Fragments of a Cale Season

Heartbreak Hotel X

2012-01-04T21:30:00.004-05:00

OK, so I sort of made up the name, but there needs to be some way to refer to the new reworking of Heartbreak Hotel that debuted as a sketch from the 2006 rehearsals on the Circus Live DVD*.

It seems to be improvised - I say that because it's labeled "Heartbreak Hotel of sorts!!" on the DVD, and somebody says, "That was a moment!" when they're done. Cale's vocal isn't really in the same key as the rest of the track, to my ears, though as atonal as it is, it's hard to tell. The worst part of the original version is the cringe-inducing "diddy wah diddy" (verbatim) scat in between verses instead of "feeling so lonely" and the rest of the chorus. Despite these flaws, it's fairly compelling. He ends the song with a slurred chant of "whadda whadda whaddid I do," which sounds better than it looks.

I thought it was a one-off when I first saw it, but Cale has been performing it live ever since. He's got a better handle on it now - it's less atonal and less jokey. (Occasional caveman backing vocals from his guitarist aside.) It's not as emotionally satisfying as the piano-driven versions from the early 80s through the 90s, but in general I like it at least as much as his original hard rawk recomposition of the song. (The main post about Heartbreak Hotel is here, if you missed it.)

"I'm scared and I wanna go home," said the guitarist after they played that first version. I agree with the first part at least, but I'm happy that he's still doing violence to old songs.

^* The forty minutes of rehearsal footage alone being a perfectly good reason to pick up the set. The DVD is region-free and the set is cheap now!

Monetized

2011-12-17T23:55:00.003-05:00

Hi. I am going to do a trial of AdWords ads. If I can cover the costs of domain renewal at least, it might be worthwhile, if it doesn't kill the visual appeal of the site (ha). If nothing else it will be a learning experience.

If you hate it, let me know. Your opinion counts (R).

Ooh La La

2011-12-17T21:18:00.005-05:00

If you took a poll among aficionados on John Cale's worst songs, you can bet that "Ooh La La" would rank high. Honestly, I don't think that's fair. Here's why.

In the song, Cale plays an older lech who hypnotizes the fair Continental ladies and leads them into sin, only to have his misdeeds catch up with him. If you haven't heard it, give a listen:

That's the version that was released on John Cale Comes Alive and as a single in 1984. Cale really hams it up, chewing scenery in the studio as seldom before or since.

There's another version of the song that was released on Seducing Down the Door and possibly Comes Alive in some regions. Despite a different mix, it's mostly the same instrumentally. It adds a cool atonal middle-eight and features completely different vocals. Cale plays it straight, with a barely-sung part drowning in self-regard. Meanwhile, his guitarist Dave Young takes over the hamming in a shouted word part, putting on various accents and trying to get Mr. Cale's attention.

OK, so the sequenced drums are tacky. It's all tacky! It's supposed to be! I mean, for God's sake: "Zoe had a crush on Castro; and Camilla, she loved Bob Hope. But after staring into my clear blue eyes, they both went looking for the Pope!" "I try to hide behind my smile, but they seem to know me... by my stare!" The whole song is as much a comic pisstake as Chickenshit or Hey Ray and should be approached accordingly.

If Cale had made a career of the dirty old man schtick after this, I would hold it against him. (In fact, I hold exactly that against Nick Cave.) But he didn't, so I enjoy this as dumb comedy. And as parody it isn't unwarranted - God knows there are a lot of European films of the late 20th century that take this subject very seriously.

It did pretty much suck live, though. I'm glad he didn't perform it beyond the tour.

Catching up...

2011-11-26T22:07:00.007-05:00

¿Qué Pasa? They snuck out a new Cale album yesterday in the US without me knowing about it? I never dreamed I'd learn of a new Cale release by discovering it in a record store, but there you are.

The Record Store Day 2: Black Friday release of EP: Extra Playful features two new tracks not otherwise available. The full tracklist:

Catastrofuk
Whaddya Mean By That
Hey Ray
Pile A L'Heure
Perfection
Bluetooth Swings
The Hanging

Black Friday pisses me off, and I did not partake. There were only two copies left at my record store today. Lucky me.

I'm midway through my first listen, but I'm favorably impressed so far. I had managed to avoid hearing Hey Ray and Whaddya Mean in their live versions. It's somewhat unserious and even jokey, though, in the vein of some of blackAcetate or Jumbo. The two bonus tracks on the US Black Friday release seem more demo-ish than the five original tracks. The Hanging is more fleshed out by far. I think this will have legs, but only time will tell...

In other news... I have done you a disservice by not commenting on the recent CD, DVD, and vinyl (!) releases of John Cale's two Rockpalast shows. I picked them up shortly after release, but didn't have much to say at first.

The CD release is great. It could be mixed better, but it's much better than the bootleg I had previously. The band show (Essen 1984) is not his best of that tour, and that band wasn't his best of the era, but it's still a good listen. (John Cale Comes Alive covers the same tour in superior versions but with many fewer tracks.) The solo show (Bochen 1983) is excellent - rather less crazed than other shows, but more competent. It features my favorite recording of "Only Time Will Tell" to date.

The DVD is essential if you like watching Mr. Cale live... and who doesn't. The band show is more entertaining to watch. Heartbreak Hotel and Streets of Laredo will make much more sense when listening to the show after you've watched it.

The vinyl is disappointing. The two-disc release includes the entire band performance, but only four tracks from the solo performance, and not the best ones at that. I'd have preferred selections from both shows. But it is nicely done (better materials than Cale Comes Alive) and worth picking up for superfans.

Hopefully I'll see you again sooner than this time next year. It is beginning to be a habit, though...

Here's to Johnny Viola

2010-11-21T02:30:00.002-05:00

It's been a year since I posted? Where has the time gone? I struggled way back in January with the ongoing disaster in Haiti, trying to use it to post on Tonton Macoute. Which, come to think of it, might be worth trying again...

But, maybe as a way to ease back into this thing, why don't we discuss a true rarity: a song about, or at least inspired by, Mr. Cale.

Shearwater are, to my mind, at the very top of the art-music world right now, in quality if not in sales, having delivered three consecutive albums of depth, evocation, and a stark beauty. As frontman and songwriter Jonathan Meiburg put it, the trilogy is music on a theme: "no sound ever comes from inside the gates of Eden."

The first in the very loose trilogy, 2006's Palo Santo, is ostensibly a theme album. Every song, Meiburg claims, is connected in some way to the life of Nico. Despite my fair knowledge of Ms. Päffgen's life and a deep and abiding love for the album, I can't tell you how.

But that's neither here nor there. About three years after I first heard the album, I finally realized that a song called "Johnny Viola" on an album inspired by Nico had to be a reference to our own Mr. Cale. It was the first non-single track on the album that caught my ear, at that.

Have a listen:

OK, so I can't tell you how it relates to our Johnny Viola. But it is an awesome song, and I was tickled and somewhat chagrined to finally make the connection.

[N.B. they're using "The Black Angel's Death Song" as intro music for their concerts this tour. You know, to set the mood a bit. I may have been the only person at the show really enjoying it.]

Paris 1919

2009-11-22T03:58:00.008-05:00

Stealing from myself, from when I was first learning of the mysteries of John Cale a long long time ago. I don't know where I got the lyrics, or why inane pop culture references seemed like a good idea at the time. But it may have led to the existence of this blog, so oh well.

Well, kids, today we're going to analyze a song. Well, "analyze" is a little strong. "Annotate" is better.

Paris 1919¹⁷ John Cale She makes me so unsure of myself Standing there but never talking sense⁰ Just a visitor you see So much wanting to be seen She'd open up the door and vaguely¹ carry us awayIt's the customary thing to say or do To a disappointed proud man in his grief² And on Fridays she'd be there And on Wednesday³ not at all Just casually appearing from the clock across the hall⁴ You're a ghost la la la⁵ You're a ghost I'm in the church⁶ and I've come To claim you with my iron drum⁷ la la la la la la The Continent's just fallen in disgrace⁸ William William William Rogers⁹ put it in its place Blood and tears from old Japan¹⁰ Caravans and lots of jam and maids of honor singing crying singing tediously¹¹ You're a ghost la la la You're a ghost I'm the bishop¹² and I've come To claim you with my iron drum la la la la la la Efficiency efficiency they say Get to know the date and tell the time of day¹³ As the crowds begin complaining How the Beaujolais¹⁴ is raining Down on darkened meetings¹⁵ on the Champs Elysee¹⁶
Stop making sense. Also, Cale sings, "never ever," which suits the meter better. It feels better in the mouth, so to speak. Try them both, you'll see.
It's strange how evocative a word as vague and unconnotative as "vague" is in this context. Perhaps we appreciate vagueness in our haunters.
George McGovern. Or... hm.
He sings "Mondays" on the record. The significance of this is unclear.
Could it be he's singing to a figure on a mechanical clock show? Perhaps a clock figurine relating to the end of World War I?
A spectre, a spirit, a spook. The tension between the lightheartedness of the delivery and the rather morbid subject matter is what drives the song.
He actually sings, I believe, "I'm the Church," which accords better with footnote 12.
The symbol of power-hungry oppression. Or perhaps the original Ghost Trap. Who ya gonna call? JOHN CALE!
This could refer to any number of political, religious, or cultural events. Speculation is imprudent.
Richard Nixon's Secretary of State (1969-1973). So... either [M.o.t.A.] is right and it's Will Rogers, or the song is tangentially about Vietnam. Or the Middle East. Hm.
Japanese captives, perhaps? But Japan was on the side of the good and the right in World War I (for all it mattered)... so what gives?
A tableaux of the spoils of war, one assumes... but of the Second World War? It fits Paris 1919, I suppose...
A Catholic or Episcopal ecclesiastical middle manager. They have been known to haunt the cathedrals of Paris.
An old Norman saying. Or possibly an old Welsh saying. Or I could be making this up.
A red wine from the Beaujolais region, duh. Made trendy recently through the brilliant marketing of a mediocre wine from an increasingly mediocre winery.
The sort, one assumes, conducted by drunken politicians.
La plus belle avenue du monde. Notably the avenue that passes under the Arc de Triomphe.
As in the Treaty of Versailles. What, Korea or Vietnam? And how does this relate to Graham Greene?

Waiting for Blonde

2009-09-11T08:08:00.003-04:00

A long-time New Yorker like John Cale surely couldn't resist the lure of adding a "September 11 song" to his catalog, right? I mean, Leonard Cohen gave in, Bruce Springsteen went concept album, and Neil Young and Paul McCartney managed to plumb some career-low depths in their attempts. Even Lou wrote poetry to grapple with the event.

No, dear reader, he couldn't resist. But he did exercise an astonishing amount of restraint back in 2003, working on the 5 Tracks EP and really stretching the boundaries of his songwriting. It was a very fertile time in his later career, and "Waiting for Blonde" benefits a great deal from the amount of experience, closely observed human interaction, and narrative trickiness poured into it.

It opens with transit station samples, followed by a laggy beat and a stop-and-go baseline that starts out faint and pensive. Viola creates a haze made thicker by various electronic trickery. Cale makes a statement of purpose: he's giving us a preview of a play he intends to write, about a subway car hawker. With that single line of setup, he switches into the hawker's voice.

The hawker speaks in repetitive phrases: "I am a very good businessman. Good morning ladies and gentlemen," selling batteries (including the MIGHTY C BATTERY) and taunting (?) the people on the train who are "waiting for Blonde: You are New Yorkers. You are the very best." The title is never explained, and doesn't need to be.

Halfway through the song, after the first chorus, it hits the bridge: everything stops, turns; the tension ratchets up. "Your skin is crawling; your tongue is in a trance. Remember you are New Yorkers, and this is your last chance. Good morning ladies and gentlemen - good morning! Step away from the closing doors." The finality with which that familiar exhortation is delivered is really striking.

For the final section of the song, Cale gives a lesson in NYC subway geography (I'm still a little unclear which station the song is supposed to be set in.) It's obvious that he's going for the WTC, though: familiar names pop up "the Z train and Port Authority; the PATH train" -- and here he slips the crumbling-civilization dagger in -- "and all stations to Atlantis."

An ambiguous, haunting track that actually succeeds in its stated aim as theatre, and addresses a catastrophe and tragedy without being trite or stupid. Not bad, Mr. Cale. Not bad at all.

Now, if only I could figure out the scat backing vocals at the end. "The spider sat beside her to the left"...?

The Moon Her Majesty

2009-06-09T22:47:00.006-04:00

Celebrating the just-past full moon in June, here's another little oddity from the late Nineties, when our man was happy to do recitations for just about anybody who asked. Mr. Cale recorded this poem as a spoken-word piece for the Kerouac tribute Kicks Joy Darkness. I can only assume he composed the music as well, as the quasi-ambient keyboards certainly fit his style and sound. There's not really that much to discuss in the content: analysis of Kerouac certainly isn't my game.

I will say that I prefer Cale's planetarium-music reading of the piece to the author's own looney tunes take (props to Funeral Pudding), though Cale's recitation of "little spritely otay" is probably the most sheepish he's ever sounded on record. In parts, he makes Kerouac's writing sound like Dylan Thomas, which is something of an achievement.

I'd really like to make this available for download, but it's on Amazon MP3. Warren Zevon's recording of Running Through Chinese Poem Song, another poem about the moon (a jaundiced look at Apollo), is worth picking up for contrast. (Note: Amazon's track artist listings are completely wrong for this album. Which is somewhat appropriate.)

Ship of Fools

2009-05-31T20:00:00.010-04:00

Part of the insane fun of following John Cale is engaging in cross-referential snipe hunts in an attempt to get inside Cale's head. For instance, one might listen to "Cable Hogue" and have one's curiosity piqued enough to pick up the bizarro Sam Peckinpah film The Ballad of Cable Hogue. "Ship of Fools" might likewise trigger the Dear Listener to check out the Katherine Anne Porter novel involving an international bunch of losers sailing from Mexico to Nazi-infested Germany. I do not recommend this course of action; it won't help you much in understanding Cale's song. The novel comes down squarely on the "people suck" side of the philosophical fence, but you can get that just by listening to Fear and it won't take nearly as long. So let's just concern ourselves with Cale's take on the loaded allegorical image of deranged passengers aboard a ship with no pilot.

Cale's "Ship of Fools" opens with a lovely floating motif, less appropriate to a ship than to a carousel. It sounds like a metallophone but apparently isn't, so it must be Brian Eno on the synth. Then Cale's weary voice comes in, complaining of hunger. Hunger is prominent in the early verses, hunger and desolation: "The black book, a grappling hook / A hangman's noose on a burnt-out tree." Cale and his friends are in Arizona, it seems-- wait a minute, Arizona? And fishermen who dream of sailing to there from Tennessee? On what river?

Cale's phantom caravan sails from Tombstone to Memphis, where Dracula gets onboard, and from there proceeds to Swansea. Home to Wales, in other words. And that's really the key here-- the images of hunger and poverty and desperate fishermen have nothing to do with Tennessee and Arizona at all. The hangman's noose and southern prayers are just another fantastic vision, Old Europe's fever dreams of the New World. Invisible cities, again.

But hold on, sister's gone south to give the sign. Is there hope? Probably not; the entire point of a ship of fools is that it's a bogus ark of salvation. Like a jester king on Mardi Gras, it's all cheap dazzle with no substance or authority. It'll be another Christmas in Wales with no food, just unfulfilled delusions.

And the ship fades into the distance with the carousel motif burbling merrily away. Round and round we go, and we're not getting anywhere.

Sanities redux

2009-03-21T23:57:00.004-04:00

I don't normally make apologies for irregular posting, but after calling Ian out I have to make my own mea culpa. I've just been very busy with other projects and have neglected this blog.

Ironically I've been going through a Cale renaissance. I was disappointed but not surprised that the shiny new Watchmen film did not include Sanities (which I already covered). Can't really say anything about it, as I've not seen it, but I was inspired to get some version of Sanities on the internet, and so put together this cover in an hour.

There's no special insight in this version, and it loses some of my favorite things about Cale's original. This is much more of a one-note horror film number. It does have a certain something in moments, though, I think. In any case, I made it, I'm not too ashamed of it, and I thought I would share it. I promise I won't make this a habit.

Everytime the Dogs Bark

2009-01-25T23:07:00.004-05:00

So, as promised, next time. The official John Cale Sunday morning record, 1985's Artificial Intelligence, is led off by the song "Everytime the Dogs Bark" (referenced in a verse or two of 2005's blackAcetate's leadoff track Outta the Bag). It's the dawn of a new era in his career, and it shows in his songwriting.

The album, whose Lazarus "Ratso" Sloman-assisted composition should indicate debauchery and dissolution, is in fact something of a cleanup album. For all its anger and randomness there's a new self-consciousness and a desire to present some sort of respectable front to the world. I should really save this stuff for the post on "Song of the Valley," though. The leadoff track, then.

At first and several subsequent listens, it's a bit of a mess, sonically: artificial instrumental keyboard textures, weirdly processed guitar, and a sort of 80s-funk feel that might well be repulsive. Many people, in fact, do seem to find it repulsive. But not me. Partly because Cale's vocal is clean and strong and aggressive, no longer the overly affected vocal of Caribbean Sunset, trying too hard to reassert itself. Partly because I can't resist that opening lyric:

If you want to be the heart of midnight, you've gotta be either cynical or dead.
All those you hold in estimation no longer count among your friends.

The lyrics sort of meander from there, though, and I can't tell you what the hell the song's supposed to be about. But the money moment, the one that contributes the title to the song and provides that reference twenty years later, that's probably what really hooked me on the song:

Listen to the slamming doors
Listen to the ship-to-shore
Listen and listen hard
Everytime the dogs bark

The music there, keyboard chords like huge bells being struck and everything else falling silent, combined with Cale's vocal (touching the edge of danger and threat without going too far, without losing control), makes me think of some escaped and vengeful convict, hauling himself onto shore after an exhausting swim - an escape from an island prison - a pursuit of some black demon ship - I dunno. Some great, anachronistic, fantastical adventure out of Dumas or Alan Moore. It gives a context (or a Greek chorus?) to the disconnected verse lyrics that allows them to resonate better than they should - and played a big role, along with other songs on this album, in informing my understanding of Cale's view of his own career.

But let me put a word in for the music. Instrumentally, it's really not the genuine bad fake funk (rebadged disco?) of the 80s. It's something more respectable than that. (Hell, it's not far from "Outta the Bag" or even real Beck-funk.) The guitar work is really quite tasty. And I do have a thing for dirty, messy, noisy, artificial 80s keyboards. And this was one of the first Cale records I heard, after Fragments and Paris 1919 and the doom trilogy. So perhaps I am uniquely qualified to enjoy this track - but I hope not.

Further back up the chain of references: As I fell further into Cale-addiction, picking up the obscure and rare releases one by one off foreign web stores and eBay and less reputable sources, I snagged one particularly odd release. And when I got to the second track, one of the least in-control and respectable tracks on one of his least in-control and respectable albums, it struck me that this song referenced it. So maybe next time we'll visit that seedy and disreputable part of his career.

FIGHTER PILOT!

2009-01-22T16:26:00.005-05:00

[nor is this]

Funny how old things can sound relevant after twenty years, isn't it? Something happens to you personally or happens in the world that gives new life to some odd little painting or movie or song? I mean, in 2005, when I first heard that martial drumbeat, the crude production, that off-kilter bassline, and then way behind the beat those "Bomberettes" (who are they?) chanting

FIGHTER PILOT

And all of a sudden, a song for which I had no expectations started to make sense to me. What it looked like in my head was something like this. (Sorry for the crudity of technique and content. I'm not a video man.)

I don't know how long beyond the last administration this song will continue to resonate with me. After all, it's already something of a novelty number on an album with several novelty numbers. But for as long as it lasted, it was remarkable.

Thoughtless kind.

2009-01-09T00:59:00.005-05:00

[this is not next time]

If you grow

The best things in John Cale's catalogue do not get the most releases or the most exposure. Or the best recordings, even.

If you grow tired

They might not cry out for attention. They might be buried under an avalanche of noise and aggressively push the listener away. They might be slathered underneath snickering and tape clicks and random keyboard twinkling. You might not realize for quite some time that those versions might be the best ones, the ones that most fully realize the possibilities of the song.

If you grow tired of the friends you make

You might start out with a live version (on Fragments of a Rainy Season, mostly). You might crave a hearing of another version, before being hit with the awful reality of the studio recording. In case you mean to say something else.

