Lou Reed, Dome, Brighton Festival

The chords are beautiful (if only his voice was, too)

It takes approximately 30 seconds for Lou Reed to start grumbling. The problem apparently lies with the guitar monitors. "Now why don't you turn that thing down? D'you think you can do that?" he snarls. Of course, we've learnt to forgive old Lou his crabbiness by now and besides, he's playing the opening chords of the Velvet Underground classic "Sweet Jane."

Finally turning his attention to the audience he mutters: "This song's older than some of you but it's still pretty good. Three chords of pure beauty."

He's right about the chords, though his singing is still open to debate. Reed dances tantalisingly around notes, occasionally hitting the right one as if by accident. Yet, when he allows it, his voice can be powerful and direct, dark and dangerous.

Tonight's show promises to be "an intimate evening of words and music". Wearing the old uniform of black T-shirt and leather trousers, Reed dutifully wheels out the old Velvet Underground material along with a handful of his better-known solo numbers, among them "Small Town" and "Perfect Day". Even more recent material such as "Ecstasy" stands up well.

But it soon becomes clear that Reed's greatest hits show comes with a quid pro quo. For every legendary track, say "Venus in Furs" or "Dirty Blvd", we must endure such tripe as "The Bed", from Reed's Berlin album and "Tell It To Your Heart". The lowest point of the evening is "Revienne Cherie" (sample lyric: "I bring to you my love like a bird"), sung with sickly pathos by Reed's bass player Fernando Saunders.

By the time our host gets around to his reading of the Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven all reverence has left the building. As it reaches its umpteenth crescendo someone in the crowd lets out a loud "Arrrooooooo!". Reed doesn't even twitch. Perhaps it's a punishment for our disrespect that he allows a guest singer introduced as Anthony to sing the Velvet's "Candy Says". Without Reed it would be bad, but with him standing there refusing to sing it's nothing short of torture. Ah well, perhaps that's the point.