Bow wow wow yippy yo yippy yay Lou Reed is definitely in the (Sydney Opera) house! Lou Reed, the sullen-faced New York City bard, has always been a little on the strange side but he and his wife Laurie Anderson are turning it up a notch with their latest concert idea. “Scooby Lou” Reed and Anderson are this year’s curators for the annual Vivid Live festival held at the famous Sydney Opera House in Sydney, Australia. Here is what their website has to say about the festival:
Vivid LIVE is an artist curated festival, created and produced by Sydney Opera House. The 2010 Festival is led by two of America’s most influential artists – Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson. Together they have assembled a program of music, theatre and visual art which offers bold visions of contemporary American life and celebrates fearless innovation and ambition.
As part of this fearless innovation and ambition they will be hosting a concert for dogs on the steps of the Opera House. This concert will feature a 20-minute piece arranged by Anderson that will consist of frequencies that are beyond the range of human hearing ability but right in your pup’s wheelhouse. It is being billed as an inter-species social gathering on a scale never seen before.
As wild as this sounds this isn’t Reed and Anderson’s first go at canine tunes. They have been rehearsing for quite sometime with a very special four-legged friend as the audience, their dog! Anderson said of their rat terrier named Lollibelle:
“She likes things with a lot of smoothness but with beats in them. Things with voices and lots of complicated high-end stuff. Chk-chk-chk-chk-chk – that kind of stuff.”
Dog owners who plan to attend the canine concert have been warned to make sure their dogs are on leads and that humans are attached to the other end of said leads.
In honor of the event I want to play another Rock and Roll Hall of Famer’s canine tribute. This is the venerable Neil young with my favorite song about a dog, Old King, off of my favorite Neil Young album with “Harvest” in the title, Harvest Moon:
The music for dogs show is scheduled for June 5th at 10:00 AM Sydney time. If it’s successful, perhaps it could lead to the formation of the Lou Reed-led supergroup, The Velvet Underdog.