Other versions you find might get overly mannered and fussy, and lose some of the soul. It's hard to put your finger on it, but there's just something off. Maybe it's just an unreflective night for the artist. Say they were the best of times you ever had. The best of times with the thoughtless kind.

Or they might be sloppy and aggressively goony and full of drunken foolishness, and after the initial shock you might be surprised at how well they hit the mark. We dress conservatively at the best of times, prefer the shadows to the bright lights in the eyes of the ones we love.

Or they might hit the right balance of feelings: sentimentality and contempt. Nostalgia and nausea. Remembrances of past glory and the bitterness of irremediable mistakes. What we see, what we imagine. The eyes tell us nothing. The bright lights in the eyes of the ones we love will tell us nothing like the scars of imagination.

But when you get down to it, a song is more a possibility space than a specific set of words and chords (I mean, it's just G C Am D - not so far different from "Good Riddance" ferchrissakes in music or topic or live execution). It's the space defined by the way it sounds and the life experiences of the artist and the words and your own life experiences and the best and worst and most extreme performances of it, and the volume of that space depends greatly on the individual experiencing it.

And yet there are more of us who value, even treasure, those possibility space, than there are people to create them. Maybe this feeling of shared understanding or experience is an illusion, but it's one I wouldn't give up for anything.

The bright lights in the eyes of the ones you love will tell us nothing except we're the thoughtless kind. So if you grow tired of the friends you make, never, never turn your back on them. Say they were the best of times you ever had. The best of times were the thoughtless kind. The very best of times with the thoughtless kind.

Outta The Bag

2009-01-02T23:38:00.005-05:00

Oh, this isn't a very dignified way to enter the new year, with a strained falsetto and a Beck-lite ironic-funk rhythm track. Outta the Bag isn't nearly as clever as Cale seems to think, seeing as he chose it lead off his weirdly paced blackAcetate. But is it enjoyable?

To me it certainly is. The adventurous and restless vocal melody is very appealing once one adjusts to the multitracked falsettos in Cale's timeworn voice. The different layers of instrumental funk are pure ear candy, the instrumental drop out a minute and three quarters in is awesome, and so is the monotone rhythm guitar chord chop that starts at 2m40s - like one of Neil Young's infamous one-note guitar solos, allowing the rest of the song to rotate around it. And the pure daffiness - bird chirps, the "the birdies sing: woo hoo hoo" coda - is quite welcome, fitting as it does with the album's goal of puncturing inflated perceptions of Cale as artiste.

The live version loses a lot of the fun but gains a little live energy. I don't know if it's a worthwhile trade.

The lyrics aren't half bad either, though not revelatory. It's Cale's take on "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" - delivering the bad news to an unfaithful partner, maybe. The words are spiky and passive aggressive and a good mixture of vague and specific. There are some evocative lyrics. I can't complain!

In particular, I really like the way it continues a two-decade chain of references. More on this next time.

Year of the Patriot

2008-11-25T23:28:00.002-05:00

The aesthetics of desperation really work for me. That said, I have another obscurity for you, from the recently reissued Words for the Dying documentary - and its tragic nature (and the story gets worse) isn't its only notable aspect.

As usual, Hans scooped me on the money quote, but, hey, I'm not proud:

There was a Russian double bass player that Brian Eno and I ran into when recording ‘Words For The Dying’. He had gigantic hands. He had hands like spades. I remember before I met him I was listening to the radio in New York and they played his record. He used to play Paganini on the bass. I got to Moscow and I asked, “Do you know this guy?” And someone says “Yeah he’s in the next building. He works next door!” I told Brian about him and I said, “You gotta hear this guy play. He is just amazing! He plays the double bass but he plays Paganini on this thing!”

So we set it up and arranged it and it was really sad. I mean the guy walked in a tuxedo and sat himself up and brought all the armors with him and set the armors up on chairs behind him in a semi circle and he stood in the middle and he started playing the bass. We noticed there was something wrong and also we noticed that the people that worked with him were making fun of him. What was happening was the guy had a disease called lupus [ed. note: um, no, though quite possibly Marfan Syndrome.] and his whole body was changing. You know the bones kind of crumble and they swell up. And his hands were gigantic. Very efficient in playing what he was doing but his face had altered. And he had this sort of distorted flat face. And it was horrible the way they were making fun of him.

It's an uncomfortable scene - Cale and Eno are obviously rather horrified by the situation, and they're both remarkably condescending - but what emerges from it is an outline of a remarkable piece. Despite the project, the lyrics don't appear to be Dylan Thomas, but Cale - "I'm buying my enemies to sell my friends. I'm buying my friends to sell my enemies. In the year of the patriot, the traitor is king and the genie's out of the bottle." OK, somewhat rough, but it's the start of something.

When I first saw the documentary - on a hard-won VHS tape - I was struck by the piece and was saddened that it was reduced to this little scrap. It's hard to see what more they could have done with it, to be sure, but what's there is evocative. I guess I should be grateful to have it.

Sudden Death

2008-11-21T15:04:00.003-05:00

Assassinations and societal upheaval in unspecified third world (?) countries are the order of the day in "Sudden Death," and no wonder. It's one of Cale's most outright political songs, and yet there's really no moral judgment happening: his most disgusted moment is when he seems to dismiss a murderous mob as amateurs. It's hard to get any sense of the narrator. The narrative voice is wry, detached, and more pitying than anything else. The result is an ambiguous, chiaroscuro lyric and one of the more haunting final tracks of any of Cale's albums.

What's most notable about the song is the way an astonishingly reportorial lyric is rendered elegantly in Cale's vocal. A line like, "UPI and Reuters were the first ones to the phone," does not deserve to work as well as it does - but then again I didn't parse the words for months of listening to it. There's a fatigue to the lyric that maybe captures the feeling of the mid-70s as well as anything else I've heard.

The slow and bassy music works well to match the lyric, though the echoed piano split at the wide edges of the stereo picture end up feeling unnervingly disco-ish. Lots of great viola and string work in general (not to mention bassoon!). It's a little turgid, I admit - I vacillate a bit on really how good it is. But it is certainly worth hearing.

Though Cale was not to record again for four years, 1979's Sabotage/Live picked up not far from where this track left off. Shame he never did this one live during those shows.

Don't Pretend

2008-11-18T13:11:00.008-05:00

So, see if you believe that this exists. This is a self-helpish track, just this far from Max Powers in its lyrics. Our friend John urges us to carpe the diem in very blunt terms, with some seemingly obvious inversions of what is meant ("the physical world will transcend", "life is the dream that you must wake"). It lacks any sort of particular angle that would make it particular to a specific scenario, but is sort of generic and all-encompassing. Only the coda gives it any hint of an interesting spin: "You'll be a big man someday / just starting with today," which might be interpreted to mean that it's directed at the young.

But why does it feel like a Violent Femmes song? The vocal melody, the weird and American word choices, the occasional lapses into anachronism ("troubles must needs come"), the pulsing/stabbing instrumental (except here it's piano)? It's so blatant you'd think it was written by Gordon Gano.

Which indeed it was, appearing as it did on GG's strange 2002 quasi-self-tribute album Hitting the Ground. Elsewhere on the bizarre my-new-songs-performed-by-my-heroes album, Lou Reed got a cowriting credit on the much earthier "Catch 'Em in the Act", but Cale just plays the notes and sings the words as written. Gano observes, "I wrote 'Don't Pretend' trying to play like John Cale. Instead of me imitating him on the record, you get the real John Cale playing the song they way I envisioned it. How cool is that?"

It sounds like an interesting sort of hall of mirrors, Cale performing Gano (writing like Cale) like Gano, but really it just ends up being insulting to both of them. My favorite part of the whole weird scene is the credulous reviewers suggesting it would fit on Paris 1919. Thank God Cale was about to come out of his period of collaborative drift with 5 Tracks.

Dance of the Seven Veils

2008-08-29T08:10:00.004-04:00

Today's my favorite feast day in the old Catholic calendar: the beheading of St. John the Baptist. It so happens that our man Cale has the perfect song for it, too - a live dramatization featuring Judy Nylon on vocals. Dance of the Seven Veils is a somewhat cheesy recasting of the very cheesy Oscar Wilde interpretation of the biblical Salome story. I find a little girl childishly toddling around the room and then asking for the head of the great (loony) ascetic to be a lot more appealing dramatically than Wilde's psychosexual obsessive.

Cale & Nylon & Co. thankfully do not take the material overly seriously. Judy chews the scenery nearly as well as her partner - as morningside posted over here, Salome is recast as a sassy New York Girl. Nylon's narration proceeds through flirtation ("to tell the truth..."), lust ("take his lips and..."), murder ("I want the head of the Baptist!"), and denouement ("'Now get her.'")

The instrumentals are really appealing, building and building circularly in a very post-rock way before crashing into that coda. The coda, the part that actually features singing, seems a little rough/incomplete, but it's an appropriate conclusion to the piece. ANYWAY, I wish there were more and better recordings of the Cale band(s) of this period - they're among the tightest and rapport-ful of any of Cale's bands. The performances on Sabotage are better than anything on Cowgirls, but not by that much.

Somehow I suspect that there was a visual component to this. Damn shame we don't have a record of that.

Chickenshit

2008-08-23T12:35:00.004-04:00

About the lede the other day...

I'm stealing from Hans here, who did the work of typing in the following from Cale's maddening, intriguing, invariably sordid quasisemihemidemiauto- auto- auto- autobiography What's Welsh For Zen?:

One day on the tour, we were driving back to London and I said to the tour manager, 'I want to get a live chicken.' We had bought a meat cleaver in Germany and it gave me an idea. I told him to stop at a farmhouse and buy a chicken, but put in a box so that nobody else in the band would know. However, he came out of the farmhouse holding the squawking chicken by its legs. All the way back to the Portobello Hotel everybody in the band was asking, 'What's he gonna do with the fucking chicken? You're not going to hurt it, right?'

The gig was at Croydon. I had the chicken killed backstage and put on a wooden platter with a handle. I told the roadie: 'When I get into the second verse of Heartbreak Hotel, slide it out to me on the platter.' I already had the meat cleaver stashed on stage. The guys in front were slam-dancing, bopping and swaying. All those punks with their leather and chains, pushing everybody because they had taken too much speed. So I thought, try a little voodoo! I am singing, 'We could be so lonely,' swinging the chicken around by its feet, nobody in the audience knowing it was dead, 'we could be so –' Twhok! I decapitated it and threw the body into the slam dancers at the front of the stage, and I threw the head past them. It landed in somebody's Pimm's. Everyone looked totally disgusted. The bass player was about to vomit and all the musicians moved away from me. Even the slam dancers stopped in mid-slam. It was the most effective show-stopper I ever came up with.

And then he goes and throws a hilariously awful dramatization on the even more hilariously titled 'Animal Justice' EP:

"Hi, my name is Arthur- and I quit!"

Chickenshit!

"You know he said something about a taking a feather home for his wife, you know for a hat that she was making."
"I don't- I don't know what he's gonna do with that chicken..."
"He said he's not gonna hurt it, so, so it's OK."
"Alright, fair enough."

Ain't nobody gonna waste my time
Nobody tells me what's his and what's mine
Break down a window, break down a door
Don't wanna listen to you no more

"I don't know man, I mean, it's uh, it's kinda, I'm getting kinda nervous."
"Starting to get worried?"
"I'm not qualified to..."

Go on by my houses, you tear down the wall
Darling don't like it, better stay at home
I need her trouble like a hole in the head
Get out yer gun and use it instead

"Checking out, need my things? Room 42, please."
"You alright, John? You're not gonna hurt it, are ya?"

Wasting your time, telling me what to do
Take it or leave it or put it down
Get out of the way, don't bring it down
Gotta be, gotta be put out in the ground

Chickenshit! Chickenshit! Chickenshit!

"Oh, oh my god."
"Did you, did you see what he did, he did?!" *retching noises*
"Oh, I don't believe he did it. I mean, I was standing right there, I saw the whole thing with my own eyes. I never thought he'd do something like that. I mean, what do you think? It was so unreal!"

Nobody gonna push me around
Nobody gonna put words in my mouth
Listen to no one, I don't get my mail
Told me a fool always ends up in jail

"What were you thinking? You said you weren't gonna hurt it!"
"I didn't hurt it, I killed it. Gave it the fucking heave-ho."
*chatter and recriminations*

Not an episode to be proud of (as Cale admitted, not quite convincingly). I'm not tolerant of cruelty to animals. Why, then, is this episode such a guilty pleasure to me as a fan?
Photo by Ronald van Kaam.

Heartbreak Hotel

2008-08-21T22:25:00.018-04:00

This is the song that killed a chicken, and that's hardly the most remarkable thing about it. That was in 1977, in Cale's mid-post-Glam-ish-whateverthehell period. He was doing polo shirts before the Talking Heads, I'm saying. Back then, in those innocent days of good friends, fast women, lots of drugs, and no studio recordings whatsoever, Heartbreak Hotel was pretty much camp, as it was from its debut in the Cale arrangement on June 1, 1974 (yeah, that's the name of the album it's on, too - and we all know what happened on May 30). He would change the arrangement a bit over the years, but through the end of the Seventies it was pretty much the same old bloated parody.

Something like this, from as late as 1981 (gawsh, that's Andy Summers! yet another Cale almost-producee):

And as over-the-top as Cale was through most of that period, and even as genuinely threatening as he could sound, Heartbreak Hotel never really seemed more than a bit of good fun - something to lurch through with some high-concept stage mischief.

But somewhere between playing mit der Polizei and coming out of his lost years, in the less innocent days of good friends, fast women, lots of drugs, and possibly too many studio recordings, somewhere around the time he seems to have hit bottom in '83/'84, he started playing it on solo piano. And no more was this man kidding around.

You can hit this version as being equally over the top, less pleasurable, pretentious, laughably melodramatic without the sense of self-satire that earlier versions had. Hell, audience members start laughing - albeit nervously, this not being what they were used to.

But whatever you think of it, it's hitting an entirely different set of emotional targets now. Like Cale's other piano in extremis songs - Fear and Guts and Waiting for the Man - there's a potent mixture of emotions here. I don't know if it would stand as well on its own without exposure to the Presley version, Cale's earlier and later versions, etc. - but you who haven't heard any of it before can tell me, eh? But IMO it's the definitive Cale version of the song - hell, the most affecting arrangement of the Axton/Durden/Presley song around, says I - and it's not really represented on any albums (John Cale Comes Alive is as close as you get).

But in a radio studio late at night in the winter of 1984, in the middle of an almost unbelievably shambolic performance/forty minutes of weirdness, Cale essayed the unbeatable performance. Anger, resignation, hatred, fear- everything surfaces in it like tongues of flame in a fire. The ending even shut up the annoying radio personality (who, to be fair, was probably panicking at the disaster on his hands). Hear it, if you haven't. Listen again if you have.

Cale gradually gentrified the arrangement, removed the screaming and scenery chewing. The new arrangement, different spins of which can be heard on Circus Live and Fragments of a Rainy Season, is fine - moving in its way, more emotionally resonant than the original - I say this lovingly - wankfest. But it's almost background music now, and doesn't grab you by the balls. I don't think it's coincidence that it's paired with Style It Takes both places.

Subtlety has its virtues, and you can't live like Cale was living in 1984 for very long. But thank God we have recordings of Cale at rock bottom.

Fear (Is a Man's Best Friend)

2008-07-15T21:58:00.006-04:00

I was saying to M.A. around the time of the last post, "I really have been avoiding the essential stuff. I'd like to write up Fear, but I don't really know what I can bring to it. Something would have to get me in the mindset." I joked, "Maybe I should go get mugged."

Shortly thereafter, a kid got gunned down a few houses down from us. A drug thing or a gang thing, most likely. And I thought, with very little human decency, "Maybe now I should write up Fear."

But I didn't, because, after all, I had not changed. An burst of automatic weapons fire and a corpse on the neighbor's lawn does not necessarily change you. Scare you, yes. Especially when you consider that you were seen by the whole block talking to the police, and not everyone might be innocent. But that state of fright and shock doesn't last long before being swallowed up by the complacency of the day-to-day. I think back on that early, early morning with little fear or sympathy - little pity, even - just with disgust and not a little wonder that it really happened. Ah yes, and the detectives never bothered to call.

So I can't really blame my unplanned hiatus from this work on any scar from the experience, only on a sense of disappointment that I was not in a better position to write about this, one of Mr. Cale's finest songs. Especially one so tantalizingly apropos to the situation on the ground. I just hacked away at the song on my guitars, over and over again, for the next week or so.

Look, there's a reason it's on every greatest hits that's ever been put out for our man Cale. If you've listened to it, you know. If not, you haven't been listening to me, have you?

Paris S'eveille

2008-05-13T10:54:00.003-04:00

Paris awakens! But not to this music. The score to 'Paris S'eveille' is sleepy music, music to lull you back to sleep when you awaken in the early morning. Like the song goes, the newspapers are printed and the workers are depressed and it is your time to go to bed.

Immediately striking is the use of sound effects - rare in the Cale oeuvre. A rainstorm begins this one (I think the same that ends Fragments of a Cale Season), introducing a Soldier String Quartet mouvement. It takes a while to get going, but does a lot with the available voices, especially when the low strings speak up. There's almost a Low Side 2 feeling to it, though it never reaches those heights - though there's a bit in the bass that sounds just like "Subterraneans"...

Clattering delivery trucks open the second fragment, a synth-and-strings bit that I swear Cale reworked elsewhere. Very pensive and tense music that goes nowhere - music for the surgical waiting room. I don't mean that as an insult.

The third fragment, sans sfx, starts with synth xylophone and valueless drum machine wank before giving way entirely to the quartet. Cale's ubiquitous electric piano atonally interrupts their piece and starts a new piece in a different key entirely. An interesting effect, at least. Neither side will leave; they just keep going at their own things.

Street noise begins the fourth piece, which integrates synth and xylophone in a very soothing way, and even ends with birdsong and wind noise! Shades of Pink Floyd.

The final movement is a synth(-and-strings?) reprise of the waiting-room piece. It does more rhythmically than movement 2, but has less soul. It ends with the same rainfall it started with.

Like the movie it was written for, it's a minor work and nothing to get worked up over. Inspired? Not terribly (though the first movement is damn good). Pleasant? Sure. Granted, I don't listen to Cale for relaxation, but if I did I'd listen to this more often.

So the next time you find yourself singing

Il est cinq heures
Paris se lève
Il est cinq heures
Je n'ai pas sommeil

Put this one on and get some sleep.

Taking Your Life in Your Hands

2008-05-01T12:30:00.001-04:00

What a sound to hear when you put on a John Cale record. Some kind of electric organ, synthesizer stuff. Graceful, arcing, legato stuff. The music seems bashful, tender, maybe a little ashamed to be there. The bass figure that speaks up about a minute in sounds like it really has something to apologize for. Maybe Cale means this "New Society" thing? Maybe after the derangement of Sabotage, the further derangement of Honi Soit, the years of being off the rails, Cale is mellowing?

Except his voice isn't very warm. He's singing about children and their mother, and blue men in uniform, and tears in her eyes. That guitar stab isn't very warm or comforting. Dear me, he's back to his Riverbank vocal mode. And now it's the chorus. Hm, the title is taken from the chorus. "The children will always be there"? What's that supposed to mean. And now it's

Cancel the day, cancel the night.
Can't sell the day, can't sell the night.
'Cause who would be watching
when she steals and runs away
full of hysterical laughter to say
Mama, mama, I've left school today

So. "Taking Your Life in Your Hands" ushers in Music for a New Society, an anti-lullaby to open a rather nightmarish (but quiet!) album. It exhibits a main flaw of Cale's early-80s oeuvre: sloppy first-take-grade lyrics. But they sort of work here... "blue men in uniform" doesn't mean "men in blue uniforms," but it subtly exposes the fractures in the narration. Similarly, "I hope I get to see you in that funny school far away," a dull dead set of words as a lyric, does sort of convey that the perspective character is a young girl.

I seem to recall Cale saying that he didn't know what the song was about, specifically; that he liked the superposition of possible meanings just fine. There's the mentally-ill mother, the mentally-ill child; the runaway from a broken home; the suicide, the filicide, the spouse-murderer; and the interpretations go on. I like the ambiguity just fine; I pick a different one almost every time I listen, or just let my critical response drift among them. It's not the lyrics that make the song, or the music; it's how they interact. I can't weigh it or judge it, just feel it.

Been There, Done That

2008-04-24T11:00:00.000-04:00

Whoa, not just uptempo but upbeat. I found the bubbliness of "Been There, Done That" off-putting on initial listens of Wrong Way Up, but the pure popness and charming personality of the song eventually won me over.

