He was aware. It was first mentioned by him in an interview and he said he had no interest in opening it.
That is really cool. As desperately as I do want some unearthed classic VU stuff, I am also fascinated to hear this 'in development' stuff too. Can't wait to hear baby Lou. Also I wonder if the 'male voice' harmonizing with him is John Cale and someone was just being super shade-y by not naming him lol
'Like' and... 5 years? Shocked! Seems like yesterday. The magic and the loss has not faded or diminished. His spirit still permeates my town and my soul.
You are correct Ralph. Laurie tells me she deems the responsibility very seriously and will not yield to any pressure to rush out anything and yes she has many projects of her own to work on. She would also not speak at all to what material there is to work with or who is involved. Not a single word; simply a wry impish smile. So the raw truth of it is that I have no information to share. My "guess" is that if we hold our collective breath we might all turn various shades of blue before we see anything substantial.
You can still listen to the bbc show. The demo is very nice as can be expected, similar voice to the Heroin demo. Man though, very intense listening to his reading of Exodus by Bob Marley. Must be during his very last days.
If I were to dream of what might be on the rest of this tape... Based on the archivist saying there are 4 VU related songs and 7 never before known songs. So I assume no version of 'Won't You Smile No' or any Pickwick material because those would have been copyrighted already. I really hope to hear demo's of Venus In Furs, because we only have a Cale-sung demo so far, and Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams because we have never heard a Lou Reed sung version of this song. It would also be really cool to hear original version of things like I'll Be Your Mirror and I Found A Reason. I'm particularly itching to hear a Lou vocal on I'll Be Your Mirror. To date my favourite reading of the song is a live version from 1972 where Lou plays it solo on electric guitar with an absolutely incredible quiet vocal. Not a good recording unfortunately.
My concern is that the curators of some of these various estates are dragging the chain on re-issuing stuff. They may find that by the time they get around to it, anybody who knows who Lou Reed is will also be dead and buried.
The boss of the archive has clearly said that it takes time to deal with the rights and licensing where material is affected by such issues. He made it clear that they were working on it. Given the way they are leaking snippets of that demo tape, suggests to me that it should be soon. What I would like to see is a complete list of the tapes.
They did use the words "imminent release" when describing the archive during this latest BBC special. Though I suppose the word 'release' could mean that every year on his birthday they will play 30 seconds of an old demo. I hope we get to hear The Primitives rehearsal tape.
Isn't that the one Tony Conrad recorded? He gave it back to John Cale along with a box of other VU tapes (yes, a box of tapes), after Cale warned him about Lou and his lawyers.
Yes, that’s the one. I’ve read Tony Conrad’s description. It might not be in the archive if Lou didn’t have a copy and John didn’t offer his copy to the archive.
On behalf of one and all... thank you for your post. The NY Public Library is a magnificent underused and under appreciated resource. It always has been and remains a treasure of all things... ALL THINGS! My earliest experience / understanding of this was... as a kid the 2 things I couldn’t wait to roll down my block were the Good Humor Truck and the Mobile Library. It was my first introduction to the Whole Wide World ... it blows the World Wide Web out of the Water. The Toasted Almond Bars were pretty damn good as well.
according to a Facebook post, Hal Willner was recorded a couple of months ago talking about his Lou albums, for a unnamed Lou archive release. edit: it says "project", not release
I saw that too! I remember seeing a Tai chi book by Lou was in the works but hopefully it's an archive series. Instead of selling big box sets, it might be smarter to just have an online archive with downloadable mp3s/FlAC/FLAC-HD/Etc of the entire archive at like 10 dollars per album's worth of materials. But we'll see. Would be great if they can do this sooner than later tho
I know it's hardly an archive release, but I love the single version of Sally Can't Dance. It might be the closest we get to an unreleased Lou. There are some great sounding boots out there of some shows from the Street Hassle Tour.
Yea nothing beats the bootleg from Chicago in 1978. But there's hours worth of Bottom Line shows in the archive among other shows
Good news! Hopefully this is the first of many releases. Given this pandemic surely Laurie and the archive people must be rethinking this whole come visit New York City thing.
This is great news! The live tracks draw from several different nights of the tour, which indicates the possibility that complete concerts from each night may exist and could be released in the future. Until then, enjoy the included DVD performance and also hang on to your boot CDs to hear full concerts from this period.
