Lou Reed - 1977-08-07 - Mont de Marsan, FR (AUD/FLAC)

(Audience FLAC)

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Lou Reed: guitar, vocals
Stuart Heinrich: guitar
Michael Fonfara: keyboards
Bruce Yaw: bass
Marty Fogel: sax
Michael Suchorsky: drums
Joanne Kamorin: backing vocals

01: Sweet Jane 8.46
02: Rock And Roll Heart 3.47
03: Waiting For The Man 8.29
04: Rock And Roll 9.45
05: Vicious 4.29
06: Walk On The Wild Side 5.31
07: Kicks 11.54
08: Satellite Of Love 7.10
09: Leave Me Alone 24.41
10: Banging On My Drum 5.16
11: Heroin 12.17

Late summer saw part 2 of Lou's 1977 European tour. He would complete these dates before closing the year with some shows in Australia and New Zealand. Over the summer, Joanne Kamorin had been installed to provide backing vocals and Stuart Heinrich had replaced Jeffrey Roth on guitar. This was a difficult time for Lou: his relationship with Rachel was falling apart and they had several separations during late 1977. The binaural live tapes he had made in Germany earlier in the year had been rejected by Clive Davis and he would have to add some new studio material to them before they would be released as "Street Hassle". There were also other problems during the tour - Lou reportedly threatened at least 1 promoter, sacked his soundman "and kicked the monitors off the stage" during one show.

This recording historically circulated as "Mont De Marsan Punk Festival", but that festival took place on the 5th and 6th August. (One of the organisers of the Punk Festival was Marc Zermati, who was also (jointly) responsible for the the first Velvet Underground vinyl bootleg - "Evil Mothers"). I suppose it could be argued that Lou "headlined" the festival by appearing the next day.....There are long gaps between some songs (over 3 minutes after "Sweet Jane") while guitars are being re-tuned, and the audience get quite restless at times. Lou doesn't directly address the audience during the whole show other than to say a cursory "thank you" just before leaving the stage. He manages to fit in only 2 tunes from his last LP - the lightweight "Rock And Roll Heart" and a (relatively) lengthy buzz-saw rendition of "Banging On My Drum" - his ode to "drug masturbation". There are no "new" songs. "Kicks" gets the usual 1977 treatment - speed manic and menacing. "Leave Me Alone" also gets a long, long workout - possibly the longest available recorded version of this song.

This is a reasonable quality audience recording - the vocals are a bit muffled but there's not too much tape hiss. At least one other audience recording of this show exists, but it is incomplete and (in my opinion) inferior to this one.