It helps that the extremely complex, contrapuntal arrangement, which feels like a wall of noise at first, resolves into a beautiful mosaic on further examination. The percussive bassline, the drip-drop electronic percussion, electric piano, lead and backing voices (etc. etc.) all intertwine with clean precision - there is no mush here whatsoever.

It also helps that Cale gives one of his most accomplished pop vocals. There doesn't seem to be much to the lyrics, but there's enough to evoke interesting thoughts and images. There seems to be Eno influence in the lyrics, but as I've said before, I just can't tell what's Cale and what's Eno on this album. All I know is that it's great stuff.

The Soul of Patrick Leeeeeeeeee

2008-04-22T22:15:00.002-04:00

Dammit, I'm going to finish at least one album here. Even if it means slogging through this crap. We'll never know why Cale felt the need to mess up a perfectly listenable (if at times rather unfocused and over-long) instrumental album by throwing on this Procol Harum-lite drivel. Don't look for that sort of penetrating insight here!

What I can do is point out, as anyone with ears could tell you, that getting this Adam Miller character to sing a Vintage Violence-style miniature was a bad idea. The lyrics to "The Soul of Patrick Lee" aren't awful - bloated and purple, I suppose, but maybe with a little Welsh tongue-roll it would be palatable. But the generic psychedelic pop vocal is so oily and bland. Not that Cale is your Dylan or your Young or your Lennon or your Cash, but his vocals aren't greasy.

The tune isn't terrible, the hilariously overloaded arrangement is entertaining, and the song is actually not offensive, but the vocal I cannot forgive. On an album of long-winded pseudo-prog, the 2m50s "Patrick Lee" is somewhat improbably the Church of Anthrax track that most overstays its welcome.

Lay My Love

2008-04-06T22:01:00.002-04:00

You know, the first time I put on Wrong Way Up, I wasn't much impressed. It sounded fairly staid, simple, uninteresting. I loved "Cordoba," sure, and liked "One Word" just fine. But starting with "Lay My Love," the album's simplicity was trancey, rather boring, and quite disappointing - it wasn't what I wanted from a dream-team pairing like John Cale and Brian Eno.

That's how I felt for quite some time. One by one, songs clicked (and this was one of the first), until I could comfortably call this one of my favorite Cale albums. And it's an album you can play for the less... adventurous listeners in your life, too - who'd have thought that the two weird guys from two really weird bands would come up with music that sounds so nice?

"Lay My Love" is a patently Enoid song, so I don't want to dwell too much on it. (I can't speak for you, but I've got to love a song whose first lyric is "I am the crow of desperation" and which goes on to anoint the narrator "the termite of temptation - I multiply and fly my population.") But Cale's viola contributions here really make the song, giving it a complexity of feeling that sustains an otherwise fairly uninteresting piece of music. Does it want to be frenetic? Does it want to be soothing? Does it want to be tense or comforting? It's up to the viola to keep all of those questions unanswerable.

(There's a live cover of the song by Poi Dog Pondering available on iTunes and elsewhere around the 'net - a great take and eminently worth a listen.)

John Cale

2008-04-01T11:30:00.004-04:00

[Grab this rare non-album track in beautiful gimped 96kbps mono here! (This one will be up for a week or less, so do it fast.) The song's twists and turns are worth experiencing before you read about them.]

Hey let me tell you 'bout my dream
There isn't really much to tell
At first I'm playing in the Velvet Underground
Then
I'm
speak
ing
Welsh
and
I
can
do
the
double-l

In the same vein as "Autobiography" (better be careful about using the same vein twice!), John Cale's postmodern classic "John Cale" is an examination of conscience, an attempt to evaluate his art, his legacy, his public profile through the eyes of another. Like Autobiography, it puts a humorous and self-deprecating spin on things.

And now I'm on the West Coast all
Fucked up on heroin and speed
And then I'm riding in the back of someone's car
And
I'm
Say
ing
all
these
nas
ty
things
a
bout
Lou Reed
Lou Re-e-e-e-e-ed

(Oh yeah, he went there!) Unlike "Autobiography," though, "John Cale" hearkens back to the pastoral instrumentation of Vintage Violence and the Brian Wilson melodies of his early career. It's a very capable pastiche of Cale's so-called classic period, and it's not unlikely that frustration with the overemphasis on that period leads to the cutting satire of the instrumentation: I mean, sleighbells?!

Nobody can take my dream away.
Nobody can take my dream away.
Nobody can take my dream away.
Away, away, away.

His ability to put himself, as a songwriter, outside himself and look back is stunning.

And then it's nighttime in New York
It's cold and I can see my breath
It's cold. I think I'll maybe stop in for a drink
At
the
White
Horse
Tav
ern
where
I
drink
my
self
to death
to dea-ea-ea-ea-ea-eath

Ah, the classic shocking John Cale ending. He can't be dead, 'cause he's singing the song, but he just killed off his fictional doppelgänger! Audacious and deeply amusing. He rubs in the postmodernism with a final smirking chorus - it was all a dream:

Nobody can take my dream away.
Nobody can take my dream away.
Nobody can take my dream away.
Nobody can take my dream away.
Away, away, away.

If you want a more listenable version, buy the full-quality version (which is actually written and performed by Don Lennon) for pocket change at Amazon MP3 or somewhere else. Laughter, after all, is priceless.

Palanquin

2008-03-31T17:42:00.007-04:00

Another "One Word" b-side and North American Wrong Way Up bonus track, "Palanquin" is unquestionably Cale and Cale alone. If it it's not... well, I'll eat my hockey mask.

Why am I so sure? (The plastic may be hard on your teeth, but it's the padding that really discourages taking a bite.) I'm sure because it's a solo piano instrumental, the sort of rolling poco ritardando composition with light counterpoint and right and left hand voices moving in unison. But listening to it again...

Well, there's some synth in the background. There's no reason Cale couldn't have added that, really. He's perfectly capable of the trick of hiding the synth in plain view as part of the chord the piano is slowly exploring, then letting it peek out from behind the keyboard just when you've been lulled into thinking there isn't anything there...

But when the bubbling chimes come out to usher the piece to a close, precipitating out of the synth so naturally, irresistibly, inexorably... that's when I start thinking about what kind of condiment is appropriate for polyurethane.

No idea what this track has to do with human-powered transportation, though. (Chomp chomp.)

Praetorian Underground

2008-03-22T20:24:00.001-04:00

Sometimes really goony lyrical ideas can work out well. It takes the right combination of performance, composition, and (regrettably) a sense of the author to do it. Pete Townshend circa 1969 could do it; circa 2006, not so much. Thom Yorke's bizarre spiky creepy obsession songs lately ("I Froze Up", "Skip Divided", "All I Need") would be much less tolerable if I didn't have such regard for his usual "literate bus-station psycho" modus operandi. And Neil Young can toss outright stinkbombs ("I'm an Aerostar, I'm a Cutlass Supreme / in the wrong lane, tryin' to turn against the flow") into his grandest songs and make them the most appealing phrase. I don't know how much of it is just preserving the suspension of disbelief and how much is really alchemy.

So I guess what I'm saying is that you can spot the James Dean forgeries by their uncertain ways. Er, well, that's what John Cale was saying in "Praetorian Underground." It's a really thoroughly goony idea for a song. It involves a dystopian government regulating music, which (shades of Republic!) corrupts the heart of man. It also imagines a generation of musical pretenders, pretending to be edgy and not having the heart of boiling magma that a real artist has. And it connects the figurative heart of magma to the literal explosion of Krakatoa in 1883, which Cale seems to think kicked off the revolution in music that led to, well, him.

The silliness of this idea is tough to redeem, but somehow the song appeals to me. It's one of the mediocrities that keep Caribbean Sunset from any sort of essential status, but like much of the album it's curiously addictive. It's got familiar Cale tropes without the substance, it has an overly impassioned vocal performance, and appealing (in this case, frenetic) if unimaginative music. It's junk food, and, dammit, I do like it. Sing it with me now: A forgery will always let you dooooooown!

Waiting for the Man/Augustus Pinochet

2008-03-21T10:49:00.008-04:00

AUGUSTUS PINOCHET!
I don't know what I'd have thought if I were in that audience. Cale is doing his usual mid-80s tour thing on "Waiting for the Man," hamming it up, performing it the way he did back then. It's really moving along. So of course he starts rapping about going to Chile in search of the great coffee bean.

Wait, what? Then he starts screaming at Augusto Pinochet? "I CLAUDIUS," he says. Which gives this modern monster of an "Augustus," a man unworthy of such a name, far too much credit. "Have another cup of coffee!" he bids the Generalissimo. "What's the matter, Augustus? Poison? I drink this poison to you, Augustus! I Claudius!"

Most amusingly, he changes the song's denouement - always the highlight of his versions - to a rather different sort of transfixion:

Augustus saiiiiiiiiid
Augustus SAIIIIIIIID
Augustusssssss aaaaaiiiii Claudius
He said-
Don't leave me, don't leave me Clau-
Baby don'tcha holler
Daaaaarling pleeeeeease don't bawl and shout
I'm Catholic too
I'm gonna work it on out
I'm feeling so good, feeling so fine
Until tomorrow
But that's just
Just another

WAITIIIIIIIIIIN
WAITIIIIIIIIIIN
WAITIIIIIIIIIIN

And what can you say to that? Nothing. You just shut up and listen.

Vigilante Lover

2008-03-19T18:00:00.004-04:00

Artificial Intelligence: an attempt to be Leonard Cohen? Maybe, maybe not. (You have to ignore quite a few things, like the outward violence and half the songs.) It's as close as Cale comes, anyway, with songs like Vigilante Lover - radically different, yet sympathetic in some fundamental ways. Maybe it's shallow to connect the paganized Judaic symbolism of Cohen with the paganized Christian symbolism of Cale. Could be.

Maybe it's not very insightful to point out the preoccupation with crossing the line between love and war they shared for some of these years, rendering lovers' quarrels as humint battles and affairs of the heart as border disputes. It's certainly superficial to equate them or connect them simply on the basis of falling for 80s digital noises. But I'm not equating Cale to Pete Townshend or Roger Waters, am I.

ANYONE COULD HAVE CRACKED THAT CODE.

It's just a feeling I get. Do I really have to point out that Cale covered a number of Cohen songs? Won't you just give me the benefit of the doubt here? I listen to all this music. Let me make an argument with my heart and my ears. Just this once.

The incantatory nature of the lyric here, the heart ripped open Cale pins on his sleeve, that's what makes this song. Autoabortive references to the Rosy Christians (he must have known better) certainly aren't. It's a supine song, the anger of a bum fallen into the gutter. It's as powerless a song as The Sleeper, but the illusion of calm has been thrown away. All he can do is scream:

SOMETHING IS BREAKING YOUR HEART.

And something is.

Ides of March

2008-03-15T15:26:00.004-04:00

LADIES AN GENNLEMEN, TONIGHT YUH'LL WITNESS A BOUT FOR DA AGES. IN DIS CAWNA, SOMEWHERE OVER A RAINBOW, TERRY RILEY! AN IN DIS CAWNA, DA WELSH KID, JOHN CALE! NOW BOYS, LET'S HAVE A CLEAN ONE - FIGHT!

OK, OK, as duels go, this one isn't really that aggressive. Cale and Riley face off on piano, true; but Cale's bit serves as the rhythm part, keeping time more reliably than the drums, which lay in the pocket behind the beat and hover at the edges of the stereo picture; Riley's bit (on I believe prepared piano, as there's some weird sitar-like noises that accompany his strikes) provides the "lead" voice, arpeggiations bubbling away as usual. It's the same approach as the two other long-form pieces on Church of Anthrax take, an approach that Riley seems largely responsible for - extreme repetition with a bit of subtle variation. Which isn't to say they sound the same at all; they just use the same techniques.

The first few (or twenty) listens, after the beautiful and expansive intro (which lasts all of seven seconds), it sounds more or less the same all eleven minutes through. Eventually, though, especially with repeated listens to the track, you start to discern a structure:

Riley drops out momentarily at two minutes before coming back with a more considered and assured lead part
he returns to the bubbling and it starts to slow down around the three minute mark
speeds up considerably a minute later
softens and recapitulates the beginning after seven minutes as Cale takes his part slightly out of key
slows down and flexes its muscles just after nine minutes in the coda.

The coda practically has more development than the rest of the piece put together, with Riley adding in a blues/gospel-ish call and response section before dropping out, only to voice a final piece of "advice" as Cale is bringing the piece to a close.

The drums (which seem to start in a syncopated parody of a march, perhaps giving the piece a punny title? or maybe it was just recorded today) sound interesting at first, but over time irritate and distract from the interesting piano dialogue more than they contribute anything. I'd like the piece much more without, I think. So it goes.

[Believe it or not, Church of Anthrax is getting an international rerelease - including its North American CD debut - in a month or so, so you'll finally be able to hear this *ahem* gem. It's not my first preference for a rerelease (in fact, it's one of my last), but those with a high tolerance for repetition and irritating noises are advised to check it out. I can't be the only one... right?]

Vexations

2008-03-14T14:00:00.007-04:00

John Cale took part in an infamous 18-hour performance of Erik Satie's "Vexations". While there is no recording of that performance (think of all that tape!), a video has emerged that's quite fascinating. Others have called it "astonishing", "jaw-dropping", "priceless." And I can't disagree - try to think of a network or channel that would play this today.

I've mentioned it before, and still don't really know what I think about the thing. It's certainly hypnotic, and enjoyable enough - it has that great late 19th-century crepuscular French mystic mood going, and that's worth something. You can read fascinating notes on the piece by a pianist who performed it in totum with only one partner, or the opaque Wikipedia entry on the piece, too, if you want a variety of nearly baseless speculation.

Try putting it on repeat, and see what you think after 840 playthroughs (to be honest, I'm not sure whether he plays one cycle or three). Volunteer for this experiment by downloading it here. The audience's titters may be distracting at first, but I find that they ultimately blend in well with the music, giving it some texture. God I'm being pretentious. Let me know how you make out, OK?

Autobiography

2008-03-09T12:00:00.009-04:00

I never wrote a song called "Cocaine"
I never wrote a song called "After Midnight"
My name is Cale
You can call me John

Poor John. Forced to differentiate himself - in 1983, for God's sake! - from the other John Cale, the one whose middle initial is J., the one who adopted the moniker "J.J." in the first place to differentiate himself from the Velvet Underground's bassist. It's all very sad.

"Autobiography" was a little tour rave-up concocted for the 1984 European tour and only played at a handful of shows, most notably at the Rockpalast show available in bootleg form in both audio and video. It's pretty shamelessly improvised, with unprocessed lyrics straight from the Cale cookbook ("Hmm, need lyrics - something about Wales! something about incapacitation due to drug use! something about friends!"). It even features shouted chord changes - appropriate enough for the Caribbean Sunset tour. Funnily enough, the riffs don't sound inappropriate for ol' J.J.

Nothing terribly memorable, but it's an amusing little bit of petulance. Have a listen. And, hey, Mr. Cale, happy birthday.

Ski Patrol

2008-02-26T12:30:00.001-05:00

The most fillerly filler on Slow Dazzle (and in the Island years in general), "Ski Patrol" plays the syndicated sitcom to Cale's Lynchian miniatures and cinematic epics. Or the Snow Patrol to those songs' Velvet Underground: not worth skipping, but not worth intentionally listening to either.

There's nothing irritating about it - it has an interesting hint of a political spin on it ("And the candidates who ran"), it's pleasant listening, he puts in a good vocal. But there's nothing to sink your teeth in, nothing to actually inspire feeling. It's curiously static. It feels improvised, but there's no risk to it. It's a sweet nothing.

Interestingly, it sounds more like Vintage Violence than like anything else post-VV. Maybe it's a demonstration of the dead end his pastoral period might have ended in. Or maybe not.

(All that being said, it gets stuck in my head irritatingly often.)

Antarctica Starts Here

2008-02-24T19:43:00.007-05:00

You know the drill...

Shackle: Another remake from John Cale. He's making a cottage industry of these, eh?

Ibert: These aincher typical remakes, Jean. No Oceans 11 or Italian Job here.

Shackle: I'll admit that. And this is difficult material he's working with - Cable Hogue was no cakewalk, but to take on Sunset Blvd. - and bring something new to it! - is an impressive feat.

Ibert: Yes, "Antarctica Starts Here" captures something about the material that neither the original nor other attempts at reenvisioning (such as noted director Alan Sparhawk's impressionistic take, "From Your Place on Sunset") could.

Shackle: The staginess here was an initial sticking point for me. It's a problem usually encountered in stage plays: when King Lear is playing to the back of the auditorium, the people in the front-row seats just see a ham caked in make-up. But at some point... I think it was the second time through... the artificiality of the performance somehow gets at the nature of the material in a more direct way.

Ibert: And to cut away the fake realism of the original's framing conceits and to introduce a cruel and derisive narrator - perhaps the voices of the Fates - it cuts away any pretensions the characters have. And yet in the narrator's admiration for their excesses it exposes some of the hidden beauty of human pride and folly. A mainspring of Cale's finest work, by the way.

Shackle: The most impressive thing is how he turned an existing - er, semi-? - fictional universe and brought it organically into his body of work at the time. It marks an end to, some say, his greatest work - a period of small, unassuming works with depth and gravity - but what an ending. Take it from this skeptic - even a non-Cale fanatic will come away from Antarctica with a new perspective on a timeless story. And it deserves every viewer it gets.

Ibert: This means you.

American Psycho

2008-02-22T13:00:00.003-05:00

Oh, it's typical, ladies and gentlemen. Sad, but so typical. We've established that Mr. Cale has written scores for many films: some films good, some not; some scores good, some not; some scores released on album, some not; some popular, the vast majority not. So what happens when he writes one of the best scores of his career for a film that, if not a blockbuster, was seen by millions of people?

Well, of course, the soundtrack album released for the film is your typical "various artists" selection. There are a few score excerpts, but they're voiced over by the titular psycho killer, Christian Bale, who, though f-f-f-far better than many narrators, is still an obstruction to my goal, which is hearing the goddamn John Cale score.

A-and it's a hell of a score. It's a little mushy in the late middle, but starts with a bang and ends the same way. The spirit of Bernard Hermann is here (notably on "The Men's Room") - unique for a Cale soundtrack. The piano figure on "The Ritual," while rather unimaginative, is haunting for what's done with it. On "Packing for Paul" Cale recalls his theme for director Mary Harron's earlier film I Shot Andy Warhol. There's a lot of rhythmic tension throughout - unlike some of his more meandering soundtracks, this is mostly a frenetic and tense experience.

When it slows and calms down, though, the effect is powerful - on "The Office," for instance, the eastern-European-feeling horns give the piece an off-kilter nature that's simultaneously threatening and laughable, while the Ligeti influences on "The Second Time"/"The Bloodbath - The Chainsaw" are more effective for being isolated. The churning strings on "The Police" and "The Wrong Building" lose me out of the context of the film, but the Eastern European folk intro of "The Confession" grabs me again.

The most striking track of the score is "The Day Planner" - the weird vocals (by the Mediaeval Babes) are creepy and beautiful, and the sudden appearance of voice has an impressive transformative effect on the soundtrack, allowing for a transition into the drone and serenity of "The End." "American Psycho (Reprise)" provides a smirking, sprightly, sinister finish to it all.

Great stuff! Of note is an interview Cale did about the score, giving a little insight into how he approaches film composition. Screaming rabbits? Yow. He is into music for interrogations!

Psst... there's something nice hiding in the first comment...

Primary Motive

2008-02-20T15:09:00.004-05:00

The number and variety of John Cale's scores is pretty unique for a guy who kept his day job as a rock star (unlike that loser Danny Elfman). With a few notable exceptions, though, the films in question are fairly obscure and sometimes not very good.

I mean, I wouldn't expect Cale's name on an hour-long political thriller starring a guy from St. Elmo's Fire and a former child actor from "Family Ties," would you? How did he even get the job? Anyway, Primary Motive came out (on tv? straight to VHS? oh, regional theatrical release) in 1992, smack in the middle of his temporary hiatus from solo rockery and his Eno/Reed/Eno/Neuwirth collaboration streak.

The score, as it appears on Paris S'eveille, is a seven-minute tidbit. It's composed of several movements:

Factory Speech: All bubbling tension and squawking synth horns. I like the composition, but Cale's synth proclivities of the period are seldom more unfortunate.
Strategy Session: Synth strings, somewhat reminiscent of an Eno Variation on Pachelbel's Canon, but not as good.
Closing Titles: More pensive synth strings, then a snare-drum laced credits-roll synth bass bit with some reggae touches. Weird.

