Various Artists - 25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert, Madison Square Garden, New York City, 10-30-2009

I just posted the first day of the two-day long 25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert, in 2009. Here's the second day.

This second day concert followed the same format as the one on the first day. Read my write-up for more details about this two-day concert in general. Suffice to say that for this day, four major musical acts were chosen: Aretha Franklin, Jeff Beck, Metallica, and U2. Each of them hosted one fourth of the concert, and each had special guests join them during their sections. 

I was a bit surprised by the choice of Jeff Beck, since his record sales weren't nearly as big as the others. It turns out that section was supposed to be for Eric Clapton, but he got sick at the last minute and had to back out. So Beck was another "guitar hero" to fill a similar role.

I detailed in my write-up for the first day of this concert how I put a longer concert out of material from a DVD, plus the HBO broadcast, plus an audience bootleg. That's the same case here, except I didn't find an audience boot for all the otherwise missing songs. I did find such a boot for some of the Metallica songs, but that didn't even have the entire Metallica set. But it did get me "You Really Got Me," with Ray Davies of the Kinks as the guest. 

The Wikipedia page for this concert lists all the songs that were performed, in their correct order. Here's that page:

25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concerts - Wikipedia 

Based on that, it looks like I'm missing five songs. Here are the songs that I couldn't find:

Drown in My Own Tears - Jeff Beck (or possibly Aretha Franklin, I'm not sure)
Cause We've Ended as Lovers - Jeff Beck
Rough Boy - Jeff Beck & Billy Gibbons
One - Metallica
Stone Cold Crazy - Metallica 

That's too bad, but at least the vast majority is here. If anyone has any of the missing songs, please let me know. The first day concert that I posted is a little over four hours long, whereas this one is two and a half hours long. If you add in the missing songs, this probably totals about three hours, not four. So I think the first day one is a little longer, and better. I'll bet some of that was due to Bruce Springsteen, as his section on the first day was extra long.

One interesting note about this concert is that the collaboration of Metallica with Lou Reed - a very unexpected pairing - eventually led to the recordings of the album "Lulu," a joint Metallica and Lou Reed release, in 2011. 

A couple of performers who appeared in the first day concert also appeared in this one. Jeff Beck played a song on the first day, and had his own section here. Sting sang duets on both days. And Bruce Springsteen had his own section on the first day, and sang two songs with U2 here. Jerry Lee Lewis also opened both days with a song.

The sound quality is generally excellent. The quality is actually higher here than on the first day, because I only have one song sourced from an audience boot this time ("You Really Got Me," as mentioned above). I ran into many of the same problems with the first day, such as having to smooth over the transitions between songs by adding extra cheering noises. Read my write-up about the other concert for more details on all that. 

This album is two hours and 33 minutes long.

01 talk (Tom Hanks)
02 Great Balls of Fire (Jerry Lee Lewis)
03 Baby, I Love You (Aretha Franklin)
04 Don't Play That Song [You Lied] (Aretha Franklin)
05 Make Them Hear You (Aretha Franklin)
06 talk (Aretha Franklin)
07 Chain of Fools (Aretha Franklin & Annie Lennox)
08 Theme from New York, New York (Aretha Franklin)
09 Think (Aretha Franklin & Lenny Kravitz)
10 [I Never Loved a Man] The Way I Love You (Aretha Franklin)
11 Respect (Aretha Franklin)
12 People Get Ready (Sting & Jeff Beck)
13 Freeway Jam [Instrumental] (Jeff Beck)
14 talk (Jeff Beck)
15 Let Me Love You Baby (Buddy Guy & Jeff Beck)
16 Big Block [Instrumental] (Jeff Beck)
17 Rice Pudding [Instrumental] (Billy Gibbons & Jeff Beck)
18 Foxy Lady (Billy Gibbons & Jeff Beck)
19 A Day in the Life [Instrumental Version] (Jeff Beck)
20 For Whom the Bell Tolls (Metallica)
21 talk (Metallica)
22 Turn the Page (Metallica)
23 talk (Metallica)
24 Sweet Jane (Lou Reed & Metallica)
25 talk (Metallica)
26 White Light-White Heat (Lou Reed & Metallica)
27 talk (Metallica)
28 Iron Man (Ozzy Osbourne & Metallica)
29 Paranoid (Ozzy Osbourne & Metallica)
30 talk (Metallica)
31 You Really Got Me (Ray Davies & Metallica)
32 All Day and All of the Night (Ray Davies & Metallica)
33 Enter Sandman (Metallica)
34 Vertigo (U2)
35 Magnificent (U2)
36 talk (U2)
37 Because the Night (U2, Bruce Springsteen & Patti Smith)
38 I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For (U2 & Bruce Springsteen)
39 Mysterious Ways (U2)
40 Where Is the Love - One (U2 & the Black Eyed Peas)
41 talk (U2)
42 Gimme Shelter (U2, Mick Jagger, Fergie & will.i.am)
43 talk (U2)
44 Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of (U2 & Mick Jagger)
45 Beautiful Day (U2)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/UZjACSG5

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/mtktsXHvZPk8rgE/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. From left to right: Bono, The Edge, Fergie, and Mick Jagger.

The Velvet Underground - The Playhouse, Edinburgh, Britain, 6-2-1993

The Velvet Underground is one of the most legendary and revered rock bands of all time. But it seems like their 1993 reunion tour has been mostly forgotten. Maybe that's because the only way most people have of judging it, the official live album that documents it, "Live MCMXCIII," was curiously lackluster. Perhaps this concert bootleg will change some minds. I like it a lot, and I much prefer it to the official album.

Velvet Underground member John Cale considered the official album a disappointment, mainly due to the way it was mixed. He later commented:

The trouble is that we had an opportunity here with the live album to really show what the band sounded like and it really doesn't give it to you. Some of the bootlegs that came out of the tour are almost a truer vision of what the band sounded like than the well recorded one, because the well recorded one really didn't take advantage of the ambiance of the room in the mix of the music. And that's what we were always pushing at. We wanted to fill the room up with this noise. Unfortunately it wasn't quite as present in the mix as I would have liked it to be or others would have liked it to be either.

I wonder what Cale would think about this particular bootleg. I didn't post anything from this reunion tour prior to this, because I thought there was nothing but rough audience bootlegs. But I recently discovered this. It's either a soundboard or an FM radio broadcast. Either way, I think the sound quality is as good or better than the official live album.

Now, let me say a little bit about the reunion tour in general. The two main singers and songwriters in the band, Lou Reed and John Cale, put out an album together in 1990, "Songs for Drella." While they toured together to support that album, they were joined on stage for a single song at a concert in France by the other two original members of the Velvet Underground, Maureen Tucker and Sterling Morrison. That set the stage for a reunion tour with all four of them.

The tour began in Edinburgh on June 1, 1993. This was the second night of the tour, also in Edinburgh. Creative juices must have been flowing, because the last song played here, "Coyote," was apparently written jointly by Reed and Cale mere hours before the concert began. That's according to some banter in the concert by Reed. But that also matches the information at setlist.fm, because it wasn't performed on the first night, and this was the first time it was played in public. 

The tour was a relatively short one, hitting different countries in Europe over six weeks. There was a plan to follow it up with a North American tour, a studio album, and more. But relations between band members quickly deteriorated, and all further reunion plans were canceled at the end of the six weeks. So we're very lucky to have this excellent recording from the second night of the tour, before the troubles began. By the way, the "Live MCMXCIII" was recorded over a couple of nights in Paris, France, about two weeks later. So maybe the band was already in decline by then compared to this night, who knows.

John Cale was only in the Velvet Underground for their first two albums, "Velvet Underground and Nico" and "White Light/White Heat." So, not surprisingly, many of the songs in this concert came from those early albums. But it's interesting to see Cale take part in the songs that were recorded after he left, such as "Sweet Jane" and "Rock and Roll." This reunion tour was probably the only time he ever did that. 

Also, Cale didn't sing lead vocals much at all while he was a member of the Velvet Underground, but he did have a long, successful solo career as a lead vocalist afterwards. So I liked how he sang lead on a few of the songs here, taking vocals that had been done by Nico or even by Reed.

Although the bootleg was excellent in most respects, it did have some problems. The biggest problem was that all but the first minute and a half of the song "I Can't Stand It" was missing. So I used the "Live MCMXCIII" version to patch in the rest. That's why that song has "[Edit]" in its title. Also, in some cases (but not most cases), the applause at the ends of songs was cut off. So I patched in applause from the ends of other songs to give every song a normal sounding ending.

Sterling Morrison died of a degenerative disease (non-Hodgkin's lymphoma) just two years after this tour, so we're lucky it happened when it did. 

This album is an hour and 55 minutes long.

01 Real Good Time Together (Velvet Underground)
02 talk (Velvet Underground)
03 Venus in Furs (Velvet Underground)
04 talk (Velvet Underground)
05 Guess I'm Falling in Love (Velvet Underground)
06 After Hours (Velvet Underground)
07 All Tomorrow's Parties (Velvet Underground)
08 Some Kinda Love (Velvet Underground)
09 I'll Be Your Mirror (Velvet Underground)
10 Beginning to See the Light (Velvet Underground)
11 The Gift (Velvet Underground)
12 I Heard Her Call My Name (Velvet Underground)
13 Femme Fatale (Velvet Underground)
14 talk (Velvet Underground)
15 Hey Mr. Rain (Velvet Underground)
16 talk (Velvet Underground)
17 Sweet Jane (Velvet Underground)
18 Velvet Nursery Rhyme (Velvet Underground)
19 talk (Velvet Underground)
20 White Light-White Heat (Velvet Underground)
21 I'm Sticking with You (Velvet Underground)
22 The Black Angel's Death Song (Velvet Underground)
23 Rock and Roll (Velvet Underground)
24 talk (Velvet Underground)
25 I Can't Stand It [Edit] (Velvet Underground)
26 I'm Waiting for the Man (Velvet Underground)
27 Heroin (Velvet Underground)
28 talk (Velvet Underground)
29 Coyote (Velvet Underground)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/f2j62dqb

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/WKgJXJR7BeX4jH2/file

The cover photo isn't from this concert, but it's close. It was taken three days later at the Forum in London. From left to right, that's Cale, Reed, Tucker, and Morrison. For the band name at the top, I used the art from the official live album.

Various Artists - New York Children’s Health Project Benefit, Madison Square Garden, New York City, 12-13-1987

The first thing I want to make clear is that, while this is a star-studded benefit concert, it is also in large part a Paul Simon concert. Out of the 32 songs here, Simon sang lead on 11 of them, and backing vocals on another three. That's because Simon was the host and the prime mover behind the cause for this benefit.

I did a little research on how this concert came to be, and I think it makes for an interesting story. Apparently, when Simon was working on his studio album "Graceland" in 1985 or 1986, he was taking going to his recording studio in the heart of New York City most every day. Each morning, he would make eye contact with a homeless girl begging on a street corner. But eventually, after months, she didn't show up for a while. He asked around, and found out that she had died. Being homeless, she had no access to health care. Simon decided he wanted to do something to help.

Around this time, homelessness had greatly risen in New York City. Plus, many thousands of families were packed into squalid welfare hotels. Simon connected with Dr. Irwin Ledlener. a pediatrician, who was already working on the problem. 

Ledlener later recalled, "We went on a tour of some of the not-so-hot spots in the city. We went to the welfare hotels, to boarder-baby facilities where they had these infants whose mothers were crack
cocaine addicts, and we went to some of the infant H.I.V. programs. It was a hell of a day, just one thing after another." Simon and Ledlener decided that it was obvious many homeless children weren't getting any health care, so they decided to make that their focus. 

Ledlener told him it would cost about $90,000 for a mobile van to bring health care to where the homeless where. Simon paid for that out of his own pocket, and the van began operating in the fall of 1987. But it soon became clear that just one van wasn't enough. Plus, there were upkeep costs, and the need for a charity group (called the "Children's Health Fund") to keep medical records on the homeless kids no matter how often they moved. So Simon put this concert together. It raised about half a million dollars, which was doubled by a contribution from his record company. 

More vans were bought. The results were impressive, so the program kept expanding. By 2005, the charity had expanded far beyond New York City. They had 20 vans in 14 states. Simon followed up with two more benefit concerts (in 1993 and 2012) to help keep the charity funded. All in all, it seems like one of the best results of a benefit concert that I've heard of, although it's a shame the government wasn't performing this help already.

Anyway, getting to the details of this concert, keep in mind that Simon's most recent project was his wildly successful "Graceland" album, released in 1986. That sold 16 million copies worldwide. So perhaps it's not too surprising that Simon played eight songs from that album, while he still had support from the vocal group Ladysmith Black Mambazo and other South African musicians that had gone on tour with him to support the album. I checked, and this was essentially the very last concert of Simon's Graceland tour.

Other than that, there were short sets by Lou Reed, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Dion, Laurie Anderson, Bruce Springsteen, Ruben Blades, James Taylor, Nile Rodgers and Chaka Khan. Apparently, Billy Joel wasn't scheduled to take part, but since he dropped in at the last minute, he did an impromptu song. I believe Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five played a song, but it got cut from the bootleg I found. I think you can hear him for about ten seconds at the end of the Nile Rodgers medley, introducing Chaka Khan. Paul Shaffer & the World's Most Dangerous Band backed most of the musical stars who didn't bring their own bands, like Bruce Springsteen. Debbie Harry and Grace Jones were there, but they only introduced Lou Reed and then helped sing backing vocals to "Walk on the Wild Side."

One special moment was that Dion was backed by some major star power on his song "A Teenager in Love." His backing vocalists were Ruben Blades, James Taylor, Billy Joel, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, Lou Reed! You can see how that looked from the album cover. That's a sign of how much of a musical influence he was on all of them, since he came from an earlier generation.

There were some celebrity appearances as well. Springsteen was introduced by New York baseball stars Ron Darling and Don Mattingly. Whoopi Goldberg introduced Nile Rodgers. She spoke for longer, but I cut out some of it because she was just stalling for time while the band got ready, as she admitted, and it showed. Comedian Bill Cosby gave a speech prior to introducing Ruben Blades. But I cut out all of it except for a few words introducing Blades, since I can't stand to hear him due to his later revealed history of rape. Lorne Michaels, Kevin Nealon and Chevy Chase introduced James Taylor.

As far as I know, everything here remains unreleased. But the bootleg I found has soundboard quality.

This album is three hours and 13 minutes long.

01 The Boy in the Bubble (Paul Simon)
02 Gumboots (Paul Simon)
03 Whispering Bells (Paul Simon)
04 talk (Paul Simon)
05 Crazy Love, Vol. II (Paul Simon)
06 I Know What I Know (Paul Simon)
07 talk (Paul Shaffer & the World's Most Dangerous Band)
08 Treat Her Right (Paul Shaffer & the World's Most Dangerous Band)
09 talk (Paul Shaffer, Debbie Harry & Grace Jones)
10 Tell It to Your Heart (Lou Reed)
11 talk (Lou Reed)
12 New Sensations (Lou Reed)
13 Walk on the Wild Side (Lou Reed with Debbie Harry & Grace Jones)
14 talk (Lou Reed)
15 The Wanderer (Dion)
16 Runaround Sue (Dion)
17 talk (Dion)
18 A Teenager in Love (Dion with Simon, Springsteen, Joel, Reed, Taylor & Blades)
19 talk (Paul Simon)
20 Yinhle Lentombi (Ladysmith Black Mambazo)
21 Homeless (Paul Simon & Ladysmith Black Mambazo)
22 Graceland (Paul Simon)
23 talk (Paul Simon)
24 You Can Call Me Al (Paul Simon)
25 talk (Paul Simon)
26 talk (Paul Simon)
27 Babydoll (Laurie Anderson)
28 Let x = x (Laurie Anderson)
29 talk (Paul Simon, Ron Darling & Don Mattingly)
30 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
31 Born to Run (Bruce Springsteen)
32 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
33 Glory Days (Bruce Springsteen with Paul Simon & Billy Joel)
34 Cuentas del Alma (Ruben Blades)
35 talk (Ruben Blades)
36 Muevete (Ruben Blades)
37 talk (Paul Simon, Lorne Michaels, Kevin Nealon & Chevy Chase)
38 Looking for Love on Broadway (James Taylor)
39 Carolina in My Mind (James Taylor)
40 That Lonesome Road (James Taylor)
41 talk (Whoopi Goldberg)
42 talk (Nile Rodgers)
43 We Are Family - Le Freak - Good Times (Nile Rodgers)
44 I Feel for You (Chaka Khan with Nile Rodgers)
45 talk (Paul Simon)
46 New York State of Mind (Billy Joel)
47 Still Crazy After All These Years (Paul Simon)
48 Late in the Evening (Paul Simon)
49 Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes - Drums (Paul Simon with Ladysmith Black Mambazo)
50 talk (Everybody)
51 Rock and Roll Music (Bruce Springsteen & Everybody)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/jKCnMBjU

alternate

https://bestfile.io/en/uLq5HEnWr1SO0XO/file

The cover photo was taken at this exact concert. It shows the moment Dion was backed by an impressive bunch of stars on the song "A Teenager in Love." From left to right, that's Ruben Blades, James Taylor, Billy Joel, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, Lou Reed, and Dion. Dion had been further over to the left by about ten feet. In fact, I took him from a different photo taken in the same sequence. Then I used Photoshop to move him close to Springsteen.

Various Artists - Come Together: A Night for John Lennon's Words and Music, Radio City Music Hall, New York City, 10-2-2001

I don't know much about why this particular John Lennon tribute concert happened when and where it did, with these musical artists taking part. I did find one mention that it was part of a series of tribute concerts shown on TV by the TNT channel. I do know that there are a lot of excellent performances here by talented and famous musicians. This was broadcast on TV at the time. I suspect it was edited down for television from a longer concert, because there's basically no moment wasted here, with tight edits from song to song.

Given this was a tribute to John Lennon, some key musicians were missing. Most importantly, the three other ex-Beatles Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, as well as Lennon's musically successful son Julian Lennon. But his other (much less commercially successful) son Sean Lennon did take part. In turns out the timing was pretty terrible, because George Harrison was dying of cancer and only lived one more month. 

