LOU REED 1995-04-16 MELBOURNE Alternative Nation Festival solo performance audience recording

"....you call this work? ....huh?...."

Alternative Nation Festival
Olympic Park
Melbourne
16 April 1995

01 Sweet Jane 4.15
02 Satellite Of Love 3.43
03 I Love You Suzanne 1.54
04 White Light White Heat 3.07
05 Waiting For The Man 3.12
06 Walk On The Wild Side 3.49
07 Heroin 7.24
08 Dirty Blvd 4.18

Lou Reed: electric guitar, vocals
L7: backing vocals (I Love You Suzanne)

lineage: unknown generation TDK SA60 cassette - Pioneer CTS670D player- wav - flac (level 8) - you

"Alternative Nation" Festival, 1995

13 April: Chandler Sports Complex, Brisbane
14 April: Chandler Sports Complex, Brisbane
15 April: Eastern Creek Raceway, Sydney
16 April: Olympic Park, Melbourne

Lou made a number of interesting solo appearances during the 1990s, and this is one of them. Called in at the last minute after the headliners cancelled, he accompanies himself with his Telecaster and L7 provide minimalist backing vocals. This recording isn't as "boomy" as the extant recording from the previous day's show in Sydney, but the audience seem just as uninterested (and very noisy at times). Quality is mostly excellent.

Here's what Wikipedia says about the "Alternative Nation" Festival:

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Alternative Nation was a series of music festivals held in Australia in 1995. It was organised by a consortium of concert promoters, Michael Coppell, Michael Chugg and Michael Gudinski and backed by the Triple M radio network as an alternative to the Big Day Out. The event was held in three cities over the Easter long weekend: Brisbane on April 13 and 14, Sydney on April 15 and Melbourne on April 16.
The festival had an excellent line up but suffered when both headlining acts, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Stone Temple Pilots, withdrew from the event. Lou Reed was added to the bill in their place but without the show's main drawcards, ticket sales were slow. Unlike the Big Day Out, which featured various local acts at each city, Alternative Nation's line-up was the same at all three events, except in Brisbane where four more Australian bands, Budd, Catfish, Dreamkillers and Chalk were included. Somewhat cynically, however, all of the Australian bands that performed in Melbourne and Sydney, except Def FX, were relegated to smaller stages away from the main performance area.
The Sydney show was marked by constant rain throughout the day that transformed the venue, Eastern Creek Raceway, into a mudbowl and several bands were pelted with mud by the audience. Live's Ed Kowalczyk retaliated to this behaviour by throwing a guitar into the crowd at the end of his band's set. Along with the bad weather at all three shows, Alternative Nation's success was tempered by poor ticket sales and restrictions on alcohol sales and it was never held again.

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Here's a contemporary review of the Melbourne show:

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"Birth of a Nation" By Chris Johnston

Easter Sunday in Melbourne and it's pissing down. The sky is an endless wall of dark grey, and the wind has a definite chill. Alternative Nation does not need this at all.

Organised as competition to the wildly successful Big Day Out, this badly-named East Coast roadshow needed, at the very least, good weather to let people to forget all the bullshit surrounding its build-up-the cancellation of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and subsequent unsubstantiated accusations (by the Big Day Out promoters) of unethical dealings; similarly unsubstantiated rumours that local bands were threatened over which event they opted to appear at (in the end they only got a side-stage at Alternative Nation); and the name. Needing to label something so large and obviously corporate 'alternative' is pretty short sighted, and anyway, since when did Triple M (gaby-commercial shlock rock station) have anything to do with the counter culture? If McDonalds sponsored a health food festival we wouldn't believe them either.

Then it rained. In Melbourne, Sydney and on Brisbane's second day. So we sloshed through the puddles and grime and the cold to Olympic Park and at the gate they confiscated our umbrella. The security people said it might be used as a weapon. We said "no". They said "yes". We handed it over, conceding that because it was a telescopic umbrella they might be right. Thank God then, or thank the Devil, for L7 (****), who bounded onto an indoor stage with devilishly glowing horns stuck to their heads and became the first band of the day to really kick it. Joined at one point by a staggering Cosmic Psycho and at another by a topless roadie with a polystyrene guitar, L7 blitzed through the old ("Pretend We're Dead") and the new ("Stuck Here Again") with just enough punk energy and pisstaking to make us feel okay about even turning up.

L7 re-emerged a little later with the expertly understated Lou Reed (****) for some off key chorus signing on "I Love You Suzanne", then quickly disappeared. Reviews after Alternative Nation suggested that the crowd ignored Lou and his solo magic, but from where I was standing the opposite seemed true. The songs he rolled through- "Sweet Jane", "Satellite Of Love", "I Love You Suzanne", "White Light, White Heat", "I'm Waiting For The Man", "Walk On The Wild Side", "Heroin", and "Dirty Boulevard"- are among his best and surprisingly included some vintage Velvet Underground classics. Respect.

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The Festival is also briefly mentioned in the book "High Voltage Rock'n'Roll" by Christie Eliezer:

"Another disaster was 1995's Alternative Nation, a series of concerts held in three cities during the Easter long weekend in which Gudinski's Frontier Touring teamed with rival Michael Coppel Presents. Everything went wrong although the bill was a strong one. Two major acts, headliners Red Hot Chili Peppers and Stone Temple Pilots, pulled out. They were replaced by Nine Inch Nails and Lou Reed, who were paid a fortune to get them on board at short notice, but who added nothing to boosting extra ticket sales. A last minute change in venue in Sydney meant that the kids had to work out whether they wanted to make the trek way out to the boondocks. The Brisbane venue was right next to a church and the faithful were less than impressed with American rapper Ice T's copious and highly amplified use of the word "motherfucker" during his set. The kids thought the tour was a cash-in on the highly successful Big Day Out tour which shifted 250,000 tickets over six cities. Alternative Nation's broadcast partner Triple M playlist did not include most of the "alternative" acts to provide publicity. Finally torrential rains wiped out Alternative Nation. The talk was that the festival lost $500,000 each day."

Included with torrent files:

1: Lou on stage, Melbourne 16 April 1995 (look at that haircut!)
2: scan of ticket for Brisbane 13/14 April 1995

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The best place to find accurate information about all aspects of Lou Reed's solo career is www.arrakis.es/~e.miquel/rnranimal/