It's definitely one of the weaker pieces on the compilation, which is not overly strong to start with. But it's not even the weirdest. Oh well. I suppose one has to pay the bills.

Black Rose

2008-02-19T23:00:00.003-05:00

Ladies and gents, in honor of the Academy Awards, please welcome back our friends, analysts, discussants, Jean Shackle and Reginald Ibert...

Shackle: To be a pretty new face in the heart of showbiz. It's the subject of so many songs and books and films and fantasies, and frankly it's not very interesting anymore. It doesn't matter whether it ends in tragedy or in triumph, it's simply worn out.

Ibert: You might say the same about wild west pictures. It's all in the execution, my friend, and John Cale got it right with "Black Rose." It's not a classic picture, I suppose, but it's a beauty: a lyrical little noir.

Shackle: It's graceful, I'll give it that. But graceful assembly can't redeem a collection of clichés. Look at this!

Standing on the corner, just baying at the moon
Just another little Miss Too-Much Far-Too-Soon

Ibert: My mother once told me that cliché is in the eye of the beholder. Sure, any single element isn't notable, but it's a beautiful arc it follows, and it leaves you with a feeling - which is more than many films do.

Shackle: Well, the main feeling it leaves me with is disappointment. He seems to run out of ideas towards the end, and ends with a straightforward lifting of material from his much finer "Verses."

Ibert: Jean, this came out fifteen years earlier than that.

Shackle: Hum. Still, as the noted film soundtrack composer T.E.Yorke might say, THUMBS DOWN.

Ibert: Have you no soul? Bah, don't listen to this man. It's an excellent piece from an underrated and forgotten period of Cale's work, and worth your attention. A big thumbs up from me.

(I Keep a) Close Watch

2008-02-15T12:30:00.002-05:00

(Fik shun)

Akron, Ohio. Late 1977.

"I got it!"
"Got what?"
"John Cale's last album. The album they wouldn't release here."
"Whaddya mean? Guts just came out."
"Guts wasn't a real album, just random songs from his last two albums."
"Huh. So what's this album?"
"Helen of Troy. The cover's, uh, kinda cheesy. Cale is in a straitjacket on an antique chair, and some woman is making a face from a mirror on the wall. I haven't actually listened to it yet. Do you wanna come over?"
"Sure, gimme twenty minutes."

Half of Akron, Ohio's John Cale fanclub sped across the city to visit the other half.

"So where did you get it?"
"Man, I told you already. Dave went to England for a couple weeks with his folks. I asked him to send me a copy if he could find it. I gave him money, a pile of money, for it. I still owe him, he says."
"Well, put it on!"

You can imagine the many layers of confusion side one of this schizophrenic album inspired in the membership that day. (Can you? Hell, can I?) Hard rock, hard rock with a gay guy doing the sexy monologue instead of Judy Nylon, pseudo-Beach Boys, whatever the hell that was, more hard rock, murderous gay desperados. And then on the flip side... the first cut is a big sentimental love song drenched in echo and huge sappy string orchestration?!

"I don't know about this, man."
"Yeah, it... is... a little strange."

Little did these two young Ohioans know that the song in question was trying desperately to have a great performer cover it. Cale wanted so badly* to have Frank Sinatra sing "(I Keep a) Close Watch" - he hired the orchestra, carefully calibrated the melody, ripped off one of Johnny Cash's best lines, kept the lyrics universal enough that Frank could do that thing he did. But it didn't work. Maybe the fact that it was lodged between a song about gay love and murder in the Wild West and a song about Pablo Picasso never getting called an asshole had something to do with it. Or the fact that the album that featured it was never released in the US. Or maybe it just wasn't up to Frank's standards.

Anyway, what we got was an over-the-top pile of sloppy sentimentality in performance and instrumentals and arrangement on top of a touching but slight song. It's a shame Cale can't do this one over again.

* According to the contributor of liner notes to Seducing Down the Door. Blame him if it's not true.

(I Keep a) Close Watch/Mama's Song

"Hi, this is Terry."
"Hey man, how's it going."
"Pretty good. Sandy's under the weather, but she's doing a little better. How are you and Vicky?"
"Fine, fine. I mean, she left last night, but that's fine."
"Aw, shit. I'm sorry to hear that."
"You shouldn't be. I'm not."
"OK. I am, though. Well, the reason I called... this is gonna sound kind of silly now."
"C'mon now, I'm a man. I can take it. Hell, I'm a free man now."
"Well, OK. Do you ever listen to John Cale anymore?"
"Yeah, once in a while. Paris 1919 and Fear, anyway. Heh, you know, that record really pissed off Vicky. Maybe I'll put it on..."
"Well, his new one came into the store. It's... it's pretty fucked-up."
"Really? Like Helen of Troy? Or do you mean good fucked-up?"
"Heh, ouch. No, this is good, I think. But it's painful stuff."
"Helen of Troy was pretty painful. Remember how excited you were to get it?"
"It's not that bad. Besides... you remember that 'Close Watch' song?"
"The Disney song?"
"Yeah, uh, that one. Well, he recorded it again."
"Shit."
"No, no, this is great. It's really... desolate. No strings. Nothing. Just him and his piano... and some organ... and... weird stuff. And it's the most pleasant thing on the album."
"Huh."
"Well, if you want to hear it some time, I've got it. Just let me know."
"Sure, I will."
"You wanna go out for a drink Friday?"

So, yeah, social engagements and such aside, the record eventually did change hands.

And on its return:
"Yeah, fucked up is right. Shit, I'm never listening to that again. But you're right, I do appreciate Close Watch a lot more now... until the fucking BAGPIPES start! Let me know when he makes a rock album again."

I Keep a Close Watch

Fifteen years after Helen of Troy destroyed the Akron Ohio Chapter of the International John Cale Fan Club, our friends, still in contact as they arc through middle age, happen to reminisce about music. Which leads to...
"You know, he released the best album he ever made a couple weeks ago."
"Aw, no. I heard some of that Andy Warhol album - the wife borrowed it from the library. Not my thing."
"No, not that. This is a solo acoustic live album. It's the best live album I own."
"You own an awful lot of live albums."
"I'm not exaggerating on this one."
"Heh, you seem serious enough. You know, I kind of would like to hear some of those songs again. Can you make me a tape?"
"Sure. Hey, you know...
"What?"
"... he does Close Watch!"
Groan!

An intro like "This is a love song, so hold onto someone you love," deserves a groan. But sandwiched between "Heartbreak Hotel" and "Hallelujah," Close Watch finally found a context that made sense - not to mention its best recorded performance. And you know what? That's the year the Akron John Cale Fan Club reformed... at least for a while.

Here's a video for your trouble, from a 1983 solo gig down under:

Empty Bottles

2008-02-13T12:04:00.007-05:00

It's a shame that the only official recording of this unknown classic is from the essential, horribly recorded, and shadily published Reed/Cale/Nico album Le Bataclan 1972. "Empty Bottles" does better as a mainstream ballad of loser love than anything else Cale would write, and could have perhaps gone somewhere as a single. So of course he gives it to Leonard Cohen accompanist and "(I've Had) The Time of My Life" singer Jennifer Warnes, whose 1972 album Jennifer he was producing at the time, and never bothers recording it himself. (Jennifer, naturally, would never see reissue or CD release - though a 2007 twofer rerelease confusingly reused the name.)

It's interesting to hear Lou Reed providing lead acoustic guitar work over Cale's rhythm, even if the two sometimes seem at cross-purposes. The instrumental track is pretty unremarkable G/C strummy stuff. What makes the song is the knowledge of the narrator that this relationship is mutually self-destructive, and his commitment to it anyway. The lovely vocal melody helps, especially on the bridge:

And I do love you, against all odds
Though you don't know what I want
We're much poorer than that bottle
More foolish than that wine

John Cale and Miss Cindy of the GTOs would marry that year.

I'd post contemporary indie band The Ladybug Transistor's cover of the song, but it's up for sale on Amazon now. So, have a listen to a speed-corrected version of the Bataclan performance instead and raise a toast to Mr. Cale.

Woman

2008-02-11T19:02:00.000-05:00

I admit, John Cale tends more towards "relationship" songs of the tragic, regretful, angry , &c. nature than he does towards the "love song" per se. Most serious songwriters do, don't they? Because art loves conflict, and love and lust cause as much conflict as any other human feelings - no surprises here.

But Cale does put some uniquely weird spins on things. He can write a love song revolving around the hostility of the outside world, a common enough trope; but (giving him as much credit as possible) he seems to plant clues that argue against the hostility of the outside world, that even imply (stretching, here) that the hostile wasteland is the unavoidable - maybe even desirable - result of the forces of love.

(studio version)

Then again, he can write a love song with poison-pen lyrics like Woman, using an atonal verse and an anthemic chorus (building to an over-the-top synth choir coda). It might be my favorite song on blackAcetate - for an album I feel lukewarm about, there sure are a lot of candidates - but it stretches the boundaries of the genre a fair long way. (The Circus Live version is enjoyable enough, but having a riff and more than a trace of melody on the verses ruins the texture of the song. It's better than that live album's mediocre average, but that's saying little.)

"You're ignorant. You're cool. You never learned to say you're sorry."

No real idea nor little interest about who it's actually about, but... well... it says something that somebody made this video. The thought had occurred to me, too.

(live version)

Somewhere in the City

2008-01-29T15:29:00.000-05:00

Thanks to this project, I'm the proud owner of a massive library of soundtracks to films I am never going to see. I cobbled together a 5:42 suite of the original John Cale score to this one. It's very uncharacteristic: no drones or atonality or synthesizers or massed strings. I think his trio partners (Dawn Helmholtz and longtime Cale sideman Mark Deffenbaugh) had a lot of input here. It's nice music, if not very striking. I guess I'll take it minute by minute.

Marta & Frankie
What would happen if Ray Davies and John Cale collaborated on a soundtrack composition? This. Not that it was intentional or acknowledged, but this is a beautiful acoustic/guitar/classical guitar/cello instrumental mashup of The Kinks' "God's Children" and Cale's "Set Me Free."

Love Scene
A pensive, even soulful piano and slide guitar duet. Its brevity makes up for the unconvincing relationship between piano and guitar chord progressions. I'm sure this was improvised.

Pennywhistle
No, seriously, it really is twenty seconds of Far Eastern modalities on a pennywhistle. That seems to be Dawn Avery's thing. Nice, but definitely the odd track out here.

Drive Up to Robbery
Wow, acoustic blues! Nice slide work, and I like the fretboard percussion. I have a hard time believing Cale "composed" this, per se.

Marta and Frankie (Reprise)
Still the same arpeggios, but without the melodies a'la Messrs Davies and Cale. Ah, it is a shame.

Indistinct Notion of Cool
Hey, it's a song! This one... hey, wait just a second! This is a Walking on Locusts track. Bah, I'll cover it later.

Brotherman

2008-01-28T10:00:00.000-05:00

I write reams of this shit every day.

Thanks, J. That makes my job easier. "Brotherman" is a track I possibly should be embarrassed about - does he think this is rap? But it's too weird to be purely midlife crisis genrehopping: it's a self-mocking rumination on the songwriting process. The narrator, John Cale or not, seems to be writing about a drug deal that might be a sting. But he's mocking himself the whole time, saying sardonically, "This is just part of the magic; I write reams of this shit every day." On the other hand, he's not above a little credit-taking: he's very proud that it may be shit, "but you're feeling it!" With the namechecking of Timbaland and the Neptunes he did at the time, one wonders if it's not some sort of semi-affectionate parody of the genre.

The monologue is delivered over a bed of mostly synthetic noise that's somewhere between an ersatz hip-hop track and one of Cale's atonal live eviscerations of some poor innocent song from his back catalog. Most notable is the interplay between the silly, buzzing "bass line" and intermittent electric guitar strums. It's... an acquired taste, but one I usually like enough to listen to. Without the wry vocal, though, I doubt I'd take the time.

However, it is a unique and fecund moment on blackAcetate (an album that admittedly does feel like midlife crisis genrehopping). It's a track that many critics reviled, a few like, and probably nobody but Cale really understands. I don't know if it's meant to be serious or a pisstake, but I think that ambiguity is the point. Very uncomfortable.

I Wanna Be Around

2008-01-24T14:27:00.000-05:00

Me? I'm in great shape; here's the latest thing from the workshop.

I Wanna Be Around was a Tony Bennett hit back in 1963. The song was written by Johnny Mercer and Sadie Vimmerstedt, a cosmetician from Youngstown Ohio who sent a note to "Johnny Mercer-Songwriter-New York" containing a lyric she thought would make a good song: I wanna be around to pick up the pieces when somebody breaks your heart. Mercer wrote the song, and, being a supreme gentleman, gave her a 50% co-credit, guaranteeing her a few thousand dollars a year in royalties for the rest of her life.

And it might never have made its way to John Cale's music stand if Brian Wilson hadn't penciled it into the SMiLE tracklist back in 1966. But he did (even if he got the lyrics wrong). I have no evidence that Cale had a stack of SMiLE bootlegs, but I will assume he did, and shame on him if he didn't.

But the version he recorded with Jools Holland's big band owes little to either Wilson's gentle version or Bennett's slow croon. Cale takes the song fast, hard, and - you can hear this in the vocal - with a sharklike smile. The growl in Cale's voice on "I wanna be around to see how he does it, when he breaks your heart to bits" raises hackles.

Shame, though, that there's so much boilerplate big-band pyrotechnics going on around him. It's fun enough, sure, but a sparer arrangement with a vocal so venomous would be an essential part of the canon. But, hey, the album is cheap and you get great songs by dead guys. For pocket change, I recommend it.

Model Beirut Recital

2008-01-19T14:50:00.001-05:00

When I think about the fine modern people trying to run the world... Well, something must be done about it. Something must be done right now, about the fine modern people trying to run the world. We're whistling in the dark. I'm whispering for a friend. Whistling in the dark again.

(This is not fiction.)

I love Lebanon. I look at photos, or hear my Lebanese buddies reminiscing, and I want to get to know it. But then I always get to thinking about how easy it is for people to start killing their neighbors. A Christian friend of mine is loudly proud of his small role in the civil war, and I swear he gets a tear of joy in his eye from time to time when he remembers his killing days.

But he shares these reminiscences in mixed company: with Lebanese and Yemeni Muslim and Lebanese and Chaldean (Iraqi) Christian immigrants. They've been in the US a long time and have gone through many of the same experiences. They're friends, though politics and religion often leave them regarding each other with an uneasy but more or less good-humored incredulity. In this particular circle, I haven't seen old angers simmer back to life as I have among Serbs and Albanians who are acquaintances in the New World, but it makes me wonder at how the human brain can switch contexts so entirely.

I don't doubt that Tony would gladly pick up a gun again; he's joked (with a seriousness behind his humor) about it from time to time. And I don't understand how you can go out to lunch with people from the same groups you resent that much. But I can't understand what their formative years were like, either. So I listen to them talk, and break bread with them, and think about this civilization thing.

And we all fall down in a model Beirut recital, in that modern Beirut again.

Here's the original, with profane Lebanese intro by a military man Cale met somewhere. ("Beirut, you're a whore and I spit on you.") Here's the 2006 fragment from the Circus Live DVD.

Decade

2008-01-01T17:00:00.001-05:00

The slab of noise generously titled "Decade" was allegedly recorded on December 31, 1979. Though guitarist Richie Fliegler denies involvement with or knowledge of the band performing, it's a pretty convincing Cale band. What's most notable about it is, perhaps, the fairly conventional nature of the thing. It sounds like Rock Music. The guitar lead goes places (at least in circles), the stolid and martial drumming sounds like it should be backing a very unrehearsed garage band, and (Cale's?) bass part (which seems to appear only in the last third) thumps along.

After turning over in place with one feedback-loaded guitar explosion after another, it finally moves into some appealingly chunky rhythmic territory after Cale joins in. There's nothing particularly experimental or even very confrontational about it (unlike the title track or "Dance of the Seven Veils"). It sounds completely spur-of-the moment, a tune-up that turned into a "piece of music" - I think that's a virtue. It's just a loud, agitated-but-enthusiastic way to ring out one bad decade and ring in another.

Nothing changes but the numbers on the wall, so turn up your amps and say hello to 2008. Happy New Year!

Frozen Warnings

2007-12-28T12:26:00.001-05:00

The Marble Index is, for my money, one of the most difficult records to listen to Cale ever made (well, helped make). It's hostile and atonal, cold in a way the New York 1960s recordings aren't, and relentlessly SLOW - not to mention Nico's voice and melodies are more than usually soporific. It's an album I admire more than I enjoy: Nico's vision is singularly intense and Cale's "arrangements" are some of the most interesting music he's ever written, but I find it almost impossible to identify with the mindset behind it.

The song I most enjoy is the most tuneful thing present, "Frozen Warnings." The vocal melody is a weird blend of Gregorian chant and Indian raga, and shows more movement than most other tracks. The backing music builds up around an organ/viola drone, creating a feeling of suspended animation. I don't know what else I can say - this is hard music to talk about.

Well, here's something. Cale wrote a piano part and performed this in the Nico retrospective film Nico: Icon. Below is a video; here's an mp3 of that performance. Great stuff.

Child's Christmas in Wales

2007-12-25T23:30:00.001-05:00

I can't really talk about John Cale collaborations without talking about Dylan Thomas. It would be a mistake to harness these two oxen together or to put a Cale cart behind a Thomas horse. Still, there's a real sympathy between these two men's work, and Dylan the Elder was clearly an inspiration to our Mr. Cale. A long-lived inspiration - long before he was setting sea poems to music with Brian Eno, Cale was filching a title for the leadoff track of 1973's Paris 1919.

There's no direct connection between the kaleidoscopic short story "A Child's Christmas in Wales" and the equally kaleidoscopic song, only a shared spirit of wry reminiscence upon the wonderful and laughable circumstances of their authors' childhoods. Dylan Thomas references dot the song ("long-legged bait" and something else that escapes me), but it's very much Cale on the whole, with wonderful lyrics that perk up the ear on first listen ("Did he say 'murdered oranges'? Bled on board ship? Huh.") but carry emotional resonance ("Take down the flags of ownership, the walls are falling down.") while keeping a reserve of mystery ("Sebastapol, Adrianapolis, the prayers of all combined...") And only on Paris did Cale write lyrics like "The cattle graze bolt uprightly. Seducing down the door..."

I have to admit, I like the song better in its stripped-down solo piano incarnation. It's unadorned and unornamented, one of the barest tracks in a library of stripped-down recordings. It helps that the vocal on the Fragments version is superb, hitting all the right notes of warmth, scorn, admiration, longing, pity. But at root the song deserves to be heard without the thick coating of instrumentals laid on it in the studio.

In fact, I'd say I like the live version much better, but then you'd think I don't appreciate the warmth and fullness of the studio version, the way the slide guitar and bass and piano and organ interplay to wrap around you like the heat from a fireplace. And I do! I wouldn't trade it for anything. I'm just glad I have both versions to enjoy.

Either version's better with some cognac-enhanced eggnog. Whatever your yuletide traditions and innovations may be, I hope they've been grand. From us and ours to you and yours, best wishes and Nadolig Llawen!

P.S. Here's a little present. Nico sings and Cale does his distorted piano thing at CBGBs in 1979. "There's a lady with class," Cale says appreciatively. And even if her singing's not great here, you know I think he's right.

Sister Ray

2007-12-18T22:55:00.000-05:00

Take it away, Maestro!

I'd wager that "Sister Ray" is the most widely-heard track of its violence and aural hostility. What track on a widely available album by a major artist competes with it? Joy Division and New Order and the Sisters of Mercy covered it. (As did, amusingly, author Alan Moore, in a bizarre parody version about an Objectivist (!) comic book superhero.) Jonathan Richman, in "Roadrunner," simultaneously neutered it and made it really appealing. It sits on countless record store shelves worldwide, lying dormant on copies of White Light/White Heat, waiting to perforate eardrums and induce bad trips and anxiety attacks.

The topics, as the Wikipedia entry dryly notes, cover almost every item on the Lou Reed menu: homosexuality, transvestites, prostitutes, heroin use, sudden violence. It's so over the top that it's much more funny than it is threatening. Reed's voice is mesmerizing here - whether he's chanting "whip it on me, Jim," nagging his friends about shooting a man dead ("Aw, doncha know you shouldn't do that? Doncha know it stains the carpet!"), or droning raga-style "Iiiiii'm searching for myyyyy maaaaaaaain liiiiine," you can barely take your ears off him.

