LOU REED 1975-02-28 Lund audience recording from 1st generation cassettes RESEED

2014 RESEED NOTE: I've removed the press cuttings scans (I've left the artwork, ticket stubs and fan club material) and updated this info file.
2011 RESEED NOTE: these are the same .wav files as I originally uploaded in Feb 2008. I've fixed the SBEs, updated this info file and included (a few) contemporary scans.

"...now you know I've seen every two-bit movie that you've been in...."

Olympen Theatre
Lund
Sweden
28 February 1975

D101: Sweet Jane 6.03
D102: Coney Island Baby 6.01
D103: Pale Blue Eyes 5.41
D104: Waiting For The Man 7.51
D105: Heroin 12.18
D106: Berlin 6.44
D107: Lady Day 6.57

D201: Kill Your Sons 5.44
D202: Vicious 7.56
D203: New Age 5.48
D204: Satellite Of Love 6.10
D205: Walk On The Wild Side 7.18
D206: How Do You Think It Feels? 5.02
D207: Kicks 10.06
D208: White Light/White Heat 6.53

Lou Reed: guitar, vocals
Doug Yule: guitar, keyboards (?), backing vocals
Marty Fogel: sax
Larry Packer: violin
Bruce Yaw: bass
Michael Suchorsky: drums

A short report in "Oor", January 29 1975 said that Alan Freedman would play guitar on the tour- in reality I do not think he played at any of the shows.

lineage: 1st generation MAXELL and SONY C90 cassettes - Pioneer CT-S670D player - wav - flac (level 8) - you

original mono recording by Anders from Sektion E, Rad 2
transfer to wav February 2008 by lurid_uk
uploaded to Dime February 2008 by lurid_uk
reseeded on Dime February 2011 by lurid_uk
reseeded on Dime January 2014 by lurid_uk

This concert in Lund was the 2nd of four in Scandinavia and Lou could always be sure of a good reception there. So it proved to be, and it must have been good for tour morale to actually get some successful shows "in the can" after the disasters of the first couple of weeks. The Italian shows had suffered from politically-motivated crowd trouble, and a German show was cancelled. (Reputedly, Doug actually fronted another of the German shows himself when Lou was "incapable" but I'm not aware of any recording of that ever surfacing to prove it.)

Larry Packer was still playing violin at this stage, so he adds that little extra to the songs - even "Vicious" is graced with a mean violin solo. His playing isn't quite up to John Cale standards, but it makes for interesting arrangements of the songs. Lou's voice is pretty good throughout, although he resorts to "shouting mode" a bit towards the end of some songs ("New Age" in particular - after a fine start). The crowd are really worked up after "How Do You Think It Feels" ends, and are still clapping enthusiastically as "Kicks" starts. "Kicks" is hardly an "audience participation" song, but it takes the audience a little while to realise that, and some of them persist in clapping most of the way through it. Maybe as a result of that it doesn't quite have the impact that it usually has.....Lou seems distracted and misses his lines in a couple of places. "Rock And Roll" may have been played as a final encore, but it did not appear on the tapes I received.

Anders managed to get a reasonable quality mono recording of this show using a portable Phillips cassette recorder ("the cheapest model"). He later recalled in an email to me that Lou seemed to be "stoned or drunk". Victor Bockris goes further, alleging that Lou was taking speed intraveneously throughout this tour, visting a different "doctor" in each country and collapsing in convulsions on several occasions. This recording is not up to the same standard as Anders' superb stereo tape of Lou's 1977 show at the same venue, but it's still very listenable. The audience are loudly apparent in places, often all but drowning out the starts of the songs. There's been some damage to the master tape in a few places, but nothing too bad. There was also a cut during "Lady Day" which I patched together.

Here's a contemporary report from the UK press:

#####
"In Lou of Strife"

Lou Reed's European tour has finally recovered from it's disastrous start. You may remember that Lou and support band String Driven Thing were victims of political activists in Milan and then had similar trouble in Rome. After that, String Driven Thing had more trouble with rowdies while off-duty in Switzerland, and Lou had to cancel one of his five German dates through illness.
Now, however, things are supposed to be going swimmingly, with all venues sold out. At none of the gigs that Lou has played, we hear, has he done less than a two hour set which will come as good news to those fans, who on previous tours, have counted themselves lucky if he's done a second over 50 minutes.
A waxwork Lou, by the way, is now to be found in Madame Toussauds, though it's already out of date. It sports blonde hair and Lou's is now back to black again.

Record & Popswap Mirror
London
08 March 1975
######

artwork and ticket scans included

RIP Lou

share the music!

Images for all shows as well as full size images for this show.

Images for this show: