There’s the sound of a match head roughly grazing the striking surface of a matchbox, fizzling into life, followed by a laconic, closely-miked Noo Yoik voice intoning, “Sorry we were late, but we were just tuning” – the unmistakeable tones of the man David Bowie once called ‘the King of New York’, Lou Reed, open the city’s street poet’s second* official live album, ‘Lou Reed Live – Take No Prisoners’, later described by Reed biographer Mick Wall as “One of the greatest, most brutally honest and fantastically funny live rock albums ever released.”

And what a live album it is. Take No Prisoners captured the erstwhile Louis Allen Reed and his touring band, led by keyboardist Michael Fonfara, during a week-long, May 1978 engagement at New York City’s Bottom Line, promoting his then-current album Street Hassle (a masterful construct of studio and heavily treated live recordings), an album which saw Reed reconnect with the glitter in the gutter of down-at-heel street life he had been turning his attention to since the Velvet Underground’s fearless debut, most notably in its title track, an epic song-cycle which astutely co-opted Bruce Springsteen (touted as the new Lou by CBS), who contributed a mumbled monologue.