And yet if the song were an instrumental, it would be nearly as astonishing. Here's a war on tape: each player tweaking his volume measure by measure, a band whose every part is trying to drown each other out. It's arguably the single point of John Cale's rock career in which real honest-to-god rocking coexists with his earlier systems-music work whole and entire, body-and-blood soul-and-obscenity. His organ part could have been released as a track on the New York in the 1960s records, and nobody would have thought it out of place; but harness it to Moe Tucker's thumping, Sterling Morrison's squawking, and Lou Reed's guitar and vocal assault, and you have one of the most arresting pieces of art ever created.

A band that created music so powerfully destructive and destructively powerful couldn't last for long. It's a shame that Cale's greatest collaborative relationship - the one with Tucker and Morrison and Reed - couldn't have lasted just a little longer, though. But at least we have White Light/White Heat, and "Sister Ray," to show for it.

Gun

2007-12-14T18:00:00.000-05:00

Of course John Cale worked with Brian Eno from early on. I mean, sure, Brian Eno works with everybody. He does unreasonably brilliant work with almost everybody. What's impressive is how unique his collaborations are: the Enoed Phil Manzanera guitar part in "Gun" does not sound like David Bowie's Enoized instrumentals, which don't sound like the Talking Heads' Enoid nightmares. There's a common aesthetic and set of techniques there, but very different sounds. It's giving him too much credit to call him the central figure of "art music" in the 1970s, but it's not that far from the truth.

Not that I'm going to give Eno credit for this track. His processing is amazing, but it isn't the keystone. If I had to give credit for Gun's frightening power to a single instrument, it would be the drums. Playing ahead of the beat (establishing the track's nauseating anxiety), thumping so atavistically as to embarrass Meg White or Moe Tucker, throwing in violent tumbling fills... fuck flash and precision, this is great drumming*. The guitar is close behind, screaming eerily like human voices in distress, chopped up into stroboscopic pieces and reassembled. And then there's the vocal, at a singularly effective spot in Cale's range - particularly on the choruses, where it brilliantly undermines the potentially stadium-rock riff.

And his phrasing! He gets so much mileage out of the lyric, a film noir script about detectives on a bad beat in an awful world. It doesn't sound that original or compelling if you haven't heard it, maybe; but there's so much fear and hatred in his delivery of these Philip Marlowe-esque lines that the song completely surpasses the concept.

This song is on every single Cale compilation, and for one reason: it is essential. I will brook no dissent here. If you don't own The Island Years/Gold (which includes Fear whole and entire), you should buy it. If you don't want to, pirate the track for all I care. But you'd better goddamn listen to it, or that final guitar solo might rip out your throat.

* I do appreciate technique. But you've got to know when to just pound those suckers.

Risé, Sam and Rimsky-Korsakov

2007-12-12T13:20:00.000-05:00

Uh, I guess I'll have the Rimsky-Korsakov, thanks.

Images

2007-12-09T23:30:00.000-05:00

Of course, Cale's longest-running, deepest, most meaningful, most destructive collaboration was with Lou Reed. Those who don't know Cale think of the Velvet Underground as Reed's band. Those who worship at the shrine of Cale tend to view Reed rather negatively, and the reverse seems equally true. Me, I enjoy a lot of Reed's work, but it doesn't engage me as directly or as deeply as Cale's. If you're coming from a different conceptual space I can imagine "Street Hassle" would be more moving than "Cable Hogue" - to me the former's very interesting and intellectually engaging, but weirdly like darkside Harry Chapin.

Anyway, you'd think that both viewpoints would find something appealing about Songs for Drella. The two poles of the Velvet Underground, together to remember their lost friend and mentor. And it just doesn't work out that way. They try to find the old magic of the Velvet Underground on a few tracks, notably "Images" - a seemingly born-of-improv attempt to recapture the assault-drone they produced live for Warhol's film showings. They do some Lou Reed songs, some John Cale songs, many indeterminate ones.

It's an enjoyable album, it's touching in spots and illuminating in others, and it's convincing as a collaboration - it's hard to tell who to credit for most of the songs. (Reed is quite sure he did all of it, but what else is new.)

I don't know why I don't care much for it. It may be the subject matter - Warhol was a catalyst of many interesting things, but his art generally doesn't do much for me. There's also the fact that the album has a decidedly passive-aggressive feel to it - Reed had a lot of animosity towards Warhol, and he couldn't get rid of it completely. There's the little biographical note that both men abandoned and avoided Warhol his last five years of life.

Listening to it, you feel you've intruded on an uncomfortable wake, where the guests are drunk enough to admit past cruelties and to slip in barbs at the deceased, but not drunk enough to let go their masks and hit emotional catharsis. Then, too, they hate each other. Don't you get enough of that in real life?

The Hall of Mirrors in the Palace at Versailles

2007-12-05T11:30:00.000-05:00

The collaboration between Cale and Terry Riley, on the other hand, was a short and apparently unhappy one. (Riley's statement on the album: "Yes! Church of Anthrax! [half-mirthful, half-exasperated laughter]"). It's not a fruitless collaboration, though - even if Riley felt that Cale commandeered the sessions, their respective styles did merge and more or less complement each other.

"The Hall of Mirrors in the Palace at Versailles." Of all Cale's discarded pretentious high-art tics I miss the bizarre titles the most. The title isn't entirely inappropriate for this highly repetitious and recursive piano and sax voyage. Cale bangs away at a few chords on the piano (much faster than usual for his "classical" incarnation!), Riley plays undulating streams of sax akin (so they say) to A Rainbow in Curved Air. There are some special effects with stereo - sax flowing from left to right, echoes of the right sax in the left channel, etc.

There's a moment almost three minutes in which they change key, and it sounds like they've turned the boat out to sea. Similar picturesque developments keep the piece interesting almost all the way to the end, but the track outstays its welcome near the five-minute mark when the stereo panning of saxes gets a little overheated and the piano work lingers too long in the same vein. The ending is beautiful, though.

In all, it's a striking listen but not the most effective thing on the album. There's potential here that just wasn't realized.

Audio file hosting

2007-12-04T19:54:00.000-05:00

Speaking of mp3s... I signed up with Google Apps to get hosting for a site. I don't want to abuse their TOS, so I'm going to be deleting anything I post up there within a month at most. I will only post unreleased and well-out-of-print stuff - if anything I post is available in print, digitally or otherwise, please let me know and I'll take it down.

Secrets

2007-12-04T19:02:00.000-05:00

"What do you think is going on here?" the old man said from his chair.
"D'you think this is anything new? Now look here, son. This is just like
it was back in the old days before the last war. Then the politics
changed, the scene rearranged and became how we know now is quo.
Oh, yeah, there were times when everyone smiled and agreed and the
good times would roll, but a heartbeat away was the crime that did
pay - the shot that was heard around the world."

"But nevertheless, there ain't no money," said the kid.

Ah, the magic of collaboration. You take a spoken and entirely un-Cale rant about intergenerational differences, anti-futurism, world war and global change, slam it into a reggae-ish music (with harmonica!), and have a five word chorus come in now and again, and you get the improbably lovable "Secrets." In fact, "improbably lovable" is how I feel about the lumpy, extremely imperfect Last Day on Earth in general - it's not great, but it's charming, absolutely unique, and something only a collaboration this weird could accomplish.

Often nonsensical, often funny, mixing cliche with potent images, Bob Neuwirth is in raconteur mode here. I don't know much about him, except that he recorded a number of albums and was part of Bob Dylan's long-term coterie. But with the sharp and self-deprecating DIY aesthetic he shows on this album, I feel I should find out more. It's odd that he sounds so much like Bob Newhart, though - whom I can't help imagine delivering this rant.

Neuwirth and John Cale provide the chorus vocals, singing the sweet but prickly chorus: "Secrets, secrets, dirty little secrets." I don't know how much input Cale had on the music here - it sounds like him on (terribly outdated) synth keys, but it's not exactly characteristic. In any case, it works with Neuwirth's clipped diction to provide some syncopated appeal. There's not much really that stands out - the guitar tone is nice, and harmonica! on the coda, but otherwise it's more than the sum of the instruments.

The fast patter, the repetition of the chorus verse, the repeated objection by the kid that "there ain't no money" have an incantatory effect that build up over time. I think I didn't much like this track the first time I heard it, but the "Secrets, secrets" bit got stuck in my head anyway - possibly after one listen. It still pops in frequently. Often too (too often, say those in the know) I can't resist quoting "'But nevertheless, there ain't no money,' said the kid" at moments of varying appropriateness around the house and town.

Here's an mp3. I'd really like to know what you (yes, you!) make of this oddity. Try to hear past the sickly synth tone and the prissy production job, if you can.

Adelaide

2007-12-03T00:00:00.000-05:00

Another song that explores people as places as people, "Adelaide" ain't a patch on Andalucia. John Cale's game on Vintage Violence being exploring pop forms - he cites the Bee Gees, an underrated group of pop songwriters before disco madness infected them, as an influence - he goes whole hog on Adelaide as on Cleo, making cutesy uptempo pop songs that annoy the living piss out of me.

The choice of city may be homage to the brothers Gibb, but it's not a convincing lyric. Not an awful one - "don't want to be late/it's probably night in Adelaide" is an amusing little line working against the premise, and I really like the bit that goes "so pass me the phone/I go it alone/I whistle my way to Adelaide." But there's no sense of a real connection, and no detail to give character to the thing - just vagueness and cliche.

The structure isn't bad, I admit, with verse/alt verse/bridge construction and a cool little coda.

It's the melody, the instrumental, and the vocals that offend. Cale has turned on the charm, and it's so contrived and facile that... eh! The slightly off-key doo-wop parody backing vocals ("oooh nooo") are particularly galling. The piano figure is a hyperactive one without soul or interest. (I do like the harmonica, even if the whole thing ends up sounding like the Sesame Street theme song.) The flaws of this don't transfer at all to Macbeth (a pretty obvious rewrite), but then the strong points of that don't manifest themselves here.

It's not subversive or mocking, just imitative and seemingly in bad faith. Nothing else is really worth commenting on, is it? Well, just this: it's funny that I've complained about how samey Vintage Violence sounds, and yet it's the two songs furthest afield that I actively dislike.

Of course, the way these things always work, this song often pops into my head unbidden at inopportune times. Listening to it repeatedly while writing this post has guaranteed months more of it. Dammit.

Andalucia

2007-11-26T18:16:00.000-05:00

Enough with sordid! How about something sweet, then. On the sweet, gauzy Andalucia, John Cale and his buddies from Little Feat create a modest little melt-in-your-mouth confection. It's soothing, quiet, and more reminiscent of Vintage Violence than anything else on Paris 1919.

Alright, instrumentally, it does borrow liberally from George Harrison's recording of Dylan's "If Not for You," but the vocal line is something else entirely. It's a strained vocal, and Cale seems on the verge of going out of tune the whole time. And yet this works, somehow - the weakness of the voice brings out a humble grace in a song that a more assured vocal might make cloying. On the other hand, too weak a vocal might make the song seem sickly (as does Ira Kaplan's on the otherwise graceful Yo La Tengo cover version). Cale walks the line between and makes it work.

The lyric mostly fits with Paris's continental diversions, though the "Farmer John" bit always strikes me as odd. Possibly because it makes me think of the 1959 song by Don & Dewey, but also because it doesn't seem to fit with the album's very Eurocentric namechecking. The lyric at large is more vague than most of the album, but gets a lot of mileage out of the ambiguity of the addressee - is it a woman or a Spanish state?

The real genius of the song: it gracefully ends the first arc of the album, offers ear candy to encourage repeat listens, and lulls the listener into a calm that Macbeth can more effectively shatter. It's perfect where it is, right at the center of Cale's best album.

Wilson Joliet

2007-11-21T20:30:00.000-05:00

Close the door and let's have some private light!
As mentioned earlier, Wilson Joliet is the equally evil twin of Sanities. Along with Strange Times in Casablanca, it defines the mainline of Honi Soit. Characterized by a paralyzing paranoiac tension, the songs build from a sinister beginning to a crisis point - or a psychotic break? - and culminate in an ecstatic bout of screaming gibberish. (Riverbank and Russian Roulette hew roughly to this template as well.)

Like Sanities, it starts with a woman terrified of her mother. However, this immediately and bizarrely detours into even stranger territory: "Before the clock slammed another door on the weary hours we were facing, a second-hand Shylock shylocked in, in on us." It's rather shocking to hear Shylock, the "evil Jew" of the Merchant of Venice, invoked in such a stark and simple way. It sounds, well, bad. What's worse, it's totally opaque, admitting to no analysis. You don't know where the words are coming from or what they're supposed to mean, so you don't really know how to react. I feel that I have to bring it up, but I've got nothing to say about it.

It then proceeds to, like Riverside, weave military atrocities of the past and their effects on society ("like the lovers below Bataan") into a modern context, though even more obscurely than that song does. Is a lyric like "mothers weep while children sleep like ancestors in the ground" too manipulative, playing the "dead kiddies" card for quick emotional resonance in an otherwise meaningless song? Or does it get points for pointing out the bitter irony of children serving the role of the old (fertilizing the soil) rather than of the young (changing, ha ha, the world)?

Even more than Russian Roulette, it has no shame about its political incorrectness. It's one thing to feature audio clips from the 1954 British WWII film The Dam Busters in which characters call to the commander's black dog Nigger, as Pink Floyd did in The Wall. It's another thing entirely to create a militaristic fantasy world and end the song by screaming about you and the dog blasting out of confinement. Imagine driving through the city, blasting John Cale on your car stereo, and sharing with the world at large repeated screams of "Me and Nigger blasted our way out!" Not comfortable. And you can't explain nor rationalize it.

Like Syd Barrett's solo ramblings, the song's value lies solely in the atmosphere the song creates and the thoughts that it evokes. I don't know whether it's the audio equivalent of a Hieronymous Bosch or of a Jackson Pollock, but this war word salad just does trigger feelings in me. Is it

the crashing background noises?
the cascading tribal/march drums?
the church organ hovering ghostly over the song?
the endlessly reverberating guitar?

It might just be the prostration of the almost tuneless vocal, just barely in the realm of song rather than spoken-word, delivering such unexpectedly moving lines like "Yesterday's streets, burned out buildings reduced to shells" or "We are shuffled like a pack of cards" (a lyric he stole and reused in Zen).

I don't know which of these things in particular gets to me, what turns a studio improv babble into something moving But something does get to me, and apparently to him too, given that the song was mystifyingly included on the Close Watch compilation. Does it get to you? Why, or why not?

And would someone please tell me what the title means?

The Academy in Peril

2007-11-14T18:25:00.000-05:00

One of the most delicate works in John Cale's catalog is the title track of the underexposed The Academy in Peril. It's yet another of Cale's extremely slow meanders around the keyboard, but this one is more accessible than most, in that the rests aren't antisocially prolonged and the piece seems to have some composition behind it rather than being purely improvised.

The first half of the piece is an extremely poignant and arching exploration of two-note harmonies. For that duration, unless my ears deceive me, only two fingers seem to be needed to play the piece - is this the reason for the title? As silly as this sounds, it's music of immense beauty, and I tend to forget to breathe when I listen to it.

In any case, at that point it gets all 19th century French Romantic, like Fauré or something. It speeds up and turns dramatic/dynamic, though still very bare and unornamented. This isn't as impressive, and it's a little disappointing after the sublime first movement. Still, quality music of a type the man wouldn't come round to again for a long, long time.

Domain

2007-11-13T14:45:00.000-05:00

Hello. As you may have noticed, we've got an actual domain name registered. You can still get here via the old address, but the new official URL is:

http://blog.fragmentsofcale.net

Sanities

2007-11-12T00:00:00.000-05:00

A piece originally called "Sanctus," "Sanities" was given its name* by an engineer who misread John Cale's handwriting. Cale approved of this change, as would anyone who heard it. True, it's the story of an exaltation, but it's also a story of insanity, paranoia, and espionage. It's the centerpiece of side 1 of Music for a New Society and maybe the defining moment of the whole album.

The track is a semi-remake of Honi Soit's "Wilson Joliet." At least, they start at the same point (a woman psychotically afraid of her mother) with near-identical lyrics. But there the similarities end. Where Wilson Joliet's tension builds to explosive catharsis, Sanities heaps up dread without release. Where Wilson Joliet gains steam, Sanities seems to leach energy from the listener. Its main ambition seems to be to stop you from breathing.

Finally, centrally, where Wilson Joliet is a screamer and a rocker, Sanities is a freakish spoken-word piece, told dramatically over sinister and random background music. Cale has rarely sounded as off his nut as he does on this track - but it's neither drug-fueled hyperactivity nor screaming into the abyss. He's calm, sober, careful with each word, and totally insane.

The "music" here defines the sound of the album. I don't know what to say about it... well, let me just relate Asphodel's off-the-cuff comments, live as we listened to the track just now. "That backing track is physically unpleasant. That whole thing is Sanities? I didn't remember how irritating it was. Worse than fingernails on a chalkboard. I will not listen to that again. Evil son of a bitch."

Well, he is! There's organ doing this, there's a barely audible Cale singing part rendering the same lyric, there are random strings doing that, there's percussion with a meter that could only be expressed using imaginary numbers, and on top there's a Welsh preacher on quaaludes calmly reading a David Lynch scene treatment . Where Wilson Joliet created a hostile and malignant atmosphere with volume and distortion, Sanities creates a far more destabilizing, distracting, disturbing scene without turning up the volume at all. It puts me in a place, mentally speaking, that nothing else does; a place I don't often like to go, but a place that I need to more often than I'd like.

The text of Sanities is so full of portent and doomy imagery that it's easily mocked. "In a friendship... no, it was more than a friendship, it was a marriage! A marriage made in the grave!" Yeesh.

But I can't mock it. There's something pure and terrible in the song, in the music and the words and Cale's delivery. It is very comfortable to shut yourself off to it. It may be impossible to open yourself to it, if you're not already. But if you are open to it - I realize how goddamn religious this sounds - you can't deny it. Hey, such is art.

The shivering night.
The searching of the river continued.

The bullet of searchlight,
That searchlight found her so cockleshell and sure,
Sick and tired of what she saw,
But cockleshell and sure!

Sure of what the world had offered a tired soul.
From Istanbul, to Madrid,
To Reykjavik, to Bonn,
To Leipzig, to Leningrad,
To Shanghai, Phnom Penh,
All so that it would be a stronger world
A strong though loving world

To die in.

* To be precise, the engineer mislabeled it "Santies", which sounds like some sort of feminine hygiene product. I prefer to forget that bit.

Dying on the Vine

2007-11-02T11:00:00.000-04:00

It's Día de los Muertos. Why not enjoy a sugar skull with this post?

A note about Robert J. Widlar.

Besides many other distinctions, Bob Widlar was the father of the operational amplifier, an arrangement of transistors and biasing circuits that easily slotted into more complicated circuits, becoming a core building block of the technological revolution of the late 20th century. He did not invent it, but he set the standard for integrated circuit op-amps and designed some of the best and most versatile that have been created. After making Fairchild Semiconductor the leader in the IC market, he started the linear IC division at National Semiconductor.

This is where, over the course of four years, he established a reputation as an excitable boy. He brought a ewe in to mow the lawn. To stop people from raising their voice to him, he created and secretly installed in his office a device called the Hassler, which would echo any noise in the vocal frequency range at a higher frequency, on the edge of the ear's range; as the volume increased, the frequency offset dropped proportionally, making the echo more noticeable, and giving the effect of a ringing in the ears. He smashed nonfunctional components into a fine powder to ensure they had zero chance of causing him trouble in the future.

And then, after that four years was up, he got in his car and drove down to Mexico, to Puerto Vallarta, leaving no forwarding address. He took a single-room adobe apartment, where he could concentrate on his alcohol and write technical papers on electrical circuits without so much as an electric lightbulb around. National Semiconductor sent a mission down to track him and reacquire him. Eventually he signed on as a contractor, but kept his Mexican residence. He died at fifty-three during a demanding jog. He wasn't identified for several days.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled fragment.

I think of Bob Widlar when I hear this song. I don't only think of him - I think of the Katharine Anne Porter novel Ship of Fools, as well, and of Ambrose Bierce, charging down into Mexico despite his age to join Pancho Villa's army, disappearing from the face of the earth.

To be honest, I think of myself. Even though I'm not an alcoholic, nor a gringo in Mexico, nor hanging out among troops and criminals. I don't think it's self-dramatization; there's something about the song that reaches out and pulls you into it. It's an epiphanic moment, a passing instant of understanding crystallized into a song. Despite the very particular scenario, it's a song with a weird universal resonance.

