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LOU REED
Sydney 1974 [no label, 1CD]
Live at the Hordern Pavilion, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia; August 13, 1974. Very good audience recording.
Thanks to taper Christine 16; audiowhore and to wazza50 for sharing the show at Dime.
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What you are or will be listening to is the first ever concert that Lou Reed performed in Australia, on August 13, 1974. Between audiowhore’s extensive research, my ticket stubs plus my recollections we’ve pieced together what we both think are the definitive Lou Reed 1974 Australian Tour dates. It cleared one thing up for myself, I was under the impression that more shows were added after the tour had started but actually the 2nd & 3rd concerts for Sydney and Melbourne went on sale before Lou landed in the country.
On the early tour posters that appeared pre tour the city of Perth was listed but by the time the tour went ahead Perth was not on the tour but Brisbane which is not on the poster ended being one of the four cities visited on the tour. Obviously behind the scenes something unknown happened and Brisbane substituted for Perth.
Ticket prices were an outrageous A$5.50!
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The story behind the 13th August 1974 recording:
I first met the taper (nicknamed Christine 16 as a joke) sometime in mid to late 1972 when I brought bootleg LPs from him after he had placed ads selling bootleg LPs in the classified section of a Sydney Sunday paper. We kept in periodical contact, this usually occurred when a new batch of bootleg LPs had freshly arrived from California.
I can’t remember now if we even knew each other would be attending the Sydney Lou shows but now I know that we both caught the first Lou 1974 Sydney show. After it became known that myself & friends taped select Sydney shows he mentioned to me that he’d taped Lou back in 1974 at Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion. He recorded the show on a portable reel to reel deck, the brand of recorder plus the microphone used are long forgotten. I remember him saying he had placed the recorder either under his chair or under the one in front of him, or was it on top of his chair or the one in front?
The 1974 Lou Sydney audiences were rather sedate… Probably because most of us if not all of us had never (well on stage at least) seen a stick thin, crew-cutted bleach blonde male rumoured to be a junkie/homosexual who sang about various lowlifes & their activity’s. Most of us stood quietly in front of our seats while we watched somewhat bemused while Lou cavorted onstage & clapped politely at the end of songs.
But by the time of the Lou’s 1975 Australian tour his audiences were far more vocal as you will hear when the 1975 recordings are upped. The infamous Sydney airport TV interview plus that night’s paper & the next morning’s paper both of which reported some of Lou’s airport comments certainly helped gather interest in seeing this Lou Reed person!
People have asked me if Lou performed his hammer & tack act during the Sydney shows, you know the tourniquet & syringe hitting up scenario during Heroin. I honestly can say I don’t remember Lou doing so because I think I would remember if he did but on the other hand a friend swears he did. Having listened to Heroin from both Sydney shows I can’t hear any comments, laughs or shrieks from the audience which I’m sure if Lou had hit up one would hear some audience reaction.
Anyway sometime in the mid or late ’70s Christine 16 lent me his reel to reel tape, I borrowed my father’s SONY tape deck & personally transferred the reel onto cassette. Since I‘ve had this show I’ve only traded it only a handful of times copied from my 1st generation cassette with some fellow Lou fans in the UK. Over the years I’ve seen this show on very few Lou trade lists, sometimes attributed to various other dates in August but have never spotted it on any torrent sites.
Until now.
Thanks again to Christine 16 for his recording & audiowhore for the 2018 cassette transfer & research.
Enjoy!
Waz From Oz
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Lineage:
1st Generation Cassette Taken From The Master Reel To Reel Recorded By Christine 16
2018 Cassette Transfer Thanks To audiowhore
Artwork By Waz From Oz
Click on the highlighted tracks to download the MP3s (320 kbps). As far as we can ascertain, these tracks have never been officially released on CD.
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Track 01. Intro 1:57
Track 02. Sweet Jane 5:41
Track 03. Vicious 6:18
Track 04. Ride Sally Ride 3:48
Track 05. Heroin 11:20
Track 06. Sally Can’t Dance 4:51
Track 07. Lady Day 3:48
Track 08. Waiting For The Man 8:49
Track 09. Oh Jim 6:51
Track 10. Walk On The Wild Side 4:19
Track 11. White Light/White Heat 5:11
Track 12. New York Telephone Conversation/Goodnight Ladies 1:32
Track 13. Rock & Roll 11:50
77 mins
Lineup:
Lou Reed - vocals
Danny Weiss - guitar
Michael Fonfara - keyboards
Mouse Johnson - drums
Peter Johnson - bass
Click here to order Lou Reed releases.