. How Do You Think It Feels
07. Walk On The Wild Side
08. Vicious
09. Charley's Girl
10. Kicks
11. White Light / White Heat
12. Rock ‘N’ Roll > jam
13. It's Too Late Mama


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Band Personal
Lou Reed - Vocals & Guitar
Doug Yule - Guitar & Backing Vocals
Bruce Yaw - Bass Guitar
Marty Fogel - Saxophone
Michael Suchorsky - Drums
Michael Fonfara – Keyboards


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Thanks to the taper Andrew
Thanks to audiowhore for the 2019 transfer

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Sometime in the late 80’s Andrew kindly gave me some recordings dubbed from his masters of various shows he’d recorded in Melbourne.
Among them was this show. Not only was it Lou’s 2nd Melbourne show but the last concert of his 1975 Australian tour.
As usual back then I traded a few cassette copies with friends in the UK, which is where I assume future CD-R copies hailed from.
Over time I’ve received copies of this show on CD-R made from christ knows what generations not only with the tape flip silence in Charleys Girl but along with cuts/ fades between songs.
This 2019 version is the complete cassette from whoa to go with a run time of just over 81 minutes with no cuts or no fade outs between songs, plus the tape flip in Charleys Girl has been patched as smoothly as possible.

It’s Andrew that one can hear yelling out at times, the “C’mon Lou” & “Heroin’s quite popular!” are him, the sheila who can be heard often going “Wee!” is his then girlfriend.
I recall him telling me she wanted to be heard on the tape because it would give her a thrill, well she gets her wish multiple times. At times she talks about Lou’s monitor, changing his guitars, the cassette being flipped over
at the 45 minute mark after Charley’s Girl ends.
It’s Andrew in Coney Island Baby telling her about some guy that gave him the shits pushing & shoving but the rest of the discussion is drowned out by Leave Me Alone getting underway.

Like my earlier Sydney show you can hear Lou’s response to some audible comments such as the request for 'I’ll Be Your Mirror' which gets a sarcastic response of “With your luck?”.
Other times you just hear Lou’s reply to something that can’t be heard such as a not being able to be make out a song request, Lou simply states “Did that last show”.
He also tells an audience member “And you’ll get busted” why will remains a mystery, immediately an audible voice yells out “No way!”.
When How Do You Think It Feels ends many song title requests are yelled out, around the 6.15 mark an Aussie wag yells out “Take A Walk On The Fire Place!”, I kid you not,
I’ve replayed it umpteen times to make sure I’m hearing correctly & I can assure you it’s not Wild Side!
After Charleys Girl winds up something has occurred near the front section causing a slight delay, possibly involving a female as an audience member advises Lou “Ask her to dance Lou!”
Maybe she has climbed up onto the stage, whatever happened, it involved security as another audience member tells someone to tell the bouncers to get stuffed.

By the end of the tour it looks like Lou has done away with the Annie Had A Baby snippet in Rock And Roll, it just becomes a jam with a Gimme That Rock And Roll All Night Long vocal section near the end with a solitary No Hassling thrown in.
On trades lists I’ve seen the encore It’s Too Late Mama stating that it incorporates an early version of Street Hassle but in reality it’s just Lou singing / yelling 'Street Hassling, No Hassle, Street Hassle' in various parts of the song, nothing similar to the song Street Hassle that later came out in 1978.
But what is odd is that Lou at the conclusion of the song says “That was from Coney Island Baby”.
That LP which didn’t come out until January 1976 did so minus that very song, so maybe at that stage Lou did plan to include it on the album.

Lou then left our shores to visit New Zealand, where he did two shows, after which for still unknown reasons it all turned to shit & the rest of tour was aborted.

So Lou fans I hope as a voice can be heard yelling at the start of this show that you dead set rock your balls off to Lou’s 2nd Melbourne 1975 gig in the best sound quality available.

Thanks again to audiowhore for his work on this especially as there was a bit of bother with the original cassette.
Thanks Andrew wherever you are.

More Lou coming soon.