That's a big claim, but consider this: "Dying on the Vine" is a fairly obscure song in Cale's catalog, its definitive version a live take, the studio album entirely forgotten. And yet I have heard from several other people who call it their favorite Cale song. It is my favorite Cale song. It is not his best song, it is not his most characteristic song, but it is the song that most reaches into my chest and clamps down on my heart.

Two albums feature this song: Artificial Intelligence as an inebriated slow-motion dance, a life observed from the bottom of the bottle; Fragments of a Rainy Season as a flood of illumination. The video above comes very close to a perfect hybrid of the two. Of all the versions, the Fragments version (mp3 here) is the most essential; it's the most accessible path into the song. (It's worth noting that the version included on the Close Watch compilation is indeed the Fragments version.) I was very disappointed by the studio version on first listen, but I've come to understand and appreciate it.

It's interesting to think about the choices behind Cale's different approaches to the song: play up the Spanish motif or not? play up the emotion or hide it? emphasize the choruses or the verses? what spin do you put on the narrator? and how much of him is you? I've gone through six solo guitar arrangements of this song myself, and tweaking each of these parameters has a substantial effect on the nature of the song. But the song stands up to everything! There are few songs I've encountered that can stand up to as much resculpting as this one does, and yet it always seems to retain its soul.

I'm not a reliable guide to the lyrics of this song; my interpretation is completely personal and extremely idiosyncratic. Just part of the magic of the song is the sentence fragment in the chorus: "I was living my life like a Hollywood..." A Hollywood what, he doesn't say, but it evokes so many Nathanael West-type possibilities.

Sabotage

2007-10-31T12:00:00.000-04:00

Life is short and love is very sweet.

Why, John, how... romantic!

Look at all the people running for their lives in the street.

Well, I knew that wouldn't last.

What they running from? What they running to?
Goddamnit, ask them! I wanna know, too.

The title track of Sabotage/Live is one of the best songs in the John Cale oeuvre. It is also one of the weirdest songs in the catalog. I mean, it's not very songlike. The chorus consists of the title. The verses are spoken/sung. The various instrumental parts, for the first several listens, seem to have very little to do with one another.

And yet, you put it all together and let it gestate in your mind, and eventually the thing won't get out. If I'm going to be playing something alone with a heavily amplified guitar at 2AM on a Wednesday night, odds are very high it's this. (I'd like to take this chance to apologize to my neighbors.)

Read and destroy everything that you read in the press.
Read and destroy everything that you read in books.
It's a waste of time and a waste of energy.
It's a waste of paper and a waste of ink.
Whatever you read in the books, leave it there!

It's not as if the lyrics are particularly poetic, or tightly written, or sharply observed. I mean, they're striking, but they're also formless and a bit flaccid. ("in books"?) It must be the frenzied way they're shouted. There's malicious intent. Malicious, but morally ambiguous.

There's a word for that:

(For what? Wasting time and energy, paper and ink, you and me? Or leaving what you read in the books there?)

Sabotage!

And yet, I don't know if there's any more glorious moment in Cale's catalog. It's the apotheosis of Cale's confrontational tendencies that first surfaced in his post-VU solo career on the coda of "Fear (is a Man's Best Friend)." With him and Deerfrance screaming "Sabotage!" over a churning set of solo performances: his outlandish bass part, the bizarre lead guitar, the stop-start rhythm of it all.

Military intelligence isn't what it used to be.

The lyrics are striking, and sort of one-of-a-kind. If I had to extract a message from it, it would be that the military industrial complex, aided and abetted by British and American governments up to and including the Thatcher and Carter (???) administrations, had created and perpetuated a climate of fear intended to batter consciences and spirits into submission, cogs sarcy cogs swrking round in the machine. This is hardly an original premise!

So what?! Human intelligence isn't what it used to be either.

(Pardon the American politics, but Cale was a genuine New Yorker by that point: OK, it seems to have been written in the summer of '79, so maybe it was inspired by the Reagan campaign. But Reagan didn't take a lead until the infamous second presidential debate, on October 31, which gave birth to modern-day campaign cliches like "Are you better off today than you were four years ago?" That debate more or less cinched the election for Reagan - his election looked not especially likely until that point.)

Maybe not an original premise, but the implementation is unique in its mixing of carefully parsed New Frontiersman and Foreign Affairs language with atonality and controlled chaos. The arching vocal on

It's a riii-sing expecta-tion! It's a riii-sing of the tides!

is powerful beyond reason. And, what can I say, it's an atavistic, primitive, brutal song.

The wards will discharge all their patients in the street.
Are they hurting? Yeah, they're mine. (???)
There's a word for that: sabotage!

Er, atavistic, primitive, brutal, crazy song. (No idea what that last bit's about.)

All I know is that it tickles my lizard brain like very little else. And that it's a crime against the catalog that it's left off every anthology. And that it should be used as the theme song for the film of Watchmen, whose atmosphere it anticipates brilliantly (provided, of course, that the film is any good). Oh, yes, and that you should hear it. Download here.

A Midnight Rain of Green Wrens at the World's Tallest Building

2007-10-30T00:00:00.000-04:00

At the dig site, the architects squinted at blueprints and checked them with the drawings their eyes made on the air before them. The engineers peered and craned their necks and discussed the foundations, for the few hours they spent away from their desks and slide rules and reference books. The surveyors measured and checked and checked and measured.

Everyone concerned - except perhaps for the workers themselves, for they were lazy and short-sighted and could think of nothing but their immediate work, their upcoming lunch, and the bottles that lay waiting for them to come home - could see the finished structures in their minds. They thought of the day that they would bring their families to stand on an observation deck, when they would bask in the adoration of lower-city dwellers who finally understood what space meant. "I made this," they would say, and it would be true.

And the men with the heavy equipment and the bottles waiting for them at home, they knew there would be work beyond this building. They weren't much impressed that the building they were assembling from the bottom up would be the world's tallest, but they were pleased that there would be work for years to come. And then they would move on to a new building, and children would grow around them like trees to build new buildings and turn more wilderness into civilization and survey and engineer and architect.

The first one fell at eleven-thirty. Most of the men had gone home, and I and Riley were getting ready to. Riley was trouble, gentlemen, and he was proud of it. When that feathered lump dropped out of the sky, I thought he was somehow to blame. My back had been turned, after all. He might be hiding a slingshot in his overalls. I thought suspiciously about him as we talked idly about girls we'd known.

But another fell not five minutes later, in front of the both of us, and Riley hadn't moved. And another. We looked up into the sky. Like a rain starting, they drizzled down, and then the downpour came. My mind was having a difficult time making sense of what I saw before me, but more than anything the sound impressed itself on me: tens of thousands of feathers, rippling limp in the air, and then the small thump of impact. By the time it stopped, fully seventy-five hundred little green birds were strewn before us.

For the rest of the month, I stayed indoors, safe at my desk with my reference books and slide rule.
-
A melody-free exploration of modal development. It sounds very ancient - Greek in some spots, Baroque in others. One of the most normal and conventionally listenable pieces in the box set.

The Man Who Couldn't Afford to Orgy

2007-10-20T12:00:00.000-04:00

In honor of American greeting card holiday Sweetest Day (aka "Bribes for Sex Day"), here's a song about sex. Well, it's not about sex, exactly: it's about availability to orgy, which usually involves a wider selection of sensual pleasures. You might suspect from the title and the album it's on that "The Man Who Couldn't Afford to Orgy" is some Poe-laced account of the death of a cuckolder. It isn't - that was to come later, heh heh heh.

What it is: just a quiet little quasi-novelty number.
Who can afford to orgy:

The postman
The con man
The milk man
The butcher
The astronaut
The curate

Who can't afford to orgy:

The poor man
The sad man
The green man
The policeman
The snowman
The woman (?)

Who is he? John Cale, who's sorry to mention that he couldn't afford to orgy.
Do you believe him? Judy Nylon's come-on vocals for the "choruses" just about melt the vinyl, polycarbonate, or silicon they're played from. Do you?
Doesn't that sound like...? "In the Summertime"by Mungo Jerry? It sure does to me - "inspired by" rather than "ripped off from," but nevertheless...
Fun fact: This was the only single (b/w Silvia Said) released from Fear, a strong candidate for Cale's best album. Beach Boys vocals or no, this is not single material. Crazy man.

The Gift

2007-10-17T13:30:00.000-04:00

A word to the wise: I recommend you don't look at the lyrics of this piece unless you've heard it. It's a spoken-word story with an ending that's worth hearing in context.

The Gift (SPOILERS) is the funny, upbeat, accessible track on The Velvet Underground's 1968 sophomore effort, White Light/White Heat. (Given 1. the subject matter; 2. the eight-minute runtime; and 3. the fact that it's a spoken-word piece, that's a little surprising, but consider the album.) John Cale's accent and voice - nimble, underplayed, remarkably nonthreatening and even cute, are responsible in large part for its appeal - though the hilariously sick story and the groovy backing instrumental (also known as "Booker T.") account for much of the rest.

This piece was the first Cale vocal I'd knowingly heard. I'd heard his voice before on his cover of Hallelujah; I'd heard him play bass with Patti Smith on a cover of The Who's My Generation. But this was the first time I'd connected the Velvet Underground guy with the producer with the voice. It was great.

I don't want to give away the absurd plot, but both it and the writing show a sense of humor and a way with language Lou Reed rarely showed again in such force. It makes me wish for an anthology of Reed short stories or something. Cale's delivery certainly helps the text work, though: whether he's speaking from the perspective of Waldo or of Marsha, he makes the characters come alive with his use of tone and emphasis. The one interjection from the band ("awwww") almost makes the track for me.

I said "Booker T." was the backing track. Really, it's the side track: in the tradition of early Beatles stereo mixes, the vocal sits alone in the left channel, the music in the right. You can listen to either alone, if you'd like, by panning your stereo to one side or the other. (Believe it or not, this technique's not dead yet.) But I don't know why you'd want to - the vocal is perfectly timed to the music, and the interactions between the two at the end are highlights.

Listening to Cale's vocals on White Light/White Heat, you get the feeling that he was kicked out because Reed felt threatened, because Reed suspected that Cale would steal the spotlight. Reed may have been onto something there - I know which of the two I'd rather hear.

The Jeweller

2007-10-15T20:30:00.000-04:00

The mid-period Cale track to stop your next social function cold.

King Harry

2007-10-09T00:00:00.000-04:00

Cannonfire in the distance? A xylophone, acoustic guitar, and trumpet-driven mock-Renaissance (or mariachi?) piss-take, King Harry is one of the most enjoyable pieces on The Academy in Peril. It's encrusted with sound effects, viola, and organ (reminiscent in the extreme of Rick Wright's style of improv). And it's got a vocal!

That is, snickers and vitriol. A whispered vocal, taunting Henry VIII. "Who are you, King Harry," John Cale hisses, "But a whisper of your former self. Sail away, sail away, sail away, King Harry." It's very amusing and very sinister. The narrator is malicious, but perhaps not evil - I mean, this dirty Harry was the bastard what annexed Wales! Not to even get into the business of the wives - who, the hissing taunter rather unnecessarily reminds us, "are all dead."

I'd hate to say much about a track that makes so much out of its brevity. It's great fun, something you can't often say about Cale. It provides a necessary breather between the two substantial classical pieces of side 2. The (spurious?) historical references and Anglocentrism of Academy make the album a nice complement to Paris 1919, but it's the album's variety and ability to surprise - exemplified here - that keep you listening.

Secret Corrida

2007-09-30T20:42:00.000-04:00

Why don't I tell you about a song from Walking on Locusts that I love, then. Something that isn't schmaltzy, or draggy, or overwrought. Something like "Secret Corrida." The title, punning gently on "secret corridor," works well as a preview of the grace and ambiguity the track brings to its difficult subject matter. It's a meditation on the slaughter in the Balkans, you see, but Mr. Cale intentionally obfuscated it.

Not that the horror is completely removed. Cale describes a bullfight (La Corrida) in endless repetition. It's curiously bereft of action, just a sequence of still scenes: on the empty street on the day of a bullfight, listening to the crowd cheer; blood on sawdust, the door slammed shut, the crowd hungry for excitement (that is, death). There's no ranting about Milosevic, just meditation on human bloodlust and the monsters within us. And... though I feel cheated, a bit, by the evasion, I appreciate what he's done here in creating a subtle nightmare.

The music is gauze: somnambulant guitar coats the back of the aural picture, Cale's electric piano plays hypnotically repetitious three-note sequences throughout, and the vocal is restrained and nearly affectless. There are Spanish-inflected runs in the piano here and there. Trumpet (excuse me, mutantrumpet), gentle and as woozy as that guitar, takes the lead between each vocal section, and it nearly stops my heart each time. The Moroccan percussion works well on this track, adding to the circular and "out of time" feel.

This is one of the few pieces on the album where Cale's "less drama is more" approach really bears fruit. It's music for insomniacs, perhaps, but not for those who'd like to go to sleep. I love the song as a taste of what could have been: an album of songs like this would occupy an honored place in his catalog.

All I Want Is You

2007-09-23T20:04:00.000-04:00

Summer days are gone
And winter nights are closing fast
And no-one knows how long they'll last
Till daylight comes again

Welcome to the special autumnal equinox edition of Fragments. We'll be listening to "All I Want is You", a light and sprightly little song, a throwback to an older songwriting tradition, one somewhere between Stephen Foster and the British music hall. The first time you hear this song, filling the space between Fear and Slow Dazzle on the Island Years compilation, you'll swear it's some ancient song that Cale's covering for sport. But you'll look at the credits, and - gee! - it's a Cale original. At least that's how it worked for me.

The gentle, steady propulsion of the rhythm guitar and drum part keeps the song upbeat and positive, despite some sinister modulations in the more rhythmically free piano lead. And the basswork - sinuous and adventurous on the verse, bouncy on the chorus - is excellent. It's an elegantly and cleanly performed bit of music - benefiting, too, from a vocal that's top-quality, moving from minor to major key bits with aplomb.

And for such a simple, "classical" song, it's not a bad lyric at all! It's another exception to my overly-broad observation that John Cale doesn't write songs about the natural world - it's a pithily written goodbye to the summer sun. But the fascinating part of the lyric, to me, is the first part of the second verse:

Summer days are gone
And everybody's in the dark
And no-one seems to want what you and
I have anymore

The confused dejection of the lyric is very piquant, and, combined with the traditional build of the song, makes me suspect that it may be a genuine moment of self-pity for our boy John. (To his credit, the explicit ones are fairly rare.) It's the sort of thing you write, I suppose, when you've written a masterpiece (Paris 1919) that nobody bought and that your record company wasn't interested in. I usually try to stay away from the psychology, as I hate to project, but this feels very naked and sincere.

So anyway: despite the rather grim message ("Summer's over, nobody really likes us, and our future's not so bright. Well, let's fuck.") it's upbeat. Grim-and-upbeat is the recipe for many of my favorite songs, and it works here. I wouldn't say it's worth buying The Island Years for, but it's one of my favorite outtakes. Give it a listen, if you're able.

I hope you, fellow residents of the northern hemisphere, had a nice summer - 'cause it's over now. (You southerners are probably feeling good, though.) Me, I like all the seasons about equally. Bring on the cold.

Ex-Cathedra

2007-09-21T17:52:00.000-04:00

One of the shorter tracks in the New York in the 1960s box set at only 5 minutes 4 seconds, "Ex-Cathedra*" makes its presence felt nonetheless. The sole instrument is rapidly pulsing Vox organ.

The right hand plays the high-pitched drone that you hear first, sounding for all the world like the beginning of Pink Floyd's Astronomy Domine, but this bit never moves on - it's played throughout the entire piece. It starts in the right channel and gradually takes over the left. Wrapping around it like a reverb blanket after a minute or so is the left-hand part, lower and more comfortable. This is where the action takes place. There's no force to it at first; it's much quieter than the high-pitched part and accents it by exploring adjacent tones. It starts in both channels.

After three minutes, the hands return to their respective parts of the stereo picture, and the left-hand part takes the lead, bobbing rhythmically. The right hand experiments with bringing in some melody (God does it sound like Rick Wright), until finally at 4:19 the left hand is booted out entirely. The Vox's low-pitched overdrive noise takes an important role here. Finally the song cuts out.

It serves as a palate-cleanser on Dream Interpretation, bridging effectively the 20-minute is-it-viola-or-didgeridoo title track and the 13-minute early-David-Lynch-soundtrack untitled prepared piano piece. Though it's more accessible than the material that surrounds it, it can still clear a room handily. Good stuff.

* There's some disagreement whether this is "from the chair" or "a former cathedral." I need to check my box set.

Baby, What You Want Me to Do?

2007-09-20T15:11:00.000-04:00

The sole song that the repertoires of John Cale and Neil Young share is this Jimmy Reed chestnut. Many critics near and far have called both covers variants on "bad," but I love 'em! Maybe they "butchers the charm of the original." Maybe they're "sodden." But there's something about the song that does, Lord preserve us, call for playing it drunk, and these two covers - surprisingly similar in their 4AM stumblingness - heed that call.

Cale's version features tasty guitar playing from favorite guitarist and frequent touring companion Chris Spedding - I'm remembering that I really do love Helen of Troy, and Spedding is a major reason why - and a burbling rhythm track that really eases my burning heart. His vocal's not without charm, Starostin be damned - it's sung with the self-mocking knowingness of a guy who married the most unstable of the Girls Together Outrageously. Chagrin is the emotion on display here, but it's showed off with a wry smile, and that makes this a rare and worthwhile artifact in the Cale catalog.

Zen

2007-09-19T17:15:00.000-04:00

A punk asked John, "How can I find Heartbreak Hotel?"
The head of the chicken landed in his Pimm's. At that moment the punk was enlightened.*

What's Welsh for Zen? is the title of John Cale's incredibly weird and often nauseating 2000 autobiography, and it's an interesting question. (Cale isn't really one to speak in koans, but the book is, like his life, an exercise in apparent contradictions and bizarre paradoxes.) In any case, the book's title foreshadowed this song, which would emerge three years later as the lead track on HoboSapiens.

And "Zen" has got very little to do with Zen, really -- the song is built around a litany of "Zen and the Art of" variants (Bollywood, forgery, sorcery, reality, algebra). I'd have called it "And the Art of...", but then how can the lotus bloom without pond scum? It's a very loosely connected series of images, but - aside from a few bum lyrics - it works well. There seems to be a political political edge to it, though possibly more with hindsight; there's the germ of a relationship song in there, too. I tend to mentally emphasize whatever angle I'm more interested in on a given day, but I always love the opening verses: "It's midnight, and our silver-tongued obsessions come at us out of the dark, scrambling to be recognized before tearing themselves apart." (As my coauthor can attest, it's something I often mumble come 12AM.)

A lot of the song's appeal comes from the dazed, stop-time track: bodiless female backing vocals being cut in and out artificially, a subterranean bassline, atonal piano twinkling, multiple treated Cales singing in unison. It sounds like a subtle nightmare, one without any outright horrors that just makes everything feel wrong. It loses that live, and becomes less interesting (though more pleasant) because of it.

I feel as if the song deserves more. ("Keep talking," said the snow-white Mandarin.) But I've got nothing to say.

* Like Mumon said,
Without revealing his own penetration,
He offered another's words, not his to give.
Had he chattered on and on,
Even his listeners would have been embarrassed.

Hedda Gabler

2007-09-13T14:38:00.000-04:00

Hedda Gabler, the epic final track of 1977's bizarre Animal Justice EP, takes the structure of Mary Lou's lyrics and some of the lyrics themselves and turns them into a different sort of song altogether, a sprawling downtempo brooder that swells to an odd majesty. It's no accident that this b-side of an obscure EP has been a mainstay of his repertoire for nearly thirty years.

(The connection to Ibsen seems extremely tenuous - maybe he was just going for a self-destructive femme fatale idea. I've read somewhere that the song is "about" Anita Pallenberg, of whom it has been quipped that she was fluent in four languages and three Rolling Stones. [CORRECTION: Jack informs me that the Seducing Down the Door liner notes refer to Anita Bryant, late 50s singer and 70s anti-gay crusader. Huh. I still don't get it.] As far as self-destructive blond-haired northern European femme fatales go, well, I tend to think of someone else in Cale's life.)

