Splice Today salutes mitaka201, the god among men who, in the last 15 days, has uploaded an embarassment of music-nerd riches to YouTube. You've got a documentary about the making of Born To Run, the superlative Dylan documentaries Don't Look Back, Eat the Document, and No Direction Home in their entirety, a bunch of Rain Dogs-era television commercials with Tom Waits, some random Attractions-era Elvis Costello TV appearances, a 1976 Patti Smith concert from Stockholm, the 1984 doc The Compleat Beatles, and a bunch more exciting stuff related to Buddy Holly, Fleetwood Mac, and others. I imagine most of this stuff is under pretty heavy copyright control, so it won't be around forever. But for now, most of these clips are sitting at around 25-100 views each. Insane.
Perhaps I'm still reeling from the Adventureland soundtrack, but my favorite part of mitaka201's considerable haul has been A Night With Lou Reed, filmed at New York's Bottom Line club in 1983. This is the same tour and band that produced Reed's excellent 1984 LP Live in Italy, but the more intimate venue means that Reed doesn't spend the whole time yelping his vocals to the back row of a stadium. Plus Andy Warhol's in the audience.
At this point, Reed was playing with guitarist Robert Quine (who, both here and on Live in Italy, is conspicuously low in the mix) and fretless bassist Fernando Saunders, both of whom played on Reed's great 1982 studio record The Blue Mask. It's a shame they never get to that album's closer, "Heavenly Arms," but they do take a crack at "Women," the performance of which perhaps features the best band interplay I've heard from this group:
A continuing domo arigato to mitaka201, a hero for our copyright-be-damned times.