Lou Reed - The Bottom Line Soundcheck, February 1983
Friends, I'm back on the Jokermen podcast this week to discuss Lou Reed's Robert Quine-assisted 1983 double LP Live In Italy. Listen in! Always a pleasure — hopefully my stabs at humor and/or profundity are not incredibly annoying. Initially only released across the pond, Live In Italy still feels like a bit of a hidden gem in the Louevre; not sure if Lou just forgot about it entirely or decided it wasn't something he wanted included in that big RCA box that came out a while back. If you haven't checked it out or need to revisit, it's a killer, definitely an essential chapter in the all-too-brief Reed/Quine saga. Easily accessible via streaming services, I think.
Less easily accessible is this Bottom Line tape of Lou, Quine, Fernando Saunders and Fred Maher warming up before their first live shows a few months before invading Italy. A cool document, with some interesting rarities and arrangements; songs like "The Day John Kennedy Died," "Vicious Circle" and "A Gift" wouldn't be played much (or at all) after '83. The energy level isn't quite as high as it would get with an actual audience present, but it's pretty high all the same. And even though Quine and Reed's relationship was already pretty fractured at this point, it doesn't stop Lou from praising his guitarist. "Damn!" he exclaims at the end of Quine's typically tortured "Waves of Fear" solo. You'll likely say the same thing when you hear it.
