Lou Reed – American Poet – Pilot 83
White light makes me sound like Lou Reed…
Two recent releases on the nmc label may be of interest to many of you reading this. The first is an excellent 1972 live recording of Lou Reed called ‘American Poet‘, which captures a refreshingly buoyant Lou with backing band The Tots live at the Hampstead Theatre on Boxing Day 1972, during the ‘Transformer’ tour. The recording was originally broadcast on US radio, and has since been a favourite among fans as a bootleg.
The show features material spanning Lou’s career up to that point including songs from the Velvet Underground, Lou’s first album and the then recently released ‘Transformer’. There is also a priceless interview with him about working with David and Mick Ronson during the recording of ‘Transformer’, and his thoughts on the Velvet Underground’s continued career without him, ‘Vicious’ indeed!
The CD booklet contains comprehensive notes relating to Lou’s post-Velvet’s career up to the release of ‘Transformer’, and many beautiful unpublished Mick Rock photos from the ‘Transformer’ cover session taken at the Scala Cinema in Kings Cross. Great stuff.
The Mick Ronson Memorial Concert – Pilot 94
The other CD is a re-mastered re-issue of the Mick Ronson Memorial Concert from the Hammersmith Apollo (formerly Odeon) recorded in April 1994, exactly one year after Mick’s death. The artists featured on this newly enhanced 3-CD set are too numerous to mention here, suffice it to say that this is the show that the pre-Cybernauts Spiders From Mars debuted. Apart from the usual suspects, the band was joined by original touring Spider, Nicky Graham, on piano and Bill Nelson on guitar.
The third disc of the set (Enhanced Video Disc bonus limited to 5000 copies) features live footage from the show of Roger Taylor performing ‘It’s A Kind Of Magic’ and the entire cast performing a rousing rendition of ‘All The Young Dudes’. Go here for a full breakdown.