Apr 042011
What’s the most striking detail of this performance? (I know, it’s tough to determine “most striking” anything when it comes to Lou making his music as it was meant to sound.)
What’s the most striking detail of this performance? (I know, it’s tough to determine “most striking” anything when it comes to Lou making his music as it was meant to sound.)
Lou’s muscle tone on his arms and erect posture of a guy who works out
..also… Lou’s frustration with Dave Pirner over the fact that he can not make eye contact with the dude due to his hair covering his face.
What’s that hanging from Lou’s belt? A holder for his Walkman?
Among the many striking features of this performance that’s what caught my eye: Mansatchel? Hipflask? Similar to what you thought, BigSteve, a holder for a tape recorder (ie, maybe he was also working as a correspondent for Rolling Stone that night)?
jungleland2’s thoughts, however, are just as valid.
I’d say it’s that dead poodle he’s got strung over his scalp.
This clip is also a good example of how Lou holds and uses the pick on the guitar differently than anybody else. Notice how the emphasis is on upstrokes rather than downstrokes.
I think maybe he was there to bootleg the Soul Asylum concert. He probably had to get up and sing just so he wouldn’t get thrown out.
He holds it the way it was meant to be held!
Most striking: the way Lou has captured that phase in between Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno during the transformation scenes on the old Incredible Hulk TV show.
I do love the idea of Lou Reed being forced into bootlegging a Soul Asylum show and getting caught, like so much Rerun. The only other thing I can come up with for what he’s got there is a pair of binoculars. It’s definitely not long enough to be where Lou stashes his nunchuks.
I like the Asylumer to our left relative to Pirner who is very casually rocking a Shaggy outfit. And the guy on keys in the background who appears to be wearing some kind of ’90s Los Angeles Kings jersey with the logo missing. Is that of those generic jerseys they make for commercials where they can’t afford to the rights to have actual pro sports teams in them?
I am partial to the hard working drummer in this clip. Pretty sure that is Sterling Campbell, which would carbon date this to 1995-98. He’s also played with Bowie and Duran Duran. Shaggy is the late Karl Mueller.
I was kind of hoping it would be Lou striking Pirner in the face, but noooo……
I believe that’s the transmitter of his wireless guitar unit (you can kind of see in a few shots where his guitar cable loops up into it)…so he can “move about without all the…mucky-muck”, as Mr. Tufnel once put it.
Hey, I just noticed something even more striking – for me – than all these other incredibly striking things (even bobbybittman’s totally reasonable take on the thing strapped onto his belt): except for a couple of times (eg, the 32-second and 1:29 marks), Lou’s not playing the “secret” minor chord that he’s bragged about as the key to this song, a Bm! Now I’m confused about the implications this has for Lou’s music as it was meant to sound.
Nope, I was wrong – looks like his cable’s actually going to an amp. Huh…Mojo bag, maybe?
Could be Pirner didn’t know that chord. I’m actually struck by how this sounds pretty okay, considering. And Lou’s hair has looked much worse; i.e. that horrifying modified mullet he was sporting for a few years, there.
I noticed the same thing, and like bobby I assumed he was dumbing it down for Soul Asylum, who can’t be expected to play the chords as they were meant to be played.
Speaking for myself, I’d just like to say that this show/song is a classic example of the slow death-by-a-thousand-shitty-live-engineering-decisions of the electric guitar — in fact, of the live rock performance in general. Seriously, that band sounds so sterile and lifeless and fucking *perfect* — it’s awful.
I recognize that 70% of all live shows in rock’s “classic” era probably sounded like they were played inside a cave by guys connected to the venue via telephone — but I’ll take that any day over Dave Letterman house band-sounding shit like this. Rock is dead, and this is part of the reason why. Bring back the stank, please! (I believe this has something to do with Gergley’s conception of “animality,” but I can’t be certain.)
HVB, apologizing for having been away for too long.