For this weekend's show,  check out one of the best concerts ever recorded. On December 21, 1973 - the solstice, the darkest day of the year, Lou Reed played two Yuletide sets at the Academy of Music in New York.  Oh, to have been there. The backing band featured the twin guitar attack of Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner, who producer Bob Ezrin had tapped to back on Lou's  Berlin  album, released earlier that year. The rest of the band consisted of Prakash John, Pentti Glan, and Ray Colcord on bass, drums, and keyboards, respectively.  Sadly, for Lou, the band - minus Colcord - went on to back Alice Cooper on Welcome to My Nightmare . You can here them in a live setting on The Alice Cooper Show . Most of the show (all but two songs) was subsequently released as two albums. The first, Rock n Roll Animal ,  came out in early 1974 and featured four re-workings of Velvet Underground tunes and one song of the recently released Berlin . The second, 1975's Lou Reed Li...

With everything still closed, this week we take in the Velvet Undergound from San Fransisco's storied  Matrix  club, recorded on the venue's in-house 4-track machine in late November, 1969. I had thought to run one of these shows earlier, but which one? The band had been touring its third, eponymous , album and was in the midst of a residency at the club. They were playing two sets a night, and  The Complete Matrix Tapes  captures their shows from November 26th and 27th. The question is, which set? I sat down with the four of them on a long, cross-country drive this week and, honestly, you can't go wrong. We have four versions each of "Heroin", "Some Kinda Love" and "We're Gonna Have a Real Good Time Together"; three apiece of "I'm Waiting for the Man" and "There She Goes Again"; and doubles of several others. Which is the best copy of each? With "Heroin", it's hard to tell...maybe the shortest on...