The song is very similar in construction and feel to Riverbank: heavy, weary, and slow. A woozy, gauzy electric piano and almost-infinite slide guitar form a bizarrely comforting bed of fog for Cale's very straight, affectless vocal. Viola noises break up the verses. Drums and rhythm guitar (and church organ?!) break out at the first chorus, as a touch of menace creeps into Cale's voice. It's an odd menace, though, more resigned and regretful than anything.

The lyrics are rather terse, repetitive, and dour: tired of waiting, tired of the human race, down in all her misery. Her family doesn't brighten things: her brother is sitting around reading Mein Kampf (puts a different spin on Mary Lou, eh?); her mother hangs her banker husband in the closet (though the verb used means "suspend on a hook or hanger" rather than "suspend by the neck" - love that little bit of dark humor in the ambiguity!). And all we learn about Hedda is that she's miserable and tired (so tired of listening to the gossip and complaints). It's a character study with no character except the music itself.

And it's the music that's transfigured in the end. The coda lyric, "Sleep, sleep, sleep, Hedda Gabler" is an interesting gambit after what has come before, but the line would be nothing without the remarkably sympathetic cast of the whole coda: a gentle lullaby piano vamp, a towering and beautiful guitar solo, and ensemble vocals that really seem to mean it. It's an absolution and a purification, and it's amazing to hear.

Here's a video from that great show at the Paradiso in Amsterdam:

Mary Lou

2007-09-10T12:00:00.001-04:00

Record labels add a smidgen of unreleased material to compilation albums to get die-hard fans to buy in. This has been going on for quite some time. John Cale's infamous collection Guts, which introduced hockey mask chic and Helen of Troy outtake "Mary Lou" to the world, was something of an exception, though: Island Records, you see, hadn't issued Helen of Troy in North America, and put this out by way of apology.

It's a very bizarre album, a sort of Songs in the Key of Death: side one is led off by the title track, from Slow Dazzle; then "Mary Lou" and three of the more raucous songs from Helen ("Helen of Troy" itself, Modern Lovers cover "Pablo Picasso", "Leaving It Up to You" - yep, it's back!); Fear tracks "Fear (Is a Man's Best Friend)" and "Gun"; and Slow Dazzle rave-ups "Dirty Ass Rock'n'Roll" and "Heartbreak Hotel." Now, I'd have put "Cable Hogue" on there instead of Helen, myself, but it's a pretty decent selection of the bloodiest tracks of the Island trilogy.

"Mary Lou", like Pablo and Dirty-Ass Rock'n'Roll, is on the album as leavening. Oh, it sounds threatening, but the lyrics are an innocuous and insubstantial imitation of Dylan's "Maggie's Farm." Mary, mother, brother, father, check. Though her father being in the government and not knowing the difference between right and wrong doesn't sound so innocent.

The woo-woo girls start the song out with threatening "oohs" that would pop up in a much less restrained and irritating version in the far future. Cale's vocal is pretty aggressive, especially on the chorus, and he throws in a scream or two for good measure. His screams don't really seem justified by the song's feel, but, hey. The guitar is choppy and pleasant, sort of reminiscent of "Pablo Picasso."

(In fact, very reminiscent of Pablo Picasso, which Cale did with this in a medley as the closer track on this year's Circus Live. "Mary Lou," slight as it is, did better in the medley than it does alone. They have the same turgid feel as all the other rock tracks on the album, but it's a fun pairing anyway.)

I don't agree with Robert Christgau that "Mary Lou" drags down the compilation, but it's not a track I crave hearing very often. It's just sort of there. However, it did lead to something stranger, scarier, and more substantial. Which is what we'll look at next time.

Coral Moon

2007-09-08T22:00:00.000-04:00

I don’t mean to be unfair. Sometimes John Cale wasn’t responsible for outtakes making it onto albums. In fact, in the most infamous case, one of his most famous scenery-chewers got thrown off an album in favor of a song that wasn’t really intended for release. The year was 1975, the album was Helen of Troy, and Cale’s turbulent sojourn with Island Records was coming to a bitter end.

If I read his autobiography correctly, Cale had successfully gotten his label to recall the first pressings of Helen of Troy. You see, they didn’t appreciate the finished tracks that were resulting. They decided to try an end-run on him, releasing (in the Netherlands) a version of the album consisting of tracks edited by Cale's two-timing engineer. He happened to be touring there, got a copy from a local record promoter, listened to it, and gave them a call. One presumes that shouting, screaming, kicking and biting ensued.

What’s weird, though - if Cale's version of events is correct and complete - is that Island Records didn’t object to “Leaving It Up to You” at that time. It’s a marvelously malevolent track, one well worth the attention it will be receiving at some future date. But some time after the album’s release, I believe after the first general pressing, they decided that not-very-veiled threats alluding to Sharon Tate wouldn’t do. Without consulting Cale, they replaced it with the previously unreleased and unloved pastoral “Coral Moon.”

And there’s nothing wrong with Coral Moon as an outtake, or a b-side, or a minor album track. It carries forward the flame of Cale’s crooner/mid-period Beach Boys side, directly following up “Sylvia Said” and recalling the debut’s “Big White Cloud.” It’s got the lush instrumentation, the cooing backing vocals, the thin and vaguely off-key crooning vocal, that satisfied refractory feeling. The lyrics aren’t anything to dwell on, I suppose, but in this they are not so unique. They’re simple, naturalistic, and pastoral, rather threatening the validity of my insight about Cale and nature. But they’re functional and not embarrassing, at least.

There’s really not much to complain about in this lovely if unexceptional track. I wouldn’t even mention flaws like the way the well-constructed bridge is wasted, the way said bridge’s melody rips off the better bridge of album opener “My Maria”, or the way the song peters out without a satisfying ending. It would be a pleasant surprise as an outtake, really cool as a b-side, enjoyable as filler.

But it replaced “Leaving It Up to You,” one of Cale’s most visceral and frightening songs. The keystone track of Helen of Troy, even. Pulling out that slab of violent paranoia and slipping in this slight amusement showed an insensitivity to quality and album construction on Island’s part that still rankles. It’s not fair to blame a song for the way it’s used, but life’s not fair, and “Coral Moon” will always carry an asterisk for me.

Experiment Number 1

2007-09-07T12:00:00.000-04:00

Number 1? Don't be so modest, John. We've heard your previous albums, after all, and this is somewhere in the mid-20s. "Experiment Number 1" is experimental in the sense that it is a chord-changes-and-all studio rehearsal: improvised lyrics, improvised guitar, improvised piano ending, and, no ending coming to the players' minds, a clumsy fadeout.

It starts off with doomy, New Society-type piano, but - "Turn the guitar up." - some tasty guitar comes in quickly, and Honi Soit-style vocals start. It's a very slow song. "Come on, piano." The feeling is awfully close to Pink Floyd (1987) Ltd.'s "Sorrow." Cale doesn't really seem to know what the verse is - "G minor." - and what the chorus is. Or what the bridge is. "C." It really falls apart towards the middle, as Cale's lyric ideas run out and he has to call out - "B flat." - chord changes every few words. "Do it again." It's really the apotheosis of his approach to in-studio composition: the worst flaws of that method are made central to the song and, rather than work out the kinks and work out sensible lyrics, he leaves all of his ideas in in their initial form. "G minor. C'mon Dave. It's got a pretty good feel, just do a solo."

Which isn't to say it's unpleasant listening. The piano is miked well for once, the guitar tone (Dave Gilmour similarities aside) is delicious, and the drums are satisfying if unoriginal. The vocals are even OK despite - and I'm basing this on the slurring of words here and there - the rather intoxicated state of our man. In fact, it's the quality of the sound here that makes this track so frustrating. With a real set of lyrics and a few more run-throughs, this would have been a great song. As it is, it's just a very interesting outtake that made it onto an album.

And, even for Cale, it's a strange track to release on an album - but a stranger track to put in the second slot of Caribbean Sunset, an album that was intended to be commercially viable. But then we've talked about Mr. Cale's strange ideas on what's "commercial." I wonder if this track isn't a major reason that the CD release of Caribbean Sunset was abruptly scrapped back in 2001.

P.S. This song contains a strong contender for Cale's worst single line. "Christmas comes like breakfast once a year"?! Ferchrissakes, couldn't he have overdubbed that?

Changes Made

2007-09-04T14:56:00.000-04:00

The odd track out on Music for a New Society, Changes Made was added at the insistence of John Cale's record label, Ze. (Sez he: "... That shouldn't be there.") Given that Cale had founded said label (with his manager Jane Friedman) as Spy Records three years previously, it must have been an irritating turn of events. Also at Ze's request, he recorded a rather dire-sounding promo video that was never released.

One reason it doesn't fit is that it's the only song that features a band. The vocal and production do seem to fit with the New Society sessions, but otherwise the song would fit well onto Honi Soit. Musically, it's a syncopated major-key new wave skronk-and-squawk session (with three separate and extremely tasty guitar tones). The vocal is a typical Honi Soit/New Society vocal in that, due to odd pauses here and there, you can't tell whether he's making up the lyrics on the spot. It's an impassioned vocal but nevertheless fits well into the pop framework. The sole concession to noise and atonality on the track is the squealing viola that comes in at the 2:15 mark and stays for the duration of the track. (Oh, and listen to his vocal babbling on the fadeout - it's one of the most amusing moments in the catalog.)

The other reason it doesn't fit: its topic and emotions don't seem to fit the album at all. At first blush, it seems a straightforward ultimatum for personal change: "there's gonna be some changes made 'round here." Whether he's talking to himself, a friend or a lover isn't made explicit. The middle eight injects a bizarre metaphor by seemingly referencing the Children's Caravan - or was he thinking of the Children's Crusade? In either case, I have no idea whatsoever what that's about.

It's an outlier on the album, to be sure, and it shouldn't fit between the devastated "Chinese Envoy" and the gutting Beethoven pastiche "Damn Life." But it rather does, or at least doesn't stick out too much. I doubt that its addition forced a superior song off the album, as the only known outtake is "In the Library Of Force." In any case, I don't begrudge the song its place on the final album. It provides a moment of light and energy that the album needs.

(Listen to a sample here, if you're so inclined.)

Burned Out Affair

2007-09-03T20:45:00.000-04:00

Outtakes are funny things. Some are stunning works that equal or surpass anything the artist was releasing during that period (Bob Dylan’s “Blind Willie McTell”). Some are rank, embarrassing artifacts that only an obsessive completist could stand to hear more than once (Pink Floyd’s “The Doctor”). But most outtakes land in a grey area between the gem pile and the refuse heap. They can be interesting demos that might have benefited from better production, or needed a lyrical retouch to really work. Or they’re transitional pieces, the seedbeds for later, better-known works. And they can even be perfectly decent completed songs that didn’t really fit anywhere at the time.

Cale’s outtakes fall in all possible categories, and I’ll argue that “Burned Out Affair” lands squarely in the last one. The major outtake from Paris 1919 is easily the most interesting bonus included on the reissued album-- much more so than yet another version of “Antarctica Starts Here.” With a title like “Burned Out Affair,” the listener expects a jaded slice of Cale-life, possibly a pastiche on a theme of Graham Greene (but not “Graham Greene”).

“Everything was fine/ when all the girls were boys/ and singing/ was the usual thing to do.”

Yes, kids, listen up while Uncle Cale tells you about the good old days. Cale sings of juvenile burning and looting over a lazy pastoral. The music shuffles along, and while it has the prominent slide guitar of the Paris 1919 sound, the arrangement doesn’t cut deep in the manner of the authentic Paris tracks. It’s the missing sonic link between Vintage Violence and Paris 1919 (and here I thought the missing link was “Gideon’s Bible”).

Not that anything about the song feels unfinished. Structurally complete and featuring a nicely mirrored lyric, “Burned Out Affair” tells a proper little tale. The central strand of the lyrics is the same thread that runs through the phantom streets of Paris-- loss-- but the overall treatment is more in the lighthearted manner of VV. Cale’s fading memories of pilfered magazines don’t tap into the same vein of menace that leaks through the evocations of childhood in “A Child’s Christmas in Wales.” Growing up’s a bit sad, yes, but what can one do? We don’t cry over Cale’s spilled milk and childishness, and he doesn’t seem to be inviting us to. Maybe something sinister is going on with the clumsy-eyed rats, but nothing in the song entices one to dig beneath the surface. Unlike the great tracks from this era, the images don’t wrap around the brain. “Ghost Story” may truly haunt you for the rest of your life, but this burned-out affair might just get caught in your mind occasionally.

So, there it is-- interesting, listenable, pleasant but not really essential. Rather like most of Vintage Violence, really. Though the image of tin boys and young girls, melting away, seems an oblique reference to Andersen’s “The Steadfast Tin Soldier.” I can’t imagine where Cale was going with that, and I’ll leave it to the steadfast Cale blogger Inverarity to ponder it further.

Perfect

2007-08-31T19:00:00.000-04:00

blackAcetate is an album of funny contrasts. After the ethereal "Gravel Drive," Cale tosses in one of the album's most rudimentary garage rock tracks, "Perfect." That's not meant as insult, but it is strange. There's nothing dangerous about this music: the underlying song is a poppy little confection about compulsive love of one form or another, the rocking is restricted and somewhat ironic, the drums don't do anything subversive. I think it's a shameless attempt at getting on the radio. There's nothing wrong with that. This one pops into my head more often than anything else on the album.

The real meat of the song lies outside the verses and chorus. The growl and stop-time delivery on the first bridge, "I've- been- wai- ting- for- the- mo- ment- uhhhh" works beautifully. The lyric on the second bridge is my favorite in the song, and the melody attached to it is really charming: "And I'm sitting next to you / in the corner of the room / getting writer's block from calling you / is all I wanna do." And on the third bridge, martially rigid in its chant of "It's a different kind of love," Cale vocals overlap and rise above you like a vaulted ceiling. Finally, the coda, repeating the same lyric in a completely different way, wholehearted and enthusiastic: "It's! A! Diff! Rent! Kind! Of! Love!" The song is bursting with odd little bits of melody - the subversion is in the song's construction, rather than the performance. Well played, Mr. Cale.

Though a few of lines give it body, Perfect is in the end a slight song lyrically. About some kinda love in old age. There's not that much emotional heft to it: the verse lyrics are so generic and interchangeable our man seemed to be rewriting them on the spot when he performed the song on Jools Holland. But the video, allegedly the first released promo clip in John Cale's career, effectively shows the darkness latent in the song's premise. I feel that the song's only half-complete without the death-and-decay-obsessed video, described here as "disturbing, like pre-Eraserhead David Lynch." Watch it if you can. (Sorry, it's in RealMedia. I'm working on getting it converted so I can put it on YouTube. Any suggestions?)

Anyway, the video made me think that the song was about procreation: about seeing your children grow up and have children of their own. It is a different kind of love! The song lacks the edge of eros; it feels paternal and proud rather than seductive. I hear it addressed to a young granddaughter. Odds are that interpretation is way wrong (the more conventional reading fits better with the general theme of the album) but I like it dammit and I'm sticking with it.

Grandfather's House

2007-08-30T12:22:00.000-04:00

Like "Cordoba," Wrong Way Up outtake and One Word b-side Grandfather's House uses lyrics taken verbatim from Spanish in Three Months, a textbook from the Hugo language series. Like Cordoba, "Grandfather's House" seems to tell a story of crime - this time, the story of a white-collar criminal from a good family. It's as detail-oriented as Cordoba, recounting family activities, dinners, flights and scenery. It conjures up a very intriguing story for me: the man, whose grandfather was a magistrate who oversaw the construction of the city's courthouse, embezzled money from his employer (the city?) to relieve his financial woes. I don't know what Cale and Eno saw in the text, but that's my reading. As with Cordoba, many gradations of meaning can be read into this small patch of found text.

Unlike Cordoba, though, it lacks a convincing musical development. It seems as if they couldn't figure out the right way to approach the song, so they just threw their favorite techniques and noises at it: stop-start construction, tinkling synth, electric piano, ethereal guitar, bass, a background drone. The vocal melody steals liberally from Music for a New Society's "Broken Bird," but the performance recalls Last Day on Earth's "Broken Hearts" - unctuous, rich, with an uncomfortable feeling of insecurity (or insincerity?). The song's one transcendent moment: the wordless Eno/Cale duet with viola accompaniment on the middle eight.

Since this track wasn't included on the US release of Wrong Way Up, and since the CDEP is long out of print, I'll post an MP3. It didn't deserve a spot on the album, but it's worth hearing. Enjoy.

On a Wedding Anniversary

2007-08-28T20:30:00.000-04:00

For my money, the supreme accomplishment of John Cale's Dylan Thomas project Words for the Dying is "On a Wedding Anniversary." Though Thomas's symbologies can seem random, this poem, examining the falling-apart of a young marriage, is razor-sharp. With economical language, it evokes a very complex set of ideas and feelings. Marriage is one of the most interesting and controversial institutions of human society, and the poem explores the ideal of it ("down the long walks of their vows") and the reality ("this anniversary of two"). It suggests that, regardless of catechism and other fantasies, marriage is not a true union but an alliance of two individuals - though the final verse's "their heart/their brain" seems to suggest a true union through suffering even as the institutional union of marriage is broken. It achieves a great deal with the device of the pathetic fallacy: "The sky is torn across this ragged anniversary." I read in the poem of the death of a young child, "Now their love lies a loss," and I think of the early Robert Frost poem "Home Burial."

Even lying on the page these words can lacerate, but when Cale sings them these shards of glass are hurled. On Fragments of a Rainy Season, to devastating effect, he hits just the right emotional notes on each lyric. The piano feels like sheets of rain. The vocal melody winds around the chord progression unpredictably. I think it seemed a little random when I first heard it, but now it feels natural, even necessary. As the "rain" tapers at the end, Cale's repetition of the second verse over a sinister two-chord vamp ushers out the song (and connects it to the middle song of the suite, "Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed").

It doesn't fare as well in the orchestrated original version, but it does better than the other tracks. Cale's vocal is delivered well (though not as well) and fits with the orchestra better than his other vocals do. I'm not that happy with the horn parts, which seem out of sync with his vocal, and I don't care for the ending, but it would be an entirely acceptable recording.

That is, if it weren't for the temporally and emotionally out-of-sync choirboys. They sing the key word of the lyric Cale is singing throughout the last few verses. They're fine when they're repeating "brain" endlessly over the end of the third verse, they're at least effectively creepy when they're chanting "Death strikes their house" at the end, but when they sing "chain" and "too late" and "windows" and "door" it's like someone (pardon the Americanism) blowing a raspberry. Ach! Cale should have had them sing bouche fermée (i.e. hum).

Thank goodness this stuff got a do-over.

The Sleeper

2007-08-23T12:38:00.001-04:00

Larry "Ratso" Sloman (publishing industry itinerant worker and author) was Cale's writing buddy (and presumably partner in crime) during the period that produced Artificial Intelligence (as well as an album's worth of tracks that came out here and there). It's hard to identify a specific change in the resulting lyrics, but the overall feeling is different: the old intensity is channeled into poppier digressions, verses are more coherent and polished, and the weird stuff is more predictable than before. The topics the songs cover, in general, are a little more normal and digestible.

Which has a bad side, I suppose, but also a good one. The Sleeper is a fascinating ditty that seemingly tries to use the human intelligence idea of a sleeper agent to explore a (of course) sordid, disastrous failed romance. It doesn't really succeed, as the connection between the two ideas still eludes me, but it's evocative and thought-provoking anyway.

It's about lovers and enemies who can't stay separate. The narrator goes so far as to compare himself to Jesus and the amour to Satan and implies, by a delightfully subtle use of the subjunctive mood, that despite his hateful rant they, uh, fell to conjugating. Word choice is good, with evocative and paradoxical phrases ("I was the moth stuck on your pin") and twisted syntax that works anyway ("it isn't me that's what's wrong with you"). The solid vocal delivery helps the lyrics work - Cale sounds a bit detached, but not overly, and certainly not bland.

The vocal melody itself is remarkably gentle - not what you'd expect for the lyrics. The inescapably 80s backing track doesn't hurt it too badly. For some reason the electric piano here doesn't sound as insipid as it would ten years later - probably because it's not the central instrument of the track. The percussion (is it live or is it Memorex?) sounds like a typewriter, an interesting effect. The electric guitar and bass play repetitive riffs, seemingly within the same chord for the duration of the song.

It's a good little noir song. Like the album, it's not essential, but like the album it's a rewarding listen.

Sylvia Said

2007-08-22T16:09:00.000-04:00

B-sides are funny things. Some bands don't do them - Pink Floyd, for example, once they'd dissolved in Roger Waters's bile. Some bands bury their best songs there - Radiohead's "Cuttooth" being one example. And some (most?) issue studio wankery or songs they don't like as b-sides. These categories are fluid, though, and artists regularly switch from one to another.

