| Lou Reed concert, blah blah blah. You have been warned. |
[Jul. 4th, 2008|05:49 pm] |
| [ | Mood |
| |  nostalgic | ] |
My first very own homemade bootleg sounds like pure and utter shit. Partially, I suspect, because my li'l Zen only does recordings at an underwhelming 64kb/s(!!) and in mono; partially because the bass was pretty intense (too much so, I thought) and the microphone just can't handle it. Some parts - i.e. the quieter bits - sound pretty acceptable (as in "you can actually make out what they're singing/playing-acceptable", not as in "sound quality-wise-acceptable"), but his voice and the rougher parts - i.e. most of the damn thing - can only be compared to listening to a poorly tuned FM radio with the bass way too loud, playing in a car several blocks away.
It truly does grate on the ears. You would think it had been recorded 40 years ago (and I don't mean that in a good way) - the only upside is that Bob Ezrin's wailing children aren't quite as harrowing as usual.
The concert itself was ace. Berlin is, well, Berlin. The performance was quite energetic (Lou actually even played the guitar, as opposed to just posing with it and strumming a few chords occasionally, as seems to be his wont when feeling uninspired). I particularly loved Sad Song; it is very... cathartic? (or maybe it was just my relief to be through with Caroline Says II/The Kids/The Bed) - "I'm gonna stop wasting my time/Somebody else would have broken both of her arms" ... so beautiful.
The three song encore consisted of Satellite of Love (I wish he wouldn't let Fernando Saunders sing half of it - I love Fernando, but he's not Lou. The children's choir did a lovely job with the backing vocals though), Rock & Roll (rocked, as usual) and the new song Power of the Heart (kind of a let down after the other two, but I suppose he wanted a quiet number to end on, and it's new and stuff).
Before the concert started, Like A Possum was played on loop while footage of crushing waves was projected onto a screen. It was quite lovely. Now I need to buy Ecstasy.
It was oddly amusing to hear the New London Children's Choir's distinct, proper British pronunciation; it seemed so out of place juxtaposed with Lou's NYC growling and the grim subject matter.
The concert movie + Q&A session the night before was awesome as well - he was in an amazingly good mood and even made a few humorous remarks occasionally(!) - but damn if I can remember what he actually said. Paraphrasing a couple of quotes from memory:
(On iTunes/mp3s in general) - "You've got all the music in the world - and it sounds really bad." (Audience laughs.)
"Mp3s are kind of like how CDs were when they were new. You remember when CDs were new? They were the worst thing you'd ever heard."
(Somebody asked what he thought of the actress playing Caroline in the movie, saying they were disappointed with her portrayal) - *shrugs* "C'est la vie." (Audience laughs.)
"Caroline could be anybody. There's a billion Carolines out there (...) She's a perfect Caroline. She should have 'Trouble' written across her forehead. You know, Caroline is trouble."
- "I think albums are too long these days. With vinyl, you had two sides of like, 22 minutes. Now you have CDs that go up to something like 79 minutes (...) It doesn't make the music any better. You know, telling a lot of jokes doesn't make someone funny." (Audience laughs.)
Somebody asked whether he'd do a similar thing with Metal Machine Music, to which he replied that there was "a band" (Zeitkratzer, presumably) that did it occasionally and that he would have liked to tour with them if given the chance. Then - at least I think it was in connection with that question - he added sarcastically: "But you don't see people going 'Oh, Lou Reed's Berlin! It's the chance of a lifetime!'" (at which point I felt sorely tempted to raise my hand and say that those words were pretty much what I had been thinking, verbatim, when I first heard he'd play it in Europe again, but I remained silent). He also mentioned Magic and Loss as an album where the songs - about two friends he had lost at the time - were connected in a way that might make it suitable for performing in the same way as Berlin.
... Crap, I really wish I'd had the presence of mind to record the Q&A instead as well. It would have been so awesome to be able to listen to it again. What else did he say now? He spoke about hearing a recording of Antony (Hegarty, of Antony & The Johnsons) for the first time and being so awestruck - "I could listen to him forever" - that he had demanded people track him down: "And then he'd been in New York all the time, 15 blocks down the street!"
A funny little detail with the movie was how, towards the end, they had tagged a minute or so of what looked strangely similar to the YouTube clips from Paris 1974 - platinum blonde, skinny Lou waving his arms around (pretty much as demonstrated in my icon above) - onto the newer film of him playing, giving an eerie but very cool effect. Somebody said the 'film within the film' (which consisted of some scenes with Caroline and Jim, and some scenes of seemingly nonsensical things such as floating furniture, all of which was intertwined with the concert film) reminded them of Warhol's films from The Factory, but Lou said he didn't think so at all - however, he said, the final result of images and film projected onto each other in this way had reminded him of the type of visual shows he'd used to do with VU.*
Was there more, I wonder. (There must have been, he went on for a good 45 minutes, if not more - I didn't check the time.) Here's hoping somebody else had the good sense to record something. I think I'll go have a look around. Edits will follow if my memory suddenly decides to work again.
*Did that paragraph make any sense at all? ... No, don't answer. |
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