Product: Night With Lou Reed [VHS] (1991)
Rating: 1.0
When the smack begins to flow
Lou dissapoints even his celebrity audience here (Andy Warhol manages to look even more bored than usual) with a decidedly off night. He is drugged up to the eye-balls and displays some frankly frightening facial contortions and twitches whilst struggling to make it to the end of this gig. His eyeballs roll o the back of his head and he performs guitar solos hunched in a little ball with his back to the audience.His band is composed of an effeminately ineffectual drummer and a lead guitarist who should be sent back to the greasy diner where Lou found him. Needless to say they can do nothing to mask his inebriated state (even the Hunter/Wagner band would have had difficulty).The production is pretty shoddy, bad camera work, so overexposed that Lou looks as if he's had an accident with some fake tan lotion. And just to top it off they cut out all the bits where he talks between songs -often the most entertaining parts of his concerts.How this performance ever made it to VHS let alone DVD is a wonder, especially considering that neither the mind-blowing 'Velvets Redux' reunion tour nor Reed's intense collaboration with John Cale; 'Songs for Drella' are available in this format.And if you don't believe me you can hear it from Mr Reed himself at the end of the concert when he is filmed telling the guys running the show that the venue had bad acoustics and that this isn't the sort of gig that anyone should keep a tape of.