Also, the timing was strange because this took place only three weeks after the 9/11 terror attack, with the nation still in shock. I'm sure that was hanging over this, though it wasn't directly mentioned.

As far as I know, everything here remains officially unreleased. I don't believe it's been shared as music files anywhere on the Internet either. I happened to randomly come across a video of it on YouTube. The sound quality was excellent, so I converted it to audio and chopped it up into individual mp3 files.

Normally, these kinds of concerts with lots of different acts are a mixed bag, with winners and losers. But in this case, nearly every performance here is a winner, in my opinion. The only rendition I don't like is "Imagine," a great song but way oversung by Yolanda Adams. Maybe it's because the songs are so great that artists rise to the occasion. For instance, I'm not a fan of Dave Matthews at all, but I was impressed with his version of "In My Life" here. 

The transitions between songs was done in a rather unusual way for this type of concert. Usually, one would expect an emcee introducing the artists performing each song. But there was virtually none of that here. In fact, basically the only between song "banter" here at all are recordings of John Lennon's voice from when he was alive in the 1960s and 1970s. (He was assassinated in 1980.) It worked surprisingly well for me. Weirdly, just about the only exception was Cyndi Lauper, who introduced her performance with some comments.

The sound quality was great overall. There was just one bummer: the last song faded out before it was over. I suspect the time limit for the TV came to an end, so the music went on as long as possible before the cut off moment. The fade out happened in the middle of a chorus. I extended that a bit by patching in an earlier chorus so now at least the fade out happens just after that chorus finishes.

By the way, right after I posted this, I found out a little more information about it. The TNT channel did some other tribute concerts in the years before this (Burt Bacharach's "One Amazing Night" in 1998, which has been officially released, 1998 for Johnny Cash, 1999 for Bob Marley, 2000 for Joni Mitchell, and 2001 for Brian Wilson. The 2001 I've posted here, and I'll try to get to the other unreleased ones. The series seems to have ended after that, though, as the TNT network changed its programming focus in mid-2001, according to Wikipedia. Beck and Marc Anthony were supposed to headline this concert, but didn't do so for some reason.

This album is an hour and four minutes long.

01 Imagine (Yolanda Adams & Billy Preston)
02 talk (John Lennon)
03 In My Life (Dave Matthews)
04 talk (John Lennon)
05 Revolution (Stone Temple Pilots)
06 talk (John Lennon)
07 Dear Prudence (Alanis Morissette)
08 Across the Universe (Moby, Sean Lennon & Rufus Wainwright)
09 talk (Cyndi Lauper)
10 Strawberry Fields Forever (Cyndi Lauper)
11 talk (John Lennon)
12 Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (Marc Anthony)
13 Mother (Shelby Lynne)
14 Instant Karma (Nelly Furtado & Dave Stewart)
15 Jealous Guy (Lou Reed)
16 Nowhere Man (Natalie Merchant)
17 Come Together (Craig David)
18 talk (John Lennon & Sean Lennon)
19 This Boy (Sean Lennon, Rufus Wainwright & Robert Schwartzman)
20 Julia (Sean Lennon)
21 talk (John Lennon)
22 Give Peace a Chance - Power to the People (Everyone)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16651268/VA-2001CmeTgthrANghtfrJhnLnnnRdioCtyMsicHllNwYrkCty__10-2-2001_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from this exact concert. I had a choice of different photos. I went with this one, which shows the Stone Temple Pilots performing in front of a giant screen showing a psychedelic rendition of John Lennon.

Luka Bloom, David Byrne, Rosanne Cash & Lou Reed - In Their Own Words, The Bottom Line, New York City, 2-19-1993, Late Show

Happy new year, everyone. At first glance, this may look exactly like the last album I posted, but don't be deceived. Yes, the cover is almost exactly the same, but the photo is slightly different. And the title is almost exactly the same, but this is the late show and the other post is the early show. 

What's important is that the performance is totally different. Although the format and the artists are the same, the vast majority of the songs performed are different from the early show. Plus, there's a considerable amount of talking between songs, and all of that is different as well. 

I believe these are the songs that were played in both the early and late shows: "Tentative Decisions," "Ready for This World," "Busload of Faith," "The Wheel," and "I Need Love."

Like the early show, this is an unreleased concert. Also like the early show, it's either a soundboard or an audience boot that sounds better than most soundboards. I'm guessing it's an audience boot due to the fact that the audience noise was much louder than the music or talking on stage, which is typical of audience boots. But seriously, it sounds fantastic. And I fixed all the songs so the music and talking is much louder and the cheering is much quieter. 

Also, there were a few snags with the recording of the early show, such as sections that were missing and had to be filled in from a different source. But there were no such problems with the late show.  The recording was basically flawless.

The one slight disappointment with this concert is that it's shorter than the early show. This is two hours and 14 minutes long. By contrast, the early show is two hours and 47 minutes long. But a lot of that time difference is due to more talking in the early show. The music only is an hour and 16 minutes here, just ten minutes less than the early show.

Like I did with the early show, since there's so much talking - about an hour - I've made two versions of this album, one with the talking and one without. I think the interview sections are quite good and worth listening to at least once. But the music only version has more repeat listening value.

Here's the version with the music and the talking:

01 talk (Vin Scelsa)
02 talk - Luka Bloom Introduction (Vin Scelsa)
03 Mary Watches Everything (Luka Bloom)
04 talk - David Byrne Introduction (Vin Scelsa)
05 Tentative Decisions (David Byrne)
06 talk - Rosanne Cash Introduction (Vin Scelsa)
07 Seven Year Ache (Rosanne Cash)
08 talk - Lou Reed Introduction (Vin Scelsa)
09 I'm Waiting for the Man (Lou Reed)
10 talk - Luka Bloom Q and A (Vin Scelsa & Luka Bloom)
11 The Man Is Alive (Luka Bloom)
12 talk - David Byrne Q and A (Vin Scelsa & David Byrne)
13 Ready for This World (David Byrne)
14 talk - Rosanne Cash Q and A (Vin Scelsa & Rosanne Cash)
15 The Wheel (Rosanne Cash)
16 talk - Lou Reed Q and A (Vin Scelsa & Lou Reed)
17 Smalltown (Lou Reed)
18 talk - Lou Reed Q and A (Vin Scelsa & Lou Reed)
19 Images (Lou Reed)
20 talk - Luka Bloom Q and A (Vin Scelsa & Luka Bloom)
21 Fertile Rock (Luka Bloom)
22 talk - David Byrne Q and A (Vin Scelsa & David Byrne)
23 Something Ain’t Right (David Byrne)
24 talk - Rosanne Cash Q and A (Vin Scelsa & Rosanne Cash)
25 This World (Rosanne Cash)
26 talk - Lou Reed Q and A (Vin Scelsa & Lou Reed)
27 Dirty Boulevard (Lou Reed)
28 talk - Luka Bloom Q and A (Vin Scelsa & Luka Bloom)
29 Bridge of Sorrow (Luka Bloom)
30 talk - David Byrne Q and A (Vin Scelsa & David Byrne)
31 [Nothing But] Flowers (David Byrne)
32 talk - Rosanne Cash Q and A (Vin Scelsa & Rosanne Cash)
33 Roses in the Fire (Rosanne Cash)
34 talk - Lou Reed Q and A (Vin Scelsa & Lou Reed)
35 Busload of Faith (Lou Reed)
36 talk (Vin Scelsa & Lou Reed)
37 I’ll Be Your Mirror (Lou Reed)
38 talk (Vin Scelsa & Luka Bloom)
39 I Need Love (Luka Bloom)
40 talk (Vin Scelsa & David Byrne)
41 Gypsy Woman [She’s Homeless] (David Byrne)
42 talk (Vin Scelsa & Rosanne Cash)
43 Wouldn't It Be Loverly (Rosanne Cash)
44 talk (Vin Scelsa & Lou Reed)
45 The Tracks of My Tears (Lou Reed)
46 talk (Vin Scelsa)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/1w4EEKvu

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/wQUFt8L1wTPgFb6/file

And here's the version with just the music:

01 Mary Watches Everything (Luka Bloom)
02 Tentative Decisions (David Byrne)
03 Seven Year Ache (Rosanne Cash)
04 I'm Waiting for the Man (Lou Reed)
05 The Man Is Alive (Luka Bloom)
06 Ready for This World (David Byrne)
07 The Wheel (Rosanne Cash)
08 Smalltown (Lou Reed)
09 Images (Lou Reed)
10 Fertile Rock (Luka Bloom)
11 Something Ain’t Right (David Byrne)
12 This World (Rosanne Cash)
13 Dirty Boulevard (Lou Reed)
14 Bridge of Sorrow (Luka Bloom)
15 [Nothing But] Flowers (David Byrne)
16 Roses in the Fire (Rosanne Cash)
17 Busload of Faith (Lou Reed)
18 I’ll Be Your Mirror (Lou Reed)
19 I Need Love (Luka Bloom)
20 Gypsy Woman [She’s Homeless] (David Byrne)
21 Wouldn't It Be Loverly (Rosanne Cash)
22 The Tracks of My Tears (Lou Reed)
23 talk (Vin Scelsa)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/6dFe3eJV

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/fJkPOkFsozu9Yoa/file

As I mentioned above, the cover photo is almost the same, but different. Clearly, it was taken at almost the exact same time as the other photo. However, there are some differences, such as the way Luka Bloom's head is turned on the far right, or how David Byrne's head is turned on the far left. The other one is in color and this one was only in black and white. But I used the Palette program to colorize it. Then I did some further work in Photoshop to make sure the colors matched those of the other photo.

