It was the best of Lou; it was the worst of Lou. I’m talking, of course, about Lou Reed’s infamous 1978 “comedy” album, Live: Take No Prisoners, which was recorded over a 4-day period at the Bottom Line in New York City. On it Mr. Velvet Underground adlibs all over some of his best-known songs, launching into long, meandering, and only occasionally humorous digressions that destroy said songs in the process. You will like this album if you believe Lou Reed is the second coming of Lenny Bruce. Me, I rate him more along the lines of Lenny and Squiggy.
But here’s the good news. Despite Reed’s best efforts to hobble his own material by free-associating right over it, Live: Take No Prisoners occasionally reaches sublime heights, thanks to some ballsy and unique arrangements that actually—at least at times—improve on the studio originals. Unlike Bob Dylan—whose radical rearrangements of his classics tend to give me the shudders—Reed has the ability to treat his own songs with arch irreverence and get away with it. Sometimes at least.
I could belabor the point I make in the first paragraph, but I’ll try not to. Suffice it to say that the almost 17 minutes of “Walk on the Wild Side” are truly insufferable. He chit chats for a while, then goes into a long spiel about how he came to write the song. He then interrupts said long spiel with a rant about how much he loathes the Village Voice’s Robert Christgau and rock critics in general before returning to his original spiel, having also taken a brief conversational detour to give a shout out to Bruce Springsteen who is in the audience. “Sweet Jane” receives similar treatment—Lou yaks his way through it, looking for yuks with his Barbra Streisand imitation and his observation that people from Wyoming are short (guess you had to be there). Meanwhile the band vamps behind him, vainly hoping—along with, I would guess, the audience—that he’ll just shut up and play the damn song. I know that’s what I’d have been hoping.
Reed renders “I’m Waiting for the Man” unrecognizable by turning it into a very slow and tuneless crawl. Things kinda get moving, then stop dead. Somebody in the audience speaks up. Lou replies, “I’ll sing when you shut up.” But at least he’s not doing stand-up now. He’s simply free-associating his way through the atonal muck, adlibbing and improvising and in general not making much sense. But to Reed’s credit the performance has its own morbid fascination—it’s sorta like watching a head-on collision in very slow motion. The problem is that his improvisation never really becomes a story, but rather a series of catty and hipper-than-thou one-liners. I’ll betcha Andy Warhol ate this shit up. Me, not so much.
The LP’s other long track is “Street Hassle.” Reed graciously keeps the opening banter short, the band goes into the song’s familiar lurching cadence, and it’s nice. Decadent Lou (as opposed to Sweet Lou) then commences to spit out his words, coming on like Hubert Selby III as he launches into a tired “Hey get your girlfriend who OD’ed out of my apartment man, I don’t care if you have to drag her out by her feet” tale of squalid urban realism. And I’m ready to write the song off because it feels like I’ve heard this story before—And wait, I have! It’s called “Sister Ray”!—when the bass comes surging in along with some swell guitar feedback and electric saxophone squonk. And voila! Shades of the Velvet Underground! At their dissonant best!
Seriously, I love the closing minutes of “Street Hassle” more than I do any of his studio work. And the same goes for the LP’s triumphant version of “Coney Island Baby,” which features Lou at his most impassioned. Believe me when I say it leaves the studio version in the dust. “Satellite of Love” is also a powerhouse, and it doesn’t hurt that Reed doesn’t crack wise once. “Pale Blue Eyes” and “Berlin” are also great, what with Reed delivering el primo vocal performances while the band of relative unknowns behind him prove they can give as good as they get. As for “Leave Me Alone” it features Reed speed rapping over a big, bad drone fueled by some very mean feedback and squealing saxophone. If you’re a fan of noise for noise’s sake you’ll love the way the groove never stops or changes but simply buries you under layer after layer of beautiful dissonance.
Reed himself said that Live: Take No Prisoners was the Lou Reed record he’d “choose for posterity.” He went on to say that, “It’s not only the smartest thing I’ve done, it’s also as close to Lou Reed as you’re probably going to get, for better or for worse.” Me, I think most of it isn’t worth a repeat spin, and I can no more imagine sitting down and listening to the whole of it than I can listening to Elvis Presley’s immortal 1974 LP Having Fun with Elvis on Stage. Because Lou just isn’t that funny. I’m not saying I’d sooner go see Carrot Top, mind you. But I’d have to think about it.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
C
