This is a resurrection of an old vinyl boot title of the same name (a label called Stoned issued an abbreviated version of it years ago), recorded at Stockholm’s well known Concert Hut venue, a frequent source of superb-sounding broadcasts. However, Missing Link reportedly unearthed the original radio station tape reels in order to present this more-or-less unedited show. (There are a few fadeouts as well as three-second gaps between songs but no radio announcer introductions or chatter.) So as a sonically fulsome document of Uncle Lou circa the recently-issued (in October of ’73) Berlin album, this is as good as it gets, encompassing Berlin material alongside various Reed/Velvet Underground classics. Don’t expect fireworks throughout, however; at this stage Reed had rearranged a lot of his stuff, meaning for example that “I’m Waiting For The Man” kind of lopes along like some jazz-funk fusion number. Admittedly Reed’s band at the time – bassist Prakash John and drummer Pentii Glenn (both from the Alice Cooper group), keyboardist Michael Fonfara, guitarist Danny Weiss – was a bunch of faceless ringers compared to a year or so earlier when guitar whizzes Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter powered the lineup. (Hence this bootleg’s title.) Lester Bang once famously called the Reed band of this era “some of the ugliest people ever to walk onstage” – no argument there. Reed himself wasn't much of a catch in those days either, unless of course you had a weakness for ill-tempered guys with dyed yellow hair who occasionally shaved swastikas into the side of their heads!
That said, this boot rocks at least as hard as the official live Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal, which was issued a few months earlier, in Feb. of ’74. And as noted above, it sounds incredible. -- OSWALD