Luka Bloom, David Byrne, Rosanne Cash & Lou Reed - In Their Own Words, The Bottom Line, New York City, 2-19-1993, Early Show

This is a very rare, unique, and interesting unreleased concert. It's also quite long, at nearly three hours, and the sound quality is great. Furthermore, it's just the early show, and I'll be posting the late show - with the same performers but mostly different songs - soon.

The key figure behind this concert appears to be radio DJ Vin Scelsa. In the early 1990s, he hosted many concerts in New York City that brought together combinations of singer-songwriters. (I previously posted a concert he hosted with Rosanne Cash, David Byrne, and Lucinda Williams.) This concert appears to be part of a series he hosted called "In Their Own Words." For this one, I read that he first got Lou Reed to participate, then had Reed pick the other artists. Reed picked Talking Heads leader David Byrne and Rosanne Cash, one of Johnny Cash's daughters and at the time still mainly seen as a country music star. The surprise choice was Irish singer-songwriter Luka Bloom. At this point, Bloom was relatively unknown, having only released three solo albums. But Reed and Bloom had crossed paths due to performing at some of the same festivals in Europe the year before, and Reed liked Bloom's music.

This concert just featured the four artists performing solo acoustic. The format was "in the round," meaning each artist would sing a song in turn until everyone was done, and then the process would repeat, going around and around. (There was only one exception, when Reed played two songs in a row.) But this concert is also unusual in that these was extensive talking between songs, mostly in interview format between DJ Scelsa and whoever was singing the next song. The theme of the evening was songwriting, so most of the questions had to do with that. There's so much talking, in fact, that it took up nearly half of the concert. That has less replay value than the songs, so I've created two versions, one with all the talking and one with just the music.

The sound quality is excellent. I suspect the source is an audience bootleg, because originally the clapping was way louder than the music or talking. But if that's the case, it's one of the best audience boots I've ever heard, and actually sounds better than most soundboards! I had to adjust every track to boost the volume of the music and especially the talking while lowering the volume of the applause, but now it all sounds great. 

There were a few missing parts of the recording. Luckily though, there's a second bootleg of the same concert. The sound quality is worse, but it was mostly just for talking parts, so it didn't matter much. Additionally, I ran those bits through Adobe's "Enhanced Speech" program, and that helped them sound nearly as good as the rest. Two tracks were I had to splice different versions together have "[Edit]" in their names.

This album (the talking and music version) is two hours and 47 minutes long.

01 talk - Luka Bloom Introduction (Vin Scelsa)
02 Dreams in America (Luka Bloom)
03 talk - David Byrne Introduction (Vin Scelsa)
04 Tentative Decisions (David Byrne)
05 talk - Rosanne Cash Introduction (Vin Scelsa)
06 What We Really Want (Rosanne Cash)
07 talk - Lou Reed Introduction (Vin Scelsa)
08 Busload of Faith (Lou Reed)
09 talk - Luka Bloom Q and A (Vin Scelsa & Luka Bloom)
10 Wave Up to the Shore (Luka Bloom)
11 talk - David Byrne Q and A (Vin Scelsa & David Byrne)
12 Mind (David Byrne)
13 talk - Rosanne Cash Q and A (Vin Scelsa & Rosanne Cash)
14 The Wheel (Rosanne Cash)
15 talk - Lou Reed Q and A (Vin Scelsa & Lou Reed)
16 Heroin (Lou Reed)
17 talk - Luka Bloom Q and A (Vin Scelsa & Luka Bloom)
18 Gone to Pablo (Luka Bloom)
19 talk - David Byrne Q and A (Vin Scelsa & David Byrne)
20 Sax and Violins (David Byrne)
21 talk - Rosanne Cash Q and A (Vin Scelsa & Rosanne Cash)
22 Sleeping in Paris (Rosanne Cash)
23 talk - Lou Reed Q and A (Vin Scelsa & Lou Reed)
24 Cremation [Ashes to Ashes] (Lou Reed)
25 talk - Lou Reed Q and A (Vin Scelsa & Lou Reed)
26 What's Good (Lou Reed)
27 talk - Luka Bloom Q and A (Vin Scelsa & Luka Bloom)
28 Exploring the Blue (Luka Bloom)
29 talk - David Byrne Q and A [Edit] (Vin Scelsa & David Byrne)
30 Ready for This World [Edit] (David Byrne)
31 talk - Rosanne Cash Q and A (Vin Scelsa & Rosanne Cash)
32 Dance with the Tiger (Rosanne Cash)
33 talk - Lou Reed Q and A (Vin Scelsa & Lou Reed)
34 Romeo Had Juliette (Lou Reed)
35 talk (Vin Scelsa & Luka Bloom)
36 I Need Love (Luka Bloom)
37 talk (Vin Scelsa & David Byrne)
38 Sweet Old World (David Byrne)
39 talk (Vin Scelsa & Rosanne Cash)
40 Crescent City (Rosanne Cash)
41 talk (Vin Scelsa & Lou Reed)
42 Foot of Pride (Lou Reed)
43 talk (Vin Scelsa)

This is the link for the talking and music:

https://www.imagenetz.de/cox6C

Here's the song list for the "music only" version. This album is an hour and 26 minutes long.

01 Dreams in America (Luka Bloom)
02 Tentative Decisions (David Byrne)
03 What We Really Want (Rosanne Cash)
04 Busload of Faith (Lou Reed)
05 Wave Up to the Shore (Luka Bloom)
06 Mind (David Byrne)
07 The Wheel (Rosanne Cash)
08 Heroin (Lou Reed)
09 Gone to Pablo (Luka Bloom)
10 Sax and Violins (David Byrne)
11 Sleeping in Paris (Rosanne Cash)
12 Cremation [Ashes to Ashes] (Lou Reed)
13 What's Good (Lou Reed)
14 Exploring the Blue (Luka Bloom)
15 Ready for This World [Edit] (David Byrne)
16 Dance with the Tiger (Rosanne Cash)
17 Romeo Had Juliette (Lou Reed)
18 I Need Love (Luka Bloom)
19 Sweet Old World (David Byrne)
20 Crescent City (Rosanne Cash)
21 Foot of Pride (Lou Reed)
22 talk (Vin Scelsa)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/19rsZWnJ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/VtJZCegr4J1qD2w/file

alternate:

https://www.upload.ee/files/16103356/VA1993_InThrOwnWrdsBottmLneNwYrkC__2-19__1993__ErlyShw_atse_MsicOnly.zip.html

I got really lucky with the photo on the cover here. The photo shows all the participants backstage either before or after the show. From left to right: David Byrne, Vin Scelsa, Lou Reed, Rosanne Cash, and Luka Bloom.

David Bowie - BBC Sessions, Volume 10: 50th Birthday Concert, Madison Square Garden, New York City, 1-9-1997

I'm going to tempt fate by posting another David Bowie BBC album. (Weirdly, as I write this, Volume 8 is banned here but not on YouTube, and Volume 9 is banned on YouTube but not here.) Again, get it while you can, because who knows if this post will last.

David Bowie turned 50 years old in January 1997, and he decided to celebrate it with a bang, via a concert at Madison Square Garden that was broadcast on the BBC. What makes this especially interesting are all the guest stars who dueted with Bowie, usually for more than one song: Frank Black of the Pixies, the Foo Fighters, Robert Smith of the Cure, Sonic Youth, Lou Reed, and Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins. 

I'm sure Bowie was especially excited to perform with Reed, since Bowie had been a big fan ever since the late 1960s, at a time when very few people had ever heard of Reed or his band the Velvet Underground, especially because Bowie was British and the Velvet Underground were even more obscure in Britain at the time. All the songs were originally done by Bowie, with the exception of three songs by Reed: "I'm Waiting for the Man," "Dirty Blvd.," and "White Light-White Heat." Bowie had performed "I'm Waiting for the Man" and "White Light-White Heat" pretty much since they were released. (For instance, it's known he performed "I'm Waiting for the Man" back in the summer of 1967!) However, this was the one and only time Bowie was involved with "Dirty Blvd." a more recent Reed song. The one Bowie original done with Reed, "Queen Bitch," comes from the "Hunky Dory" album in 1971. It is obviously an homage to Reed and the Velvet Underground, both musically and lyrically (and he mentioned the inspiration in the album's liner notes), so it's interesting to hear Reed help sing it.

The sound quality is excellent... now. Originally, all the lead vocals were surprisingly low in the mix. So I used the audio editing program UVR5 to remix every single song here. I think it sounds much better as a result.

This album is an hour and 58 minutes long.

