Big treat and major gush

Jo and Craig treated me to Lou Reed's Berlin at the State Theatre last night.

It was A-mazing.

The Australian Youth Choir was just brilliant, i wonder if any of them or their parents had heard of loubear before this tour. Quite a night for some of those tots, as it was for all, really.

horn and string sections were incredible as was the rock'n'roll band.

Lou's voice, alternating between staccato and drawl, was magnificent, rich and resonant. The performance really came into its own from Men of good fortune onwards.

Spellbinding.

multimedia event, natch.

audience stoked, lou choked and gracious.

There was an encore after the performance of Berlin.

It began with Lou singing Sweet Jane with Sharon Jones who led after the first chorus and was sensational. Antony Hegarty sang an utterly sublime version of Candy says.

Then LR.

Then it ended.

Audience was quite a mix featuring: the lord mayor - sporting a particularly glittering ruby red dog collar, state alp pollies, rocking cats from dayze gone by with names like si the pie, jase the face and little jimmy scannerz, double and triple J and M deejays and abc newsreaders of yore (yes both James Dibble and Bruce Menzies were there!!), 1980's Surry Hills types, young indie wearing horizontal stripes, old new wavers looking like bumble bees in their horizontal stripes, old rocking daddies sporting Miami vice fashion, interesting looking women, Sydney eastern suburb blondes - tanned, toned and tucked, and people like us. Unfortunately no Tina Bursill, Ita Buttrose nor Joe Hasham, who would have definitely raised the tone. Perhaps they'll be going tonight. Must have been some crush in that Green Room post-performance - and some fly is still trying to make sense of it all.