Cheers,

Waz

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Now if you want a good read then I suggest you read the below double review of Lou’s first Melbourne show on the 21st July 1975.
It appeared under the title LOU REED : GENIUS OR BORE? in the Aust music magazine Juke on the 6th August 1975.
The male reviewer seems infatuated with Lou but the female reviewer is the complete opposite, she attacks Lou in every way possible from his music, his gut, right down the cut of his jeans.
It’s probably the most negative Lou review I’ve ever come across!
Poor Helen as well as needing cigarettes she most likely was in need of a good seeing too, by the end of her review one wishes she’d have taken advantage of the suicide suit she tells us she wore to the concert!

Juke Music Magazine 6th August 1975
LOU REED : GENIUS OR BORE?

DAVID. N. PEPPERELL ENTHUSES ABOUT THE PRESENCE OF HIS LORD.

At the Festival Hall the side curtains are not drawn – an almost packed house to see Lou Reed and the Split Enz – a buzz of anticipation – not much make up or pseudo decadence now because that’s not what Lou is into now – that is if you read your overseas music papers and Lou fans tend to do just that – that’s how they heard about him and the Velvets in the first place.
Considering how many overseas acts have pulled about 2000 in this hall of late Lou’s gate of 5500 is pretty amazing – yet why not?
We are here to see one of the truly charismatic figures of rock – we are hopefully here to see him throw off the aberrations of the last year and a half and get back into what he does best – create music, play guitar and perform in that disturbing, joyful manner that is his and his alone – for it is true to say that he is not only ubiquitous but unique and capable of raising the mundane to the level of the marvellous.

The Split Enz just cannot be faulted on their performance – I wish I could say the same for the lighting crew whose complete lack of any sympathy with what the Enz were doing often made what they were doing impossible to comprehend and marred an otherwise superb performance.
“No Bother To Me” is still a joy every time I hear it, so is “Lovey Dovey”.
Timothy Finn’s antics seemed more appealing than ever and Noel's clockwork machinations, even though often performed in darkness were quite wonderful.
This is a remarkable band, consisting of remarkable players and singers and possessed of that indefinable thing that will always give them an open door to the miraculous.
Their finale song “ So Long, So Now” capped off a great performance and brought the house to it’s feet.
I only have two slight criticisms – one is that the band are obviously overworked and looked a little jaded, and two, that they do need some new material – two naturally is a result of one, I know.
I am intensely curious about what happened to Tim Finn’s pants too.

Lou sidled onto centre stage followed closely by Doug Yule (a member of the Velvets for all but two of their albums and a major force on “Loaded’).
He looked kinda snaky, a lot healthier, curly black hair had replaced the blonde, a guitar had broken the fragile umbilical microphone cord, you could see his eyes not black window panes – no longer the rock’n’roll animal but the rock’n’roll STAR.
From those first crashing chords of “Sweet Jane” played like only he knows how it was just all wonder and a measure of disbelief – a rebirth, a new genesis, a transfiguration.
The songs just tumbled down from great heights – an amazing “White Light White Heat”, a stellar “Satellite Of Love”, a meaner and truer “Waiting For My Man”.

He had wandered on and asked if we wanted to hear “Metal Machine Music” and seemed surprised at an overall affirmative response.
“It takes four hours to play” he mumbled and rocked on into New York land with Jane’s and Jack’s long day’s journey into night.
He called a finale with “Heroin” and this time the chills for real – no long drawn out guitar solos a la Hendrix (who admittedly Lou knew well)
Just the grits and soul and infinite despair of the matter – the who, why and therefore that reaches out of the night and never leaves us – this is the way the song was meant to be done – in fact this was the way all the songs were meant to be done –
maybe, paraphrasing Bob Dylan, decadence was just an interruption and indeed how boring blatant decadence really is – Lou’s decadence in this incarnation cannot be ignored for it almost cannot be seen.

