Lou Reed New York March 12 1978 early show audience recording

Bottom Line Club
New York
12 March 1978
(early show)

track 01: Gimme Some Good Times 3.07
track 02: Satellite Of Love 6.08
track 03: Leave Me Alone 19.06
track 04: I Wanna Be Black 8.06
track 05: Lisa Says 6.29
track 06: Walk On The Wild Side 4.47
track 07: Coney Island Baby 10.30
track 08: Dirt 11.13
track 09: Street Hassle 11.51
track 10: Pale Blue Eyes 6.06
track 11: Sweet Jane 4.33

Lou Reed: guitar, vocals
Stuart Heinrich: guitar
Ellard "Moose" Bowles: bass
Michael Fonfara: keyboards
Marty Fogel: sax
Michael Suchorsky: drums
Angela Howard: backing vocals
Christine Faith: backing vocals
Don Cherry: trumpet

lineage: trade cassette - CDr - (EAC, secure mode) - WAV - FLAC (level 8) - you

transfer to WAV by EM
uploaded to Dime January 2008 by lurid_uk

Lou started his tour to promote the "Street Hassle" lp with a few warm-up shows at his favourite local venue, the Bottom Line Club.
(It's not clear from the programme whether he played 10th, 11th and 12th March or just the 10th and the 12th). He planned to return
here in May for a 5 day residency - binaural tapes of those May shows would later be released as "Take No Prisoners".

This is the early show from 12th March. Many of the songs get funky, extended workouts, with Lou's guitar very much to the fore.
The early show from March 10th was reviewed at the time in the UK press by STANLEY MIESES. I think that his words are also
relevant to this recording, so I'll reproduce them here:

#######
"Caught In The Act" by Stanley Mieses
Lou Reed
NEW YORK: I must have seen Lou Reed a dozen times since 1966, but never before this past week's peformance at the Bottom Line
have I heard him open up on his numbers and cut loose on guitar with such intensity - and success. "Street Hassle" (the record)
doesn't begin to scratch at the satisfying level Reed reached in his opening show, and he reportedly kept up the same incredible pitch
throughout the weekend stand. And he did it without playing or referring to "Heroin," or "I'm Waiting For My Man"; the nearly
overplayed "Sweet Jane" and "Rock And Roll" were kept for the encores, where they illuminated an already remarkable past, and an
already remarkable show. Lou Reed at his best - and I'm ordinarily not given to gushing, but this was as good as I've ever seen him - is
a master of the quick sketch, and a true voice of the outrageous. When he's not catatonic or contrary and surly, he exhibits a quick and
cutting humour and an infectious pulse. He's ruthless, vindictive and spiteful, and apology is not in his otherwise all-embracing
vocabulary. He either wants your soul, or wants to dance on it.
His new nine-piece band (including the new lead guitarist, Lou Reed!) doesn't come on flashy, but their musicianship is never
subordinated to the master's, only their stage profile. The rhythm section of Ellard "Moose" Bowles on bass, Michael Fonfara on
piano, and Michael Suchorsky on drums is the most sympathetic and accomplished Lou has ever worked with. The two off-the-street
chick singers could have been used more judiciously, and the two horn players didn't really have arresting solo chops, but the ensemble
played tight and hard behind Reed's stringent guitar playing.
So the compositions that benefited most were the ones that best bore riffy repitition; the one that hit home hardest was a long
stomper called "Leave Me Alone". Lou's complaint grew into a menace and then turned downright scary as he ground his teeth into a
stinging solo that recalled the electricity of the Cale-Reed jams over a decade ago. "Dirt," in which Lou lays out the single-most-evil-
but-grudgingly-true rap about too many people we all know, was hard and tight. "Lisa Says" and "Coney Island Baby" both gave
Reed the opportunity to shift gears, and he displayed a penchant for dances he must have learned as a teenager out in Freeport, Long
Island, and a sense of maximum-effect-from-minimal-movement that only a shrewd performer could develop.
It's hard to imagine that so many of his nuances are appreciated outside New York, but he's a pretty seasoned chameleon. To wit, he
had the liberal element in the audience changing skin with him on "I Wanna Be Black," a song so raucously offensive and beyond irony
that it makes "Short People" sound serious and complimentary by comparison.
Whatever it is, animal, vegetable or mineral, that has helped Lou Reed find this expansive state, it is a valuable element to keep around.
His rare good moods add so much to his shows, because Lou Reed is at his most effective not when he's uptight, but when he's
comfortable. And maybe the three-minute song isn't his forte either, come to think of it. After all these years, it was still crystal clear
that Lou Reed still has something to say, and unlike the poor sucker in "Dirt," Reed's voice is alive.

(originally published UK 1978, magazine unknown, but probably Melody Maker)
########

This is a great show, with both Lou and band on top form - the presence of Don Cherry (who the above writer doesn't seem to have
recognised!) is icing on the cake. The audience recording is a bit dense, and there's a bit of tape hiss, but it's well worth persevering with.
The tape was flipped over during "Wild Side", so there's a brief jump during that track. I think that parts of this recording were used as
the source for the "12-3-78" vinyl bootleg lp, but those folks had access to a lower generation tape than this one: a soundboard
recording of this show would be a treat.

After these shows at the Bottom Line, the tour started proper in Vancouver on March 16th, then wove it's way back across the USA
to end back in New York in May. There's a revealing account of these times in "Life On The Road" by Dinky Dawson and Carter Alan
- they allege that Lou spent the entire tour on a drink/drugs binge, and that he was blown off the stage each night by the support band,
Ian Dury and the Blockheads.....

At the end of the USA tour, Lou was scheduled to begin a European leg by headlining the proposed open-air Charlton Festival in
England on July 22. In the event, that Festival was cancelled and Lou's European tour was reduced to a few mid-August dates in
Holland followed by a set at the Bilzen Jazz Festival (!) in Belguim. After that he went into the studio to record "The Bells": his next
public outing would be a tour to promote that lp and it would start in Europe, spring 1979.

Disrtibute widely but do not sell!