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After seeing Lou Reed in concert last night, I no longer feel anywhere near as old as I usually do. If a craggy old fart like Lou can still kick this much a** at his age, there’s hope for me yet. xp

The show was at the NorVa, a venue I’d never been to before but which proved extremely easy to find, since it’s located about two blocks away from where my father used to work. After the maximum security measures I’ve encountered at larger venues, it was nice to go to a place that’s a little less strict-- basically, all they do is check your I.D. to make sure you’re legal to drink, and if you look old enough they don’t even bother with that. The guy at the door just gave me a wristband and let me in, and they don’t even take your ticket from you-- they scan it and let you keep it. I found this kind of bizarre, but I guess the system works for them.

The need for wristbands became immediately apparent once I got inside-- there were three bars in the main venue (two on the first floor, one on the second) and a fourth just outside the doors; this last one doubled as a sort of restaurant that seemed to serve only pizza, I guess on the assumption that pizza’s the only food that goes well with beer (or the only food drunk people will want to eat). I decided to check out the beer selection, and came in on a conversation between the bartender and a guy who had obviously been drinking for a while before I arrived. The bartender was attempting to tell the drunk guy that Lou insisted that the bars inside the venue stop serving when he went on stage; I’m not sure if the words actually registered, because the drunk guy didn’t seem to directly respond to anything-- everything he said was slurred to point of sounding like it was half-speed, and it never seemed to relate to anything the bartender said. I ordered a lager, discovered it cost $6, and quickly decided this would be a good night to stay sober.

The show was supposed to start at 8, but Lou and his band didn’t actually take the stage until after 8:30. He was probably stuck in traffic; I encountered a half-hour delay at the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel on my way in from Williamsburg. But many of the audience members were restless as the sound techs kept wandering out from the wings to make little tweaks to the instruments, and observing these people was entertaining enough that I didn’t care about the delay. My favorite was a guy who looked like Kevin Spacey but with slightly more hair, but had the personality of Mr. Eddy from Lost Highway. He came up to one of his friends and, out of nowhere, bellowed, “WHERE THE ******** IS PETE?” The hapless friend had no clue, and for a moment I wondered if he even knew who Pete was. So the loud guy starts storming off and then turns to his friend and shouts, “STAY RIGHT THERE!”. Why, I don’t know-- it was a general admission show, with no seating apart from the stools at the tables around the main floor and the “V.I.P. area” upstairs, so it’s not like they were saving a spot with an exceptionally good view of Lou. I think he finally found Pete, but I don’t know that Pete was very lucky being found.

Anyway, Lou finally arrived and established the formula for most of the set: alternating between recent material and classic Velvets/early solo songs, largely favoring songs with catchy riffs that Lou and the other two guitarists could reiterate and play off of, and frequently spiraling into lengthy improvisations (the first two songs, “Mad” and “Sweet Jane”, lasted a combined twenty minutes). The sound was excellent, though I’m not sure Lou agreed, because at least twice he seemed to be giving the sound guy the finger. Though maybe he was just randomly giving people on that side of the crowd the finger, I don’t know. Actually, Lou seemed to be in a good mood for most of the night, though he’s clearly not one to engage in a lot of between-song banter. Towards the end, when he came back for an encore (“Perfect Day”, of course), he said, “You’ve been a great audience. I hope we’ll get the chance to play for you again.”, and I did a double-take. Could he possibly be sincere? confused

It’s impossible for me to pick one single highlight, because Lou’s band was so great that the show developed a definite consistency; and strangely enough, the audience seemed equally happy with Lou’s older and newer songs, unlike so many I’ve seen where everyone came for the “classics” they know and love and hated everything else (that was how it was when I saw Neil Young, and that was in 1991; I can’t imagine what his disgruntled aging-hippie fans do now after albums like Greendale and Living With War.) Actually, two of the more recent (meaning, post-80’s) songs got the biggest crowd responses: an epic-length version of “Ecstacy”, and a thunderous set-closing rendition of “Magic And Loss”. Unfortunately, the song’s somber, reflective tone was lost on the drunken frat boy standing behind me, who heard the opening bass notes and shouted to his equally clueless friends, “THIS SOUNDS LIKE TOOL!”. I wanted to turn around and smack him, and I felt the same way about the rest of his group because they’d arrived late and did not know “Walk On The Wild Side”. They carried on a lengthy debate, into the next song, about whether “that one with the ‘do-de-doos’” was used in the end credits of Juno. This was followed by one of the girls blathering endlessly during “Guardian Angel”-- one of Lou’s quieter songs, mind you, not one where the band can easily overpower idiots in the audience-- about how she likes to get drunk at concerts. I’m used to attention whoring on the Internet, but in real life it somehow seems infinitely more repellent.

But a few clueless egomaniacs weren’t enough to ruin an awesome experience. I still kind of wish this had been one of the shows where Melt-Banana opened, but you can’t have everything. xp