But there in that hall Lou Reed appeared for the first time – I don’t know who that guy who came here last time was but I hope he’s hiding out somewhere from vengeful fans and won’t ever show his face again – to all that lucky 5500 you might have seen the
Greatest show on earth – to everyone else don’t miss the chance to see him next time round – a performance that can restore your Faith in this fast fading new music of ours – a return to full power by a major force in the music – a dream revisited of reality bent
Like a “g” string and twisted until it came out straight and true like a single white light.


HELEN BARRETT RUNS OUT OF SMOKES, THIRSTS FOR SOMETHING TO DO AND IS THOROUGHLY UNIMPRESSED.

We went along in our suicide suits but forgot the razor blades and distressingly ran out of ciggies during Split Enz’s act, the latter which as usual delighted our senses of humour and musical tastes.
And won our applause.
But for the case of this one night we were more intrigued with the prospect of seeing Lou Reed on stage. We were curious, prepared to be villainously debauched (debauched being a word which is thrown around with Reed’s name in gay abandon if you read New York newspapers & magazines), but we were also a trifle wary
after having read the Sydney reviews of his concerts there.
He was, in Sydney, to put it mildly, a dead bore.
And on the first night of his two Melbourne concerts we found him, to be quite blunt about it, a dead dead bore but alive, viz heart pumping etcetera.
But alive, no!.

As a rock and roll singer-songwriter or whatever he’s supposed to be or doing he’s a miss. Completely and utterly.
Which is why there was a lot of yawning going on from the lethargic bodies near-by and lots of knee nudging restlessly and glazed sorts of eyes which didn’t spend time on the hyped–up star but travelled the Barn (Festival Hall nickname) indulging in the sight of other people yawning, nodding off,
or trying to be ever-so cool (Reed still uses that awfully out of date phrase, too).

God did we need those cigarettes that we didn’t have. Or a book. And torch. Or a jigsaw puzzle or something to relieve the boredom which set in after his third song which we didn’t know what it was about except that musically it sounded like all the others (except for “Walk On The Wild Side” which reminds me
of Marlon Brando) and ended with the usual drawn-out blitz-off of sound. Mentally I made out this year’s Christmas shopping lists (food & presents) planned the next ten years of holidays and wondered how such a brilliant guitarist as the one with Reed has stuck around with him & stayed in the background.
There was no time or place for Reed to introduce his band. As far as he was concerned anyway.

We couldn’t understand a word the man sang or said. His diction is non-existent, his mouth-over-microphone as one mumbling member of the audience muttered and the only discernible contorted words turned out to be “We’ve gonna to play what we want” (patter during tune-up), “You talk, we tune-up” (patter threat during tune-up).
...”alone” from one of his songs or maybe several I dunno........and the obvious title words from his banned smash hit “Walk On The Wild Side” which he indicated he wasn’t going to do.
But he did. Ego? Or what? Very interesting.

He has low-key tonal qualities tending to sound like a poor man’s Bob Dylan. The comparison ends with the nasal sounds.
He lacks any presence on stage except for the fact you can’t miss him because he’s tall and skinny with a two inch gut hanging two inches from under his t-shirt, his tight jeans bulging with cigarette packs or tic-tacs and his lower length of leg is half a yard longer than his jeans
which were skimped, ugly, however tight and supposedly turn-you-on-baby they were meant to be.
Oh, he wiggled a bit and simulated what one imagined to be the various characters he writes about.

He played guitar which didn’t seem to make any impression on anyone except some of us kept waiting to see if he’d knock his right ear off with some of his clichéd mannerisms with it.
Both his lyrics and melodies run in the same vein and you begin to wonder just how hard up New York was to go out and accept all that Velvet Underground stuff and Lou Reed.
Times must have been lean.
He’s supposed to be a star. So hype says.

Maybe that’s caught up in the swaggering arrogance and sneering manner-the difference of it all. Mainly him. His.
Which makes him very ordinary. Maybe he’s nice to talk with. If he is, he’s a hell of a conman, then, explained by his comment to Stephen McLean in Sydney when questioned why his latest album sounds all the same.
“I just want to rip off my public”.

If he isn’t then he’s got a lot to learn.
We’ve already learned the most valuable lesson about him.
From him.

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