Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson Present Concert Only Dogs Can Hear

Jun 1st 2010

Is your dog a fan of rock legend Lou Reed? Is it into avant-garde performance art? If the answer to either or both of those questions is yes, you'd better be making travel plans to visit Sydney next weekend, because Lou Reed and his wife Laurie Anderson are curating a festival that includes a concert that's exclusively designed to make dogs want to hold up their lighters and bark for an encore.

Scheduled for June 5, Music for Dogs is part of the Vivid Live Festival at the Sydney Opera House, and promises to be an "inter-species social gathering on a scale never seen before in Australia."

Will there be a merch stand selling $40 concert t-shirts? We don't really know about that, but we did learn a few things about Music for Dogs after chatting with its producer, Andrew Spencer.

First we wanted to know: What if this rock show inspires an uncontrollable dog riot? Will the Opera House have adequate security?

"Cesar Milan was not available for the gig. We asked!" Spencer tells Paw Nation. However, he assures us that there will be a first-rate vet adviser on hand at the event. "Dogs [and their owners] will be ushered into pens on the Forecourt. Big dogs will be with big dogs, medium dogs with medium dogs, etc. Apart from that, we expect every pooch to behave and be captivated by the live performance," says Spencer.

Furthermore, the program will be tested on "a group of lucky dogs who get to hear it first," according to Spencer. That way, the event staff will have a fair idea of whether the music will inspire the dogs to take a walk on the wild side, or just a domesticated one.