01 Introduction [Instrumental] (David Bowie)
02 Little Wonder (David Bowie)
03 The Hearts Filthy Lesson (David Bowie)
04 Scary Monsters [And Super Creeps] (David Bowie & Frank Black)
05 Fashion (David Bowie & Frank Black)
06 Telling Lies (David Bowie)
07 Hallo Spaceboy (David Bowie & the Foo Fighters)
08 Seven Years in Tibet (David Bowie & the Foo Fighters)
09 The Man Who Sold the World (David Bowie)
10 The Last Thing You Should Do (David Bowie & Robert Smith)
11 Quicksand (David Bowie & Robert Smith)
12 Battle for Britain [The Letter] (David Bowie)
13 Voyeur of Utter Destruction [As Beauty] (David Bowie)
14 I'm Afraid of Americans (David Bowie & Sonic Youth)
15 Looking for Satellites (David Bowie)
16 Under Pressure (David Bowie)
17 'Heroes' (David Bowie)
18 Queen Bitch (David Bowie & Lou Reed)
19 I'm Waiting for the Man (David Bowie & Lou Reed)
20 Dirty Blvd. (David Bowie & Lou Reed)
21 White Light-White Heat (David Bowie & Lou Reed)
22 Moonage Daydream (David Bowie)
23 talk - Happy Birthday (David Bowie)
24 All the Young Dudes (David Bowie & Billy Corgan)
25 The Jean Genie (David Bowie & Billy Corgan)
26 Space Oddity (David Bowie)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/BihDJUwS

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/FENHxg97tAFqkXl/file

The cover photo comes from this exact concert.

A Conspiracy of Hope, Giants Stadium, East Rutherford, NJ, 6-15-1986, Part 4 - Lou Reed, Peter Gabriel, & Bryan Adams

This is the fourth out of five albums of the last 1986 "Conspiracy of Hope" concert, near New York City. For a description of the concert in general, check out the write-up for the first volume.

All the musical artists on the first three volumes for this concert were reasonably famous, but this is when the really big names started to be featured. The whole concert was broadcast on MTV, but only this part until the end was also broadcast on network TV.

Since these acts are better known, I hopefully don't have to say much about them. Lou Reed was famous for being in the Velvet Underground and his 1972 hit "Walk on the Wild Side," but he also had more commercial success in the 1980s, including having a minor hit in 1984 with "I Love You Suzanne." His set is 28 minutes long.

British singer Peter Gabriel had lots of success in the 1970s and 80s as a member of Genesis then a solo artist, but he arguably reached his peak of popularity in 1986, right around the time of this concert. That year, he put out the album "So," which sold five million copies in the U.S. alone. His song "Sledgehammer" even hit Number One in the U.S. His set is 38 minutes long.

Canadian singer Bryan Adams had gradually built his fame in the 1980s. By 1986, he had become a big star, thanks to the recent hits "Run to You," "Heaven," and "Summer of '69." He would go on to even bigger fame and fortune with his 1991 mega-hit, "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You." His set is 25 minutes long. 

This album is an hour and 31 minutes long.

068 Rock and Roll (Lou Reed)
069 I Love You, Suzanne (Lou Reed)
070 No Money Down (Lou Reed)
071 Turn to Me (Lou Reed)
072 Walk on the Wild Side (Lou Reed)
073 Video Violence (Lou Reed)
074 talk by Bill Graham (Peter Gabriel)
075 Red Rain (Peter Gabriel)
076 Shock the Monkey (Peter Gabriel)
077 Family Snapshot (Peter Gabriel)
078 Sledgehammer (Peter Gabriel)
079 San Jacinto (Peter Gabriel)
080 Biko (Peter Gabriel)
081 Run to You (Bryan Adams)
082 talk (Bryan Adams)
083 It's Only Love (Bryan Adams)
084 Straight from the Heart (Bryan Adams)
085 Tonight (Bryan Adams)
086 Summer of '69 (Bryan Adams)
087 Somebody (Bryan Adams)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/oBi9zfRs

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/7e463yuU6nd1x1c/file

The cover photo of Peter Gabriel is from this exact concert.

Lou Reed - Palace Theatre, Dayton, OH, 10-27-1974

Here's an excellent sounding Lou Reed bootleg concert. I like this one because I've heard lots of live early Lou Reed from his Velvet Underground days, and from 1972 and 1973 with a focus on songs from his album "Transformer," but this is from a little later, with a somewhat different set list. In 1974, he released the album "Sally Can't Dance," which reached the Top Ten in the US. Five of the songs here come from that.

Most of the credit should go to the sound editor Captain Acid. He took a soundboard recording and changed the phase, level, pitch correction, new EQ. I'm basically just passing that on. In his notes, he said, "This is probably the best Lou Reed live recording you will ever hear - play LOUD!" The biggest edit he did was that the first four songs were missing, plus there was a big cut in "Walk on the Wild Side," so he replaced those with soundboard versions from the Felt Forum, New York City, October 9, 1974.

One interesting tidbit about this concert is that for track 10, Reed started singing the words to "I'm Waiting for the Man" while the band started playing the riff to "Sally Can't Dance." So the result was an accidental medley or merging of the two songs that only happened at this show. He switched over to singing "Sally Can't Dance" before the song ended.

This album is an hour and 21 minutes long.

01 Intro [Instrumental] (Lou Reed)
02 Sweet Jane (Lou Reed)
03 Vicious (Lou Reed)
04 Ride Sally Ride (Lou Reed)
05 Heroin (Lou Reed)
06 Kill Your Sons (Lou Reed)
07 talk (Lou Reed)
08 N.Y. Stars (Lou Reed)
09 Animal Language (Lou Reed)
10 I'm Waiting for the Man - Sally Can't Dance (Lou Reed)
11 Bass Solo [Instrumental] (Lou Reed)
12 Walk on the Wild Side (Lou Reed)
13 White Light-White Heat (Lou Reed)
14 Goodnight Ladies (Lou Reed)
15 Rock and Roll (Lou Reed)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15299368/LouR_1974_PalacTheatrDaytnOH__10-27-1974_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is exactly as I found it, lens flare and all. It was taken a concert in Amsterdam in the Netherland in May 1974.

The Velvet Underground - The Gymnasium, New York City, 4-30-1967

I recently wrote that I plan on posting what I consider all the live Velvet Underground (VU) recordings with really good sound quality. This one definitely counts, since it's a pristine soundboard. It was originally released as part of the super deluxe edition of the "White Light/White Heat" album in 2013. But I'm posting it here because I used the UVR5 audio editing program to boost the lead vocals, making this sound even better than the official release.

The band's years together led by Lou Reed can be divided into two phases: 1965 to 1968, when John Cale was in the band, and 1968 to 1970, when Cale was replaced by Doug Yule. The Cale years are more celebrated, helped by the fact that Cale went on to have a long and critically acclaimed solo career. But unfortunately, this is the sole live recording from the Cale years that doesn't sound like crap. (If anyone knows of any other good ones, please let me know.)

This is such a pristine recording that it makes me wonder if it really is a concert recording at all. What I mean is, no audience can be heard whatsoever, not even a single clap. Additionally, there's not a single word spoken between songs. If I hadn't been told otherwise by official sources, I would have assumed these are studio outtakes. But apparently there was a concert on this date, as the cover art shows, and this is what was played. If anyone knows the story behind this recording, and how it sounds like it does, please let us know.

Anyway, regardless of that, these are unique versions, and the sound quality is excellent, so what's not to like? Additionally, some of the songs are quite rare. This is the only known recording of the original "I'm Not a Young Man Anymore," and the best recording of the instrumental "Booker T." Additionally, this version of "Guess I'm Falling in Love" has lyrics that are sung, while the studio version is an instrumental. On the flip side, the studio version of "The Gift" has lyrics while this version is an instrumental.

This album is 59 minutes long.

01 Booker T [Instrumental] (Velvet Underground)
02 I'm Not a Young Man Anymore (Velvet Underground)
03 Guess I'm Falling in Love (Velvet Underground)
04 I'm Waiting for the Man (Velvet Underground)
05 Run, Run, Run (Velvet Underground)
06 Sister Ray (Velvet Underground)
07 The Gift [Instrumental Version] (Velvet Underground)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/kKdGyf67

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/eMlW0As4s3Pi87B/file

I couldn't find any good, fitting color photos of the band for the cover. However, I did find a playbill for this exact show. I made some edits to it, mainly cropping out some of it to get it to fit into a square shape, and adding the background color. But the text you see is largely unchanged. And by the way, although Nico was touted on the playbill, she didn't actually appear in the concert.

The Velvet Underground - Max's Kansas City, New York City, 8-23-1970

I recently posted a couple of Velvet Underground (VU) concerts here, both from the End of Cole Ave. club in Dallas, and those have gotten a lot of downloads. (Although, oddly, way more people have downloaded the one from October 19, 1969 than the one from October 18, 1969. Their sound quality is similar, so if you like one you should like the other.) Just as a reminder, here are the download links to both:

October 18, 1969:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-velvet-underground-end-of-cole-ave_11.html

October 19, 1969:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-velvet-underground-end-of-cole-ave.html

Anyway, putting those together has put me in a Velvet Underground mood lately, so I've decided to do my best to try to improve some of their other live recordings. The next one I tackled in this Max's Kansas City show, so here it is. In my opinion, this version sounds significantly better than other versions.

The official album "Live at Max's Kansas City" is based on this concert. It was the very first official live VU album, being released in 1972. That's a bit odd in my opinion, because the sound quality was not great. But perhaps it was all that was at hand at the time. The concert was recorded by Brigid Polk (a.k.a. Brigid Berlin) who was a well known New York City high society socialite and associate of Andy Warhol. She recorded it on a mono portable cassette player, but perhaps it was an unusually good and expensive one, because the sound quality is very good for an audience recording. 

