“We wanted to do a night of ‘noise music’ and we just did that,” said Velvet Underground’s Lou Reed after his “Metal Machine Trio” performance in The Opera House Sunday night . They sure did.
As we entered the venue, all you could hear was a single solid note of feedback/distortion as we awaited the band. What followed was a night of pure feedback and distortion Reed himself had two guitars in front of speakers with all the noise you can imagine that created, and proceeded to manipulate them with a bank of Effects Units for 90 minutes while his band-mates abused our ears in other ways. To the left, Sarth Calhoun - a long haired muzo-geek and self-styled electronics wizard - played with a vast array of toys not even conceived of when Reed first released (and then quickly removed from sale amid extraordinary back lash) the original and controversial album “Metal Machine Music” in 1975 . (I’m guessing Sarth wasn’t even conceived then either!) Two laptops, an electronic drum and strange touch-device - that allowed all sorts of strange noises just by tapping the desk – all combined to take your ears on a journey of profound weirdness.
Reed later introduced his other colleague, Ulrich Krieger, as the first person to actually transcribe “Metal Machine Music” – to which one audience member loudly responded “GENIUS!” - which he said many people at the time thought impossible. He mainly used a sax, initially not even blowing it, but merely moving it about to create the strangest feedback noises imaginable. A gong and giant kettle drum also were used at various moments, but barely any recogniseable playing of music was involved. The performance is entirely improvised and spontaneous, no set pieces and echoes of the original album. The tickets and posters warn : “No Songs, No vocals” to carefully manage expectations of those anticipating “I’m Waiting for the man” or “Perfect Day.”
This was a genuinely innovative performance sometimes hard on the ears and the brain but ultimately fascinating. More like watching a strange art-house movie than listening to a piece of music – I was dying to know how it would end! (Some couldn’t take it and left.) In fact it finally ended with Reed simply placing a finger to his lips and gesturing to the other 2/3 of the trio to shhhhhhh...with which one audience member chuckled to herself a little too loudly.
After thanking the audience for enduring what many would regard as a surreal practical joke without the context of the original 1975 project, one woman bizarrely threw a book at Reed gesturing that she wanted it autographed. Suffice it to say she did not endear herself to the rock legend and he left the stage – far more politely than his former Underground colleague, John Cale , whom I saw earlier this year .
His wife is also in town and they are both co-curating the “Vivid Sydney” festival – the centre piece of which is a brilliantly lit Opera House that brought an added “trippy” aspect to a very strange and marvellous evening.
UPDATE: I found a recording of this I made at the time but thought had actually failed. Sound is not ideal of course but gives you a hint of it...