Prairie Public Broadcasting

• "Idol's" Phillips had 8 kidney surgeries during show
• Sweden wins song Contest marked by Azeri dissent
• Sweden's Loreen wins Eurovision song contest

go

Berlin: Live at St. Ann's Warehouse Lou Reed's rock opera is available on CD by Megan Gilbert The 1970s saw the heyday of the rock opera, with musical opuses by Genesis, Queen and Meat Loaf all vying to out-bombast The Who's seminal Tommy and Quadrophenia and Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber's Jesus Christ Superstar. Lou Reed's contribution to the genre came in 1973 with Berlin, his psychodrama about a drug-addicted couple that mixed the titular German capital's art-born-of-political-strife with an LES aesthetic—and nearly relegated Reed's post-Velvet Underground solo career to one-hit-wonder status.

Since then, Berlin has slowly gained some critical success, and in 2006, Reed fulfilled his desire to stage the piece by assembling a 30-piece band and 12 singers to perform the album live at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn. Finally available on CD, it proves a lot more rock than opera. Reed's sarcastic, cooler-than-thou voice drives an art-rock odyssey that's as quirky and deep and relevant as anything he's done. "Men of Good Fortune," with its curly guitar lead and power-chord chorus, sounds like a Weezer song with Sharon Jones singing backup (as she does later, on "Oh Jim," a Velvet Underground outtake). "Caroline Says, Pt. 2," an earnest interrogation of a troubled lover, harbors all the intensity and tragedy of a girl in a bathtub with razor-slashed wrists. Guest vocalist Antony Hegarty's tenor rises out of the water like an ascendant soul. And after the quintessential rock-opera power chorus of the album's denouement, "Sad Song," we get three bonus songs: "Rock Minuet" and the Underground classics "Candy Says" and "Sweet Jane." For Reed fans, music fans and/or art fans, Berlin is a must-listen.