However, there were problems, and I've tried to fix them here. I've based this off the 2004 version, which is the only complete one. But actually it wasn't entirely complete, because the first minute or so of the song "Who Loves the Sun" was missing. But I got a lucky break with that. There's a bootleg of some band rehearsals from a couple of months earlier. The sound quality sucks for nearly all of the songs on that boot, except for two songs which sound much better, and one of those is a version of "Who Loves the Sun." So I used that version to patch in the missing first verse. That's why that song has "[Edit]" in the title.

I also used the UVR5 audio editing program to boost the lead vocals of all the songs. I think that helped a lot. And I used that program to do a lot of work on all the talking tracks. The concert was recorded in the middle of a crowd, so there was a lot of ambient noise, and especially talking nearby. I managed to cut out some, but not all, of that noise, and boost the voice of Reed doing the talking from stage. Now, you can pretty easily hear nearly all of his comments, which often had been buried in muck on all the official versions. 

I also edited out some comments by people next to the recorder that were unusually loud. I believe the microphone was being held by none other than Johnathan Richman, who would later have success as the leader of the band the Modern Lovers. For instance, on the official live album version, his voice could be heard ordering a glass of wine at one point. But I cut all that out, because my goal was to try to make this sound more like a soundboard quality recording.

A more difficult problem was that, occasionally, some loud talking by crowd members occurred during the songs. I cleaned that up whenever I could. But this was particularly bad for the song "Candy Says." In the middle of the song, some guy began talking to someone else, possibly his date, about the movie "Patton," which was in the movie theaters at the time. One could clearly hear the two of them discuss their opinions about the movie, which ruined much of the song. I was able to wipe out most of that discussion using UVR5, whenever it happened during instrumental sections. But there were some points when that talking overlapped with the singing. For that, I patched in bits from other parts of the song, or, failing that, from the version of "Candy Says" on the October 18, 1969 End of Cole Ave. concert I posted recently. I also wiped out some crowd noise on the song "Femme Fatale" using some patch work, though the problem wasn't nearly as bad. So that's why those two songs have "[Edit]" in their titles.

This happens to be the very last VU concert with Lou Reed (not counting much later reunions). The band continued on the next night and beyond, with band member Doug Yule on lead vocals. The last album with Reed, "Loaded," would be released a couple of months after this concert. But the band slowly lost more key members and then fizzled out altogether in 1973. However, you'd never know this was Reed's last concert from listening to this recording, as there were no public good-byes or final dramatic gestures. But perhaps we missed those, because I have my doubts that the last song here was the actual last song of the night. "Lonesome Cowboy Bill" seems like an odd choice for the last song, especially since "Sister Ray" was the band's usual closer. It's very possible that the recorder's cassette tape ran out, which was a common problem for tapers in that era.

This also was a concert without drummer Moe Tucker. She'd temporarily left the band in early 1970 for the duration of her first pregnancy. She was replaced on drums by Billy Yule, the younger brother of Doug Yule. Some VU fans knock this recording because of the lack of Tucker's unique drumming style, while also claiming that Reed lost his enthusiasm and thus didn't sound as good. But I disagree. I think the band kicked ass right until Reed left, at which point it ceased being the VU in my opinion, since he wrote and sang nearly all of the songs. Decide for yourself by listening to this.

This concert consisted of an early show and a late show. You can hear the band announce they were taking a break at the end of the song "Beginning to See the Light." There are two songs in the late show that were also played in the early show: "Sweet Jane" and "Lonesome Cowboy Bill."

This album is an hour and 26 minutes long.

01 talk (Velvet Underground)
02 I'm Waiting for the Man (Velvet Underground)
03 talk (Velvet Underground)
04 White Light-White Heat (Velvet Underground)
05 talk (Velvet Underground)
06 I'm Set Free (Velvet Underground)
07 talk (Velvet Underground)
08 Sweet Jane (Velvet Underground)
09 talk (Velvet Underground)
10 Lonesome Cowboy Bill (Velvet Underground)
11 talk (Velvet Underground)
12 New Age (Velvet Underground)
13 talk (Velvet Underground)
14 Beginning to See the Light (Velvet Underground)
15 Who Loves the Sun [Edit] (Velvet Underground)
16 Sweet Jane [Version 2] (Velvet Underground)
17 talk (Velvet Underground)
18 I'll Be Your Mirror (Velvet Underground)
19 talk (Velvet Underground)
20 Pale Blue Eyes (Velvet Underground)
21 talk (Velvet Underground)
22 Candy Says [Edit] (Velvet Underground)
23 talk (Velvet Underground)
24 Sunday Morning (Velvet Underground)
25 talk (Velvet Underground)
26 After Hours (Velvet Underground)
27 talk (Velvet Underground)
28 Femme Fatale [Edit] (Velvet Underground)
29 talk (Velvet Underground)
30 Some Kinda Love (Velvet Underground)
31 Lonesome Cowboy Bill [Version 2] (Velvet Underground)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15264157/TVelvtUnd_1970a_MaxsKnsasCityNYC__8-23-1970_atse.zip.html

It's very hard to find any good photos of the band in concert, especially color ones. However, there was an ad for this series of shows, so I used that, cropped but otherwise unchanged. I cleaned it up some, and added the yellow background.

The Velvet Underground - The End of Cole Ave., Dallas, TX, 10-18-1969

I've gotten a good reaction to the Velvet Underground (VU) bootleg concert I posted a few days ago, so I'm posting another one, recorded by the same taper the night before. 

There's good news and bad news. The bad news is there were more problems with this recording than the other one, and I decided that only about half of it is worthy of posting here. But the good news is the band played a few songs they rarely did, and the sound quality for this portion is nearly as good as the concert I recently posted. So if you like that one, I suggest you get this one too. This still has to be one of a handful of the best sounding VU bootlegs out there.

I gave a detailed explanation about how the recording of the next night (October 19, 1969) came to be. I'll quickly sum that up, because most of it applies here too. The VU were playing at the oddly named "The End of Cole Ave." club in Dallas for about a week. On this night, band member Lou Reed noticed an audience member was taping the show from the back of the club. During a break between sets in the middle of the show, Reed found the person and asked to hear a playback. After hearing a sample, he let the taper record in the open, close to the stage, if that person promised to send him a copy of the tape. Then the whole of the next night's show was recorded by that taper in similarly ideal conditions. The taper did send the recordings of both nights to the band, and four of the songs from the next night were released on the live album "1969: The Velvet Underground Live."

That all explains why I'm only posting the second half of this concert, because it was recorded in a much better manner than the first half. I tried to salvage the first half, but the sound quality was too poor for my tastes. Even what I think is the first song of the second set ("I'll Be Your Mirror") didn't sound good enough. Perhaps the taper was still getting into a better position or something like that. But luckily, virtually every song in the first set would be played by the band the next night, and recorded with great sound quality. Whereas a big portion of the songs included here not only weren't done the next night, they were relatively rarely done by the band at all. 

It seems the band was in a mellow mood for the second set, and played a bunch of songs from their relatively mellow 1969 album "The Velvet Underground." Even the usual closing song, "Sister Ray," was done in a relatively mellow manner. Songs like "Jesus" and "The Story of My Life" were only played a handful of times by the band. "I Found a Reason" may only have been played live one other time (according to the setlist.fm database). So, for some songs, these are the best or even the only live recordings that have survived.

By the way, the version of "I Found a Reason" played here is particularly interesting, because it was done in a country style very different from any studio version. This album is worth hearing for that version alone.

This recording has the same history as that of the next night's recording. In short, I found a version modified by a person nicknamed Captain Acid, who significantly improved the sound quality. Then I made further changes using the UVR5 audio editing program, especially boosting the lead vocals in relation to the instruments. 

This bootleg has the same problem as the other one in that the taper stopped the recording between songs, usually only getting a few seconds of applause, and probably losing most of the banter. There was only one song where all of the applause was recorded, "After Hours." Probably that was because the song got an especially big reaction due to being sung by the female drummer, Moe Tucker. (According to the setlist.fm database, this was the first time she sang lead in any VU concert! Maybe that's why she messed up a bit.) So you can listen to that to hear a complete audience response, to get an idea of how big the audience was. For all the other songs, I patched in extra cheering from the next night's recording to fill in the missing bits.

This album is 46 minutes long.

01 Femme Fatale (Velvet Underground)
02 talk (Velvet Underground)
03 Pale Blue Eyes (Velvet Underground)
04 Candy Says (Velvet Underground)
05 Jesus (Velvet Underground)
06 The Story of My Life (Velvet Underground)
07 I Found a Reason (Velvet Underground)
08 Sunday Morning (Velvet Underground)
09 After Hours (Velvet Underground)
10 Sister Ray (Velvet Underground)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/JdWhvxpq 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/vqNDSmnAWnNIuFZ/file

As I mentioned for the October 19th concert, VU played an anti-war protest in Dallas that took place a few days earlier. The cover for the 19th is a screenshot from that concert, due to there being some surviving video footage of it. This cover uses another screenshot from that concert too. Unfortunately, there weren't many good shots of the full band, so I had to resort to a screenshot that doesn't include the drummer, Moe Tucker. Sorry, Moe!

