Lou Reed - WLIR Tuesday Night Ultrasonic Concert Series, Ultrasonic Recording Studios, Hempstead, NY, 12-26-1972

A weird thing just happened to me. I've never ever had a dream involving this blog in any way, but I had one last night. I don't remember much about it, but I know it involved me posting a Lou Reed concert from 1972. Actually, that was pretty much it. It was a very boring dream! But hey, I figure if my dream was telling me that, I'd better follow though. As it so happens, I know of only one Reed bootleg concert from 1972 that has excellent sound quality, so my dream must have been referring to that one. ;) Here it is.

After Reed left the Velvet Underground in mid-1970, he didn't do any recording or touring for over a year. In fact, for a time there, he worked as a typist in his father's accounting firm! But he put out an album in early 1972, simply called "Lou Reed," and another one in late 1972, "Transformer," and resumed touring around the middle of the year. All the other bootlegs of him from 1972 that I've heard sound fairly poor to awful. (If you know of any really good ones, please let me know.) But this one stands out because it was recorded for the radio. I've posted concerts by Dr. John, Jonathan Edwards, and Fleetwood Mac as part of this same radio show.

The good news is the sound quality is fantastic, due to it being professionally recorded for the radio. The bad news is the show is on the short side, probably due to that radio station giving Reed a limited amount of time. This is just shy of one hour long. Reed seems to have opted for playing his best known songs at that point in his career, so it's almost like a greatest hits. His "Transformer" album had been released the month before, and "Walk on the Wild Side" became an unlikely hit. He played four songs from that album, two songs from his first solo album, and five songs from his Velvet Underground days.

The only thing I did with this recording was break his talking between songs onto their own tracks. This was a bit tough because he usually started talking while the applause from the previous song was going full blast. I suppose he did that also due to him feeling rushed because of the time limitation for the radio show.

If you're a fan of the Velvet Underground, you should love this. The band was tight and rocking. Most of the songs are from his Velvet Underground days, since many of the songs on Reed's first two solo albums actually were written back then. Plus, the sound quality is far superior to virtually all known Velvet Underground live recordings.

01 talk (Lou Reed)
02 White Light-White Heat (Lou Reed)
03 talk (Lou Reed)
04 Vicious (Lou Reed)
05 I'm Waiting for the Man (Lou Reed)
06 talk (Lou Reed)
07 Walk and Talk It (Lou Reed)
08 talk (Lou Reed)
09 Sweet Jane (Lou Reed)
10 Heroin (Lou Reed)
11 talk (Lou Reed)
12 Satellite of Love (Lou Reed)
13 Walk on the Wild Side (Lou Reed)
14 I'm So Free (Lou Reed)
15 talk (Lou Reed)
16 Berlin (Lou Reed)
17 talk (Lou Reed)
18 Rock and Roll (Lou Reed)

https://www.imagenetz.de/fMn6G

I've discovered that it's really tough to find a good photo of Lou Reed from 1972. For starters, the vast majority are black and white. But also, I think he looked pretty bad on stage most of the time. He often opted to wear a heavy amount of pancaked make-up on his face, to go with the glam rock trends of that era. I don't think that look has aged well. Luckily, I found some photos of him in concert in Amsterdam in September 1972 without the heavy make-up. It's black and white, but it'll have to do. I added a little color to jazz it up.