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Lou Reed's Berlin
About three weeks ago I saw Lou Reed perform his 1973 album Berlin, live at Royal Albert Hall. I'm not a huge Velvet Underground fan, and I can't say I know all of Lou Reed's stuff either, but Berlin is definitely an amazing album.
While 'Sad Song' and others were great, by far the most breath-taking part of the concert was 'Lady Day'. It's just after the album's opening vignette, and the absurd orchestration of the concert lent itself incredibly well to this already powerful song. Normally a harrowing dirge foretelling the loss of life when two unwitting strangers meet, the choir and live musicians made it into an absolute juggernaut. As it washed over me I kept thinking, 'This is the best concert I've ever been to'. I'll admit it: I wept.
Unfortunately Reed wasn't able to maintain that level of energy. His delivery for the most part was tired and tiresome, as if he'd sung the album too many times. Since this was the 33rd performance of the tour, that's probably not far from the truth. Rather than the album's offbeat but ultimately principled delivery, he tended to speak/mumble the words about a measure after he was meant to, often giving the impression that he wasn't quite sure of the words.
This kind of inept improvisation didn't blend well with the rest of the stage's virtuoso embellishment of the original. The choir, the guitarists, the backup singers -- they made the concert what the album would have sounded like if Reed had more money than Bowie was apparently willing to give him at the time. The only criticism I have is that it was so polished that it sometimes verged on arena rock, especially during the guitar solos. Unfortunately, despite the great music, Reed wrecked most of the songs, notably 'Caroline Says I' and 'II'. While 'How Do You Think It Feels' and 'Sad Song' benefited enough from the live musicians to overcome his sloppy delivery, most of the rest of the performance was more or less ruined by it.
I'm really glad I saw this concert, but as a whole it didn't really measure up to the 70s. And we may as well just face it: this is a bleak-as-hell album; maybe it could only be properly performed in the grim introspection of the 70s.