The Velvet Underground - The End of Cole Ave., Dallas, TX, 10-19-1969

I'm thrilled to be posting this album. I recently discovered this great sounding concert recording, then I made some changes to make it sound even better. I dare say this album now is the best sounding live recording of the Velvet Underground (VU), official or bootleg. If you're a fan of the band at all, you need to hear this!

Here's a little history behind this unique recording. In October 1969, the Velvet Underground spent about two weeks in Texas. It was their only time in Texas while singer-songwriter Lou Reed was still in the band. They played from the 14th to 19th at a Dallas night club with the odd name "The End of Cole Ave." They also played at a anti-war protest in Dallas on the 15th. (That's what the cover photo is from.)

Here's some further information from Jeff Leegood, the person who taped the concert. "On October 18, 1969, when I recorded the VU at the End of Cole I was sitting in the back of the place. When they took a break, Hans the roadie asked me to come to the back room, the band wanted to hear the tape. The recorder I was using (a Wollensak by 3M) had speakers (it was a stereo no less) built in so I could play the tape. I played some of what I had. So then Lou [Reed] said to me I could move up front and record them if I was willing to send a tape copy of their performance to their manager, of course, that was fine with me. I kept my word, and off they went."

Understand that Leegood recorded two nights, the 18th and the 19th. The recording from the 18th doesn't sound so good because much or all of it was recorded from the back of the club. But the recording from the 19th - the one here - was recorded in ideal conditions, right on stage.

In 1974, the official double live album "1969: The Velvet Underground Live" was released. It was mostly made up of songs recorded at the Matrix in San Francisco. But four of the songs - "I'm Waiting for the Man," "Femme Fatale," "Pale Blue Eyes," and "I'll Be Your Mirror," come from this exact show.

I will next share a comment from the Allmusic.com website about the bootleg version of this show: "Sometimes archival material which first appeared on a bootleg album will later find authorized release with improved sound quality, but [this] is a rare example of this process working in reverse. ... By the time Mercury Records got their hands on the Dallas recordings, they were several generations removed from the original source material. ... [On the bootleg version] the absence of the blanket of hiss which has usually hovered over these performances is more than welcome."

Then, in 2013, a complete "official version" of both shows was released, under the names "Live at the End of Cole Ave: The First Night" and ""Live at the End of Cole Ave: The Second Night." But, as Leegood has noted, these appear to be "grey market" versions that he had no involvement in, and the band members certainly aren't getting royalties for. Someone simply mass produced and sold the bootleg version that was already available for free on the Internet.

Then, in 2021, a person with the nickname Captain Acid made improvements. He said he did phase, level, and speed correction, and new EQ. That's the version I found. I was stunned at how good it sounded. I had assumed the versions on the official "1969" album were as good as the recording got, but boy was that wrong. 

However, there still was a big problem: the vocals were low in the mix. I suppose in 2021, Captain Acid didn't know about the new computer programs like X-Minus becoming available that allows one to break a recording into different instruments and then drastically change the volume levels on each one, or maybe he's a purist and doesn't like to make changes like that. But I have no qualms. Using the program UVR5, I've boosted the lead vocals for all the songs. It's a huge improvement, in my opinion.

But that's not all. There were three more problems with the Captain Acid version. One was that the banter between songs was often very low. In some cases, it was so low that I wasn't even sure at first listen if someone on stage was talking or not. But when I boosted the volume of those parts drastically, the speaking came through with surprising clarity, and very little hiss. So I did that for all the banter.

The second problem was that the applause after each song was cut off after a couple of seconds in nearly all cases. This was a common problem back in the days of strictly analog recording, because tapers often only had one tape and were trying to save space so they'd be able to record the entire show. (Chances are that some banter was lost as well.) However, there were a couple of songs where all of the applause was recorded. One of those was "I'm Set Free," where the cheering was surprisingly long and loud. Probably, they were reacting positively to the female drummer, Moe Tucker, taking a rare turn in singing lead. I checked the setlist.fm database, and this may well have been only the second time she sang lead in any VU concert, with the first being the night before. (She also sang the next song, "After Hours.") Based on the amount of cheering that survived for such songs, I used those bits to fill in the cheering for all the other songs. I even pasted in extra "woo hoo" noises at random times.

So that left the third problem. You know how I said tapers often turned their tape recorders off between songs to try to save tape? Well, in this case, it seems they didn't have enough tape, because the last song, "Sister Ray," faded out after fifteen minutes. Based on the similar highs and lows of the complete version recorded the night before, which is 17 minutes long, it was close to the end. So I took the last couple minutes from the October 18th version and used it to finish off this version. That's why "Sister Ray" has "[Edit]" in its title. All of the songs here have been heavily edited, but in a consistent manner. Only "Sister Ray" has that extra and even more drastic edit.

There was some jamming after the concert that also got recorded by Leegood. However, I haven't included any of that. For one thing, it doesn't sound like the rest of the concert. For instance, there's no crowd noise. But also, I did some research on this, and it seems it was only band member Doug Yule playing with either roadies or locals, or both. So it's not fully Velvet Underground music, in my opinion.

Anyway, that's a long explanation. But the LR:DR is that this concert now sounds fantastic, at least compared to live recordings of the time, and it sounds like a complete concert without any missing pieces for the first time. 

I've spent so much time talking about the details of the recording that I haven't mentioned the actual performance. Suffice to say the band kicked ass. Note that many of the songs were unreleased at the time, and a few have different lead vocalists than the album versions. This is definitely going to be my favorite Velvet Underground live recording from now on.

This concert is an hour and 22 minutes long.

I just discovered this concert a couple of days ago. I may soon try to improve the October 18th concert. But I've listened to some of it, and at least the first half sounds much rougher than this, due to the circumstances discussed above. So I might just post the better part of it. I'm not sure yet.

01 talk (Velvet Underground)
02 I'm Waiting for the Man (Velvet Underground)
03 talk (Velvet Underground)
04 It's Just Too Much (Velvet Underground)
05 I'll Be Your Mirror (Velvet Underground)
06 talk (Velvet Underground)
07 Some Kinda Love (Velvet Underground)
08 talk (Velvet Underground)
09 Femme Fatale (Velvet Underground)
10 Beginning to See the Light (Velvet Underground)
11 talk (Velvet Underground)
12 I'm Set Free (Velvet Underground)
13 After Hours (Velvet Underground)
14 I'm Sticking with You (Velvet Underground)
15 One of These Days (Velvet Underground)
16 talk (Velvet Underground)
17 Pale Blue Eyes (Velvet Underground)
18 Ocean (Velvet Underground)
19 What Goes On (Velvet Underground)
20 talk (Velvet Underground)
21 Heroin (Velvet Underground)
22 Sister Ray [Edit] (Velvet Underground)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15213233/TVelvtUnd_1969_ThEndColeAveDallsTX__10-19-1969_atse.zip.html

Not only am I psyched about how well the music sounds, I'm psyched about the cover photo. Good color photos of the Velvet Underground in concert back in the 1960s are rarer than hen's teeth. This one isn't from the exact concert, but it's surprisingly close. I mentioned above that the band performed for an anti-war protest in Dallas on October 15th, a mere four days before this concert. In 2019, a few minutes of color video footage of that performance appeared on YouTube. I think it's the only color footage of them in concert, period. (You can find versions still on YouTube, if you're interested in watching it.)

I took a screenshot from that video, then made a few improvements to it in Photoshop. The main improvement has to do with Moe Tucker. She's the one in the middle with sunglasses on and a white sweatshirt, sitting while playing the drums. 

(One unexpected thing I learned from putting this album together is that members of the Velvet Underground were professional football fans. Tucker was wearing a New York Jets sweatshirt in the video. And at the start of the concert included here, Lou Reed commented to the audience that he'd recently watched the Dallas Cowboys play the Philadelphia Eagles, and he was disappointed at how the game was a blowout.)

Anyway, in the screenshot, Tucker was overexposed, and she pretty much looked like a white blob. So I took another screenshot from the same video where the lighting on her was better, and pasted in that version of her instead.

Lou Reed - Capitol Theatre, Passaic, NJ, 9-25-1984

I think Lou Reed's music from the early 1980s is underrated. He'd had a lot of drug addiction problems in the mid to late 1970s, and I think that negatively affected his musical output. But he cleaned up in the early 1980s, and I suspect that had a positive impact. I especially like his 1984 album "New Sensations." Maybe it's not so popular with some fans because it's rather upbeat and poppy compared to most of his other stuff, and his music isn't known for being upbeat and poppy. But new wave music was a big trend at the time, and he definitely joined that movement for a while.

This is a great concert from the 1984 tour to support "New Sensations." I count six songs from that album, which isn't that many, given that this is a fairly long concert. But he also did songs from earlier in his career, going all the way back to his Velvet Underground days, and generally did them in more of the new wave style he was favoring at the time. For instance, "I'm Waiting for the Man" and "There She Goes Again" sound different from their Velvet Underground versions.

This is unreleased, but the sound quality is excellent, like an official live album. There's no official live album of his 1984 tour. However, there is a very good one of his 1983 tour, called "Live in Italy." Personally, I like this much better. For one, it has the "New Sensations" songs. It's also a lot longer. And both of them feature the lead guitarist Robert Quine. Quine played with Reed in the early 1980s, and was Reed's favorite lead guitarist. By the time of "New Sensations," they were butting heads a lot, and Quine's playing wasn't featured on that album at all. However, Quine still did play on this tour, before permanently parting ways with Reed after it ended.

Another nice bonus about this concert is that musician Jim Carroll joined the concert near the end and basically briefly took over to sing his one minor hit, "People Who Died." He also sang backing vocals on the one song played after that one, "Rock and Roll." But you can hardly tell. I only know that for sure because there's a video of this concert on YouTube, and I saw him singing on that song.

This album is two hours and four minutes long.

01 talk (Lou Reed)
02 Sweet Jane (Lou Reed)
03 talk (Lou Reed)
04 I'm Waiting for the Man (Lou Reed)
05 talk (Lou Reed)
06 Martial Law (Lou Reed)
07 ta;l (Lou Reed)
08 Down at the Arcade (Lou Reed)
09 talk (Lou Reed)
10 Legendary Hearts (Lou Reed)
11 talk (Lou Reed)
12 There She Goes Again (Lou Reed)
13 Turn Out the Light (Lou Reed)
14 talk (Lou Reed)
15 My Red Joystick (Lou Reed)
16 talk (Lou Reed)
17 Average Guy (Lou Reed)
18 talk (Lou Reed)
19 Street Hassle (Lou Reed)
20 talk (Lou Reed)
21 Sally Can't Dance (Lou Reed)
22 Walk on the Wild Side (Lou Reed)
23 talk (Lou Reed)
24 Satellite of Love (Lou Reed)
25 talk (Lou Reed)
26 New Sensations (Lou Reed)
27 A Gift (Lou Reed)
28 Doin' the Things that We Want To (Lou Reed)
29 talk (Lou Reed)
30 Waves of Fear (Lou Reed)
31 I Love You, Suzanne (Lou Reed)
32 talk (Lou Reed)
33 White Light-White Heat (Lou Reed)
34 Turn to Me (Lou Reed)
35 talk (Lou Reed)
36 Kill Your Sons (Lou Reed)
37 Coney Island Baby (Lou Reed)
38 talk (Jim Carroll & Lou Reed)
39 People Who Died (Jim Carroll & Lou Reed)
40 talk (Lou Reed with Jim Carroll)
41 Rock and Roll (Lou Reed with Jim Carroll) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/KAJDNgnP

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/DqYDrpP6aTQBPMI/file

The cover photo was taken in Chicago in September 1984, just three days after this concert.

Lou Reed - 1971 Acoustic Demos (1971)

I recently posted an acoustic version of Lou Reed's first solo album, the 1972 album simply titled "Lou Reed." That material came from a bunch of acoustic demos he did in 1971. There are enough demos for a second album of all the other songs he had written at that time. This is that album.

As I explained with my post about the "Lou Reed" acoustic album, in 2021, an album called "RCA Acoustic Demos" was released. However, it was only on sale for one day in Britain, in order to retain European copyrights to the performances. The sound quality from this source is excellent. I've used that source for the first 23 minutes here. That includes a version of "I Love You." I put a different demo of that on the "Lou Reed" acoustic album, since I found two good ones.

That leaves six more songs at the end. These all come from bootlegs of his acoustic demos, which have been publicly circulating for years. Unfortunately, the sound quality of these are okay, but not as good as what has recently come out via the "RCA Acoustic Demos." So I've edited all of them to try to improve their sound quality a bit. That's why they all have "[Edit]" in their titles. The main thing I did was increase the volume of the lead vocals relative to the music. That way, you can more clearly hear what he's singing.

The sound quality of those six songs is variable. Generally speaking, they start sounding fairly good and then the quality declines towards the end. So if high sound quality matters to you, you might want to bail out at some point. For me, these all sound good enough for repeat listenings.

In terms of musical content, Reed put out two albums in 1972, "Lou Reed" and "Transformer." All the "Lou Reed" songs are on the other album I recently posted (with the exception of the second version of "I Love You" here). So it's not surprising that there are a bunch of "Transformer" song here - six out of the eleven songs from that album. Note though that this version of "Walk on the Wild Side" is very different. I suspect this was an early version with placeholder lyrics, since the lyrics are so strange, and clearly inferior to the final version.

Reed was on fire as a songwriter, building up a stockpile of songs he would draw on for years to come. For instance, "Kill Your Sons" would go on a 1974 album, and "Follow the Leader" would go on a 1976 album. But he also looked backwards, in that "What Goes On" and "I'm Sticking with You" were Velvet Underground songs. "I'm Sticking with You" is particularly interesting, because the Velvet Underground version that was officially released had most of the lead vocals by the band's drummer Moe Tucker, whereas here you get to hear the song's author sing it. But perhaps most interesting of all is "So in Love" because this song has never been officially released in any form.

There are many more acoustic demos Reed recorded that are on bootleg and I haven't included here. That's because the "RCA Acoustic Demos" versions sound much better, and the performances are only slightly different. I included all the songs I could find that weren't on that release.

This album is 39 minutes long.

01 Perfect Day (Lou Reed)
02 I'm So Free (Lou Reed)
03 I'm Sticking with You (Lou Reed)
04 New York Telephone Conversation (Lou Reed)
05 I Love You (Lou Reed)
06 She's My Best Friend (Lou Reed)
07 Kill Your Sons (Lou Reed)
08 Hangin' 'Round (Lou Reed)
09 Goodnight Ladies [Edit] (Lou Reed)
10 So in Love [Edit] (Lou Reed)
11 Oh, Jim [Edit] (Lou Reed)
12 The Kids [Edit] (Lou Reed)
13 Walk on the Wild Side [Edit] (Lou Reed)
14 What Goes On - Follow the Leader [Edit] (Lou Reed)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15250295/LouR_1971_1971_AcoustcDmos_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I wanted a photo of Reed from the time period that fit with the acoustic demo nature of the album (as opposed to him being on stage with an electric guitar and glam make-up). I didn't find any really good color ones, but I found a black and white one I liked that comes from an interview he did in January 1972. Since I try to avoid black and white album covers, I colorized it.

Lou Reed - Lou Reed - Acoustic Version (1971)

In 1972, Lou Reed started his post-Velvet Underground solo career with the album simply titled "Lou Reed." Personally, I think it's one of his best solo albums, because his songwriting was a peak. But it's also a flaw album, due to bad production. To give you some idea, Rick Wakeman and Steve Howe from the progressive band Yes are prominently featured all over it. There's nothing wrong with the musical skills of those two guys, but it shows the producer was trying to turn the music into something that didn't fit.

Anyway, just a few days ago (as I write this in March 2022), I found out that in late 2021, an album of Reed's 1971 acoustic demos was officially released, called "RCA Acoustic Demos." You probably haven't heard of this, because it was only released for literally a day in Britain in order to retain the legal rights to the performances, due to the way European copyright law works. I love acoustic versions of songs, so it was a no-brainer for me to post that stuff here. However, it was a long album, over an hour, and I decided to break it in two. I noticed that every single song from the 1972 album "Lou Reed" was played on it, so I've made a version of that album using those acoustic versions. For all the other songs, I've made a second album, which I will be posting shortly.

Technically speaking, one song here is not from that source, "I Love You." I found two acoustic versions of that song. One is from the "RCA Acoustic Demos," and the other is the last song on the "Peel Slowly and See" Velvet Underground box set. Even though that is billed as a Velvet Underground performance, it really was just Reed and his guitar. So I've put that version here, and the other version will go on the other album I'll be posting.

Eight out of the ten songs here were originally done by the Velvet Underground. He essentially cleaned out most of the songs that band never got around to recording, allowing him to put out an album of mostly new tunes later in 1972, "Transformer." So if you think his Velvet Underground stuff is great, which it is, and "Transformer" is great, which it is, you can see why I think this is an excellent album too. But if you have an issue with the production, this allows you to hear it in a completely different way.

This album is 34 minutes long. The sound quality is excellent all the way through.

01 I Can't Stand It (Lou Reed)
02 Going Down (Lou Reed)
03 Walk and Talk It (Lou Reed)
04 Lisa Says (Lou Reed)
05 Berlin (Lou Reed)
06 I Love You (Lou Reed)
07 Wild Child (Lou Reed)
08 Love Makes You Feel [Ten Feet Tall] (Lou Reed)
09 Ride into the Sun (Lou Reed)
10 Ocean (Lou Reed)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15262650/LouR_1971_LuReedAcoustc_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I zoomed in on one section of the official cover and enlarged that. Then I added the same text at the top of his name.

Lou Reed - WLIR 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. 

This album is 57 minutes long. 

UPDATE: On September 12, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is exactly the same. But I changed the title and the cover art to be consistent with other albums from this same Ultrasonic radio show.

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://pixeldrain.com/u/UmvqqAku

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/gai6eCgArltqUnr/file 

In September 2025, I replaced the cover photo, as I didn't think the previous one looked very good. It was black and white, and then I tinted it. Instead, I found a different black and white photo of him, taken some time in 1972, and colorized it using the Kolorize program.