John Cale never put out many non-album b-sides, and hasn't in a long time (except to someone else's a-side). On the rare occasions he has, though, he's seemed to move randomly between categories B and C. "Rosegarden Funeral of Sores" certainly fits in the latter category. Fear-era Sylvia Said (the b-side of, unbelievably, The Man Who Couldn't Afford to Orgy), despite some nice touches, goes into category C.

The proto-R.E.M. instrumental work and the bittersweet though makeshift viola part are cool. But it's the slightly drunken and definitely demo-quality vocal that drags the song down. Then there's the seemingly improvised lyrics. It's also the vocal melody, which sounds awfully reminiscent of something. (And what's with that Lou Reed trademark-infringing title, eh?) It's all very ad-hoc, moreso than some contemporary tracks that stayed in the can for another two decades.

It's got a certain Dennis Wilson charm to it, and the instrumental work is very enjoyable, but it didn't deserve a spot on an album. You can pick it up in its proper place on The Island Years.

Note: This exclusively covers the Island Years version. I've read at least once the actual b-side is a different take. I don't have the single, so I can't verify that or judge its quality against this release. Please weigh in if you can compare.

Casey at the Bat

2007-08-21T15:08:00.000-04:00

Casey at the Bat is a political allegory. An impassioned song about John Cale's favorite professional sport, baseball*. A pure pisstake. An on-the spot improvisation that Cale didn't think much about. A rant about a friend or enemy or acquaintance or musical accomplice. None of the above. Take your pick. This Even Cowgirls Get the Blues track is notable on the strength of the vocal, which is a full-out screamer despite some note of mischief and humor in Cale's voice.

Like the wonderful namesake 1888 poem (this is a very lowbrow lit album, isn't it), it's about a failure. The difference is that this is an indictment of an intransigent guy who lets down his team and the fans by not showing up. That could describe any number of musicians! I like the idea of "Muddville" as an allegory for the Mudd Club (according to that Wikipedia entry, named after the previously discussed Dr. Mudd), and "Casey" as the star of an important band. It's an amusing idea, anyway.

It's an expansive and hard-rocking song that's musically a wee bit reminiscent of the Talking Heads' "Life During Wartime" (but that ain't no Mudd Club). It starts out with dueling guitars, surprisingly enough. An aggressive electric organ takes the lead once the vocal starts. Cale sounds like he's enjoying himself on this one, maliciously and mercilessly swinging away at the hapless Casey. It breaks down to simple piano to lead into the coda (apparently fooling the mastering engineers at ROIR - they cut it into two tracks). Electric organ and guitar come back with a vengeance, chain-gang backing vocals start, and Cale starts in on Casey again. It ends with lungs-out screaming: "You're a coward, Casey, a coward!"

Hell, try it out on me (login required; no-login AUTOPLAY! streaming version available here; suggestions for file hosts gratefully accepted). Anyway, it's one of the better tracks on an awfully difficult to find and difficult to like album.

* This is highly unlikely.

The Second Fortress

2007-08-20T13:56:00.000-04:00

I haven't reviewed any of these yet. They're intimidating. There are more questions in the New York in the 1960s series than answers, and I don't have the training in Stockhausen and Xenakis and friends to speak meaningfully about how or if this stuff fits into the detonation of the Western music tradition that occurred in the middle part of the 20th century. I'm not really sure that La Monte Young & Co's drony antics really had a meaningful connection to their mathematical forebears, for that matter.

Questions I wish I could answer:

Is it music?
Is it really meant to be listened to?
Was the performance the point and the recording just chaff?
Is it some kind of practical joke? (Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music undeniably has a significant "joke" component, but this stuff was recorded before the Velvet Underground, before John Cale had anyone to piss off except his friends and neighbors.)
If you listen to eleven minutes of the same electronic organ chord, distorted this way and that, are you opening your mind or boring a hole in it?

You have to understand, too, the state your mind is in by the time you get to the final track of the first disc of the New York in the 1960s box set, Sun Blindness Music. You've heard 43 minutes of the same incredibly overdriven electric organ chord. You've heard a solid eleven minutes of an electric guitar chord being thrashed to death. Your nervous system has done things that it really shouldn't be doing: chills going this way, chills going that way, some atavistic tingling at the back of your skull, all in response to changes in the sound that you can't really perceive directly.

And then Cale takes a drill to your ears. While the so-called "Sun Blindness Music," the 43-minute track, adds and removes tones from the chord, providing a more accessible listen (at least in any given 11-minute block), "The Second Fortress" is a more direct aural equivalent of staring fixedly into the sun. You hear the same set of tones throughout, but there are some phase differences you hear as the track wears on. The sound is filtered, cut up, strangled, shaken. Any structure in this piece all comes from what is done to the sound. It's inexorable and meaningless. It fades out, but you still hear the tone in the surrounding silence, just as you see the sun after it has burned into your retinas.

It is very easy to make fun of attempts in all the arts to make things as primitive and stark as they can be. I've been known to do it. Blank canvases and Rothko don't move me. Last Year at Marienbad seemed so pretentious and stupid I couldn't even keep up a running parody after the first hour. I haven't heard many of the premier musical minimalists, but I don't see why musical minimalism or structuralism would be any less risible. (Iannis Xenakis seeming much smarter than me notwithstanding.) But this stuff directly engages my nervous system in a way that less devolved music doesn't. It's uncomfortable, it's rather frightening, and I don't know that it's healthy, but it's undeniable.

So Much For Love

2007-08-16T12:00:00.000-04:00

Do you want to know why I hate Walking On Locusts? "So Much for Love" might be the very worst track on it, but it's bad in a representative way. It's lumpen, leaden, vague, clichéd, tuneless. I don't get it. It's so banal lyrically nobody has even bothered to transcribe lyrics over at Fear Is a Man's Best Friend. I'll do it, though, just to prove a point.

Since you've been gone
Many things have changed
The days get longer
We spend our nights alone

Before you took
The time to see
You didn't let me down
You're a phone-call away

Now the time has come
To think of you a while
I cannot leave you now (I cannot leave you now)
Though the door is open wide (oh open wide)
You're in my mind and soul
And I've said it before

So much for love
So long for now
So much for love
It's been good to know you

We'll meet again
Where it all began
A souvenir of the past
And I guess it's the last

So much for love
So much for love

Let's start with the music. The song is a 70bpm affair, dilating time via its porn-groove bassline and pointless Kenny G-sax-like electric guitar wanking. The ubiquitous poor-quality electric piano (one of the major limiting factors on Cale's performances in the 80s and 90s) is über alles on this album, raining a golden shower of insipidity down upon the listener on this song as on most others. The horns that come in after the bridge don't do a thing to help, either. There isn't a single decent melody here, though the bridge might be acceptable in a better song.

And, well, the lyrics speak for themselves. There's none of the usual imagination, inventive detail, perceptive characterization. It's just one cliché after another. I don't get it.

A few possible explanation for the failings of Walking on Locusts (which is admittedly still half-decent - it's the half that isn't that kills me). Either John Cale circa 1996 was suffering from a catastrophic lack of taste, he'd developed a hatred towards his fanbase, he'd gotten the idea that only pap for the toothless sells today (not that this sold!), or he was trying to write from the heart for once and couldn't take the knife to himself. I have no idea which of these, if any, are true. But the result is uncharacteristically awful.

If you're getting into John Cale, avoid this album at all costs. It's a "for completists only" sort of album; it's a shame that it's among the most common finds in used music stores. The really mystifying thing is that not only was he proud of it at the time, but he was dismissive of his earlier work! Maybe it was just a momentary lapse of taste. I don't get it.

Captain Hook

2007-08-15T11:15:00.000-04:00

Happy Independence Day, India! (And, belatedly, Pakistan.) Today's the day, sixty years ago, that the sun set on the British Empire. This isn't the place to get into the morality of British colonial involvement or the terrible failings of the partition, but it was more than time for them to get out. While India and Pakistan weren't the first colonies to gain independence (ahem), they were the first of many dominoes to fall.

Er, right, this is a John Cale blog. Today's track is about the decline of British colonialism. Captain Hook, which leads off the second side of the vinyl Sabotage/Live, seems to owe nothing but the title to J.M. Barrie - the title character/narrator is a bitter parody of British nationalism.

There isn't much ambiguity in "Tried to break India's back, but she broke the back of me." Yet it's not entirely unsympathetic - you get the idea, with lyrics like "Past the Cape of Good Hope, but there's no hope for me" sung in a way that indicates a partially identification with the mindset. The chorus lyric is even more mysterious: "I can't keep living like this no more / Oh can't you see you're losing me again?" Screeds are seldom more interesting than contradiction and unresolved tensions, and this song benefits from its obscurity. Maybe I give it too much credit - some of the lyrics seem not very polished, and Cale introduces it with, "Take it with a pinch of salt." Still, it works for me.

The music is the real substance of the song. It's divided into three distinct segments. The long instrumental intro is built around fluttering piano, echoed by guitar, backed by a sliding bassline and inventive drum fills. There's some of the evil overdriven organ that appears elsewhere on Sabotage. The tension built here is huge. Everything goes quiet, and Cale goes into his piano intro to the main body of the song. Mark Aaron's scalding guitar is initially the lead instrument, replaced by a wordless vocal from Deerfrance, then Cale's verse vocal. The chorus features nearly the whole band on backing vocals. And the coda works in a new melody from Cale, one he sings for all he's worth. That a sonic picture this complex was created live on stage is impressive - in terms of "orchestration," it's one of Cale's greatest achievements. The band is in top form throughout, and Cale's hoarse vocal couldn't be better. It's an astonishing eleven and a half minutes long - by nearly three minutes the longest rock song in the catalog.

Now, why Robert Christgau calls it the dumbest song on the record, I can't say. I think it's great. A villain hasn't gotten a song this good since Pete Townshend gave up on Lifehouse the first time, I'll tell you.

Eat

2007-08-14T13:06:00.000-04:00

This piece, a soundtrack to the film Eat by Andy Warhol, was composed by Cale in the early 90s and, along with its companion, Kiss, was first performed with Moe Tucker and Sterling Morrison at the Warhol Museum in 1994. It was recorded with some revisions the next year, after Morrison's death. I'm regarding it as a single work and only as an audio track, since I haven't seen the film.

The first movement, for pedal steel and 12-string guitar, is a glacial exploration of minor chords. After the first few notes sound in the silence, like a Bach fugal theme, the 12-string plucks through one chord after another, slowly, disconnectedly. An synth or organ interjects "boat horn" sounds (yes, John Cale is on keyboards). Weird, rippling infinite guitar hangs like a canopy over the middle of the movement before gaining its own voice and injecting a new melody into the last quarter of the movement, as the boat horn is silenced.

The transition into the second movement is imperceptible. Suddenly, Cale's voice rings out - the first time on the disc, so it's all the more surprising. The slide guitar gains a more sinister metallic edge, and moves into the back left; the 12-string moves right (but keeps playing the same sort of arpeggiations). Cale's voice hangs at center, the central instrument of the movement.

He dispassionately and thoughtfully reads the parable "Melanethon", by Emanuel Swedenborg, an 18th century renaissance man, amateur mystic/theologian, and accidental founder of a religion. It's an excerpt from Swedenborg's most famous work, Heaven and Hell, detailing the damnation of a theologian for his belittling of the virtue of Charity. In tone, the writing is closer to Kafka or Stanley Donwood than Christ. It's a haunting little vignette.

After the final word ("demons") has passed from Cale's lips, sinister strummed chords sound. You know, like the "dun dun duhhhh" of movie soundtrack cliché. The infinite guitar spirals around like a metallic buzzard. But then the 12-string modulates up, begins strumming nice, comfortable major chords. A violin joins, banishing the slide guitar, and starts singing a pretty song. Soon enough, Moe is adding a light drumbeat and the rest of the strings join. Yes, movement three is an elegant little hot club shuffle. (Well, on downers - this is all very slow music.)

It all fades for the last movement. The slide guitar started singing at the end of the third movement, and it oversees the transition into Cale piano work. It's pensive and graceful and slight, this waltz duet. And then it's over, the audience claps and we can all go home.

I don't know how this music matched a home video of a guy eating a mushroom, but maybe you had to be there. It's interesting that Cale's mentor and nemesis, La Monte Young, did the soundtrack for a group of Warhol excerpts including Eat and Kiss. Perhaps coincidence, perhaps not?

It's interesting music, but the first two movements are a little too loose and the last two are rather conventional. It's fine listening, but it doesn't really stand up to "Kiss." Cale's reading of "Melanethon," though, is definitely worth a listen for Kafka fans and lovers of creepy radio serials. The guy's voice is just mesmerising.

By popular demand, here's the 'Melanethon' segment. High quality flash player, low quality MP3.

Spinning Away

2007-08-10T11:57:00.000-04:00

To be honest, I don't really think Cale had much to do with "Spinning Away", a beautiful little song from Wrong Way Up. It's a song about sketching under a dark night sky: feeling the earth turn, watching the dome of the sky move. It's just a moment in time, but it conveys the feeling terribly well. It has Eno all over it.

So why discuss it, given that I said I was only doing the obvious "John Cale" songs from collaborative albums? Well, it illustrates a certain lack in Cale's own oeuvre. Cale's songs are always about people. There are a few minor exceptions: "Big White Cloud," a cute little Vintage Violence track (but that sounds more like an LSD trip log), "Lie Still , Sleep Becalmed" (the vastness and scale is right, but the words aren't his). In general, though, if nature or the universe at large intrudes upon a song, as in "Barracuda", it's only as a tableau to put actors in front of.

Cale isn't interested in engaging with the non-human world on a personal level; for all that he illustrates the defects of human relationships, he never really goes beyond them. Which is fine, as there are lots of awful "awestruck" songs about the world, and anything that prevents atrocities like "Be the Rain" is alright by me. But in a forty-year songwriting career that has covered many recherché topics and many genres, the absence seems a little strange.

Advertisement! The peak of the Perseid meteor shower is this weekend. If you're in the northern hemisphere and can escape light pollution, consider heading somewhere dark and looking up. Brian Eno would want you to.

Darling I Need You

2007-08-09T12:15:00.000-04:00

We'll segue outta this arc real easy-like, you get me, podner? By moving over to Galveston, Texas, 1899 or thereabouts. This island, the Manhattan of the west, was the center of Western American culture and industry and wealth, before it gets wiped out by the great hurricane of 1900. The sinnerman who's saying that "Darling I Need You", he's been drinkin' all day and all night and raisin' who knows what kinda hell. And when he finally wakes up, his godfearing and longsuffering honey is gone, gone away to join in the Pentecostal revivals going on back east.

The straight-talking lyric is matched with a straight-shooting piano-based tune. It's a frankly pleasing song that doesn't do anything innovative or surprising. I love it anyway. It's a great little character study, one that makes up for the lack of narrative depth with closely-observed detail. It's one of the highlights of Slow Dazzle (an album, admittedly, with many highlights that just don't gel). The song really turned my ear when I first heard Fragments of a Rainy Season - it's a real change of pace from the rest of the album, but a convincing and well-executed one that somehow feels natural as the link from Cordoba to Paris 1919. (As usual, the Fragments version is the definitive recording.) Not typical John Cale, nor essential on its own, but it's always welcome on my turntable.

Bring It On Up

2007-08-08T12:15:00.000-04:00

Cale's predilection for the Wild West was evident even from the beginning. Back in 1970, his debut Vintage Violence was host to the first I'm aware of, Bring It On Up. It's more rock'n'roll than many of the other songs, though still in the genteel and restrained way characteristic of the album. The song is an encomium to that mainstay of popular Western lore: the saloon. Yes, girls and boys, we have a drinking song here. Shame it's not more interesting.

"Just one bottle left, standing on the shelf / I'd better bring it on up," goes the chorus, and indeed he'd better, what with locusts and guns and sheriffs and jails being all the rest that's on offer. It's a fluffy song, lyrically, but I love the line "Standing in the desert with a gun in my hand / and the locust's gonna come devour me." Locusts being one of my favorite symbols in songwriting. Anyway.

This song is indicative of the problems of Vintage Violence. The chorus has a nice enough hook, but the verse melody, while pleasant, isn't very unique. It's not very unique in comparison with the rest of the album, especially - many songs have similar, bouncy vocal tunes. His band sounds a LOT like The Band on this track (not a bad thing, but a little strange to hear). It's a cute, enjoyable little ditty, but rather forgettable.

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

2007-08-07T12:00:00.000-04:00

The novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, by Tom Robbins, has nothing to do with this song. That I can see. Nor does the Gus Van Sant film adaptation of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, narrated not by John Cale but by Tom Robbins himself. Having especially little to do with this song is the album Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by k.d. lang, the soundtrack to the film (though you have a better-than-average chance of receiving that album if you try to order this one on Amazon). There ain't no whooping crane in this song.

And yet, "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" is the first line of the song's single verse, repeated again and again and again, over an audience-driven clap beat that merges with a muted electric-guitar cough, then a kick-drum thud. And Judy Nylon's repeated, drawn-out, cat-in-heat moan. I don't mean sexy, I mean a sound from deep in hell.

It might have been improvised on the spot - the CBGBs audience clap seems to start before the instruments, I think someone calls "Encore!", the lyrics in their entirety are "Even cowgirls get the blues when they're living down in Peru, moving on to Caracas on their bellies just like little rats. But it's only love.", and the whole song feels like a malaria-induced hallucination. Maybe it's a shot at someone he knew, maybe it's free-association, maybe it's just a Greek chorus for a Pynchon-lite anarchohippie novel.

Why'd they name the album after it? It's sick and unbalancing and will appeal to very few. Oh, right, I guess it is appropriate after all. Like the album in general, I find it an intense experience - unpleasant but worthwhile.

The Cowboy Laughs at the Round-up

2007-08-06T11:17:00.000-04:00

This little synth composition is found on the "Paris S'eveille - suivi d'autres compositions" disc. The album, as that "followed by other compositions" implies, is a compilation of Cale's late-80s/early-90s film and ballet scores, along with some oddities. (It's also the most widely available of his French-issued "classical" discs.)

This track is one of the oddities - it doesn't seem to have been written for anything in particular. It starts with a "glorious vistas" segment, rolling electric piano chords that sound like a gentle, good-natured parody of Western soundtracks. It transitions into a more pensive segment, still on electric piano. The thoughtfulness here is appreciated. It's emotionally engaging in a way the soundtrack work often isn't.

Then comes the laughter - synth horns and a chugging synth bass. Then a drum machine. The third section sounds like a poor cover of a evening news or Sunday sports show theme, and it kills the composition stone dead. It's an interesting practical joke, but an irritating one.

Buffalo Ballet

2007-08-04T19:46:00.001-04:00

“Buffalo Ballet”-- it’s a wonderfully perverse image, isn’t it? Dances with Buffalo, a Wild West version of the “Dance of the Hours” sequence from Fantasia. Anyway, there’s not actually anything about buffalo or ballet in the lyrics to the song. Instead, Mr. Cale takes us back to old Abilene, the final destination of the Chisholm Trail. Or is it? Anyway, the tune's spare and piano-based, but Cale introduces strings and a choir on the chorus of “sleeping in the midday sun.” This isn’t a rollicking cowboy song-- the sound is both dry and expansive, evoking the sun-drenched dusty plains rather than smoky saloons and gambling halls. It’s worlds away from, say, Bob Dylan’s old west. Neither dancing girls nor gunfights, just cow skulls bleached by that midday sun and the tumbleweeds rolling by.

Abilene is a city “young and gay,” but again Cale’s emphasis isn’t on the nightlife, it’s on those cattle, sleeping-lying-rotting in the sun. And then the “broken old men” of the East lay railroad tracks across the plain, and the town grows, and soldiers storm through the town and kill the inhabitants. Those who survive the massacre end up drowning in their own wealth anyway. Or they’re just drinking themselves to death. Hmm. This isn’t exactly evocative of Wild Bill Hickock, Luke Short, and John Wesley Hardin. It is also not raising the image of Abilene’s most famous son, Dwight David Eisenhower. This business of the evil men and their railroads and soldiers running down the people sounds like something else altogether.

It sounds like the Johnson County War.

It’s not a total stretch. This ugly little episode in Wyoming history was the inspiration for both Shane and Heaven’s Gate (the Michael Cimino film, not the cult). In brief, the immigrant population had issues with the cattle barons (who were mostly rich Eastern men), the peasants resorted to cattle rustling and the landowners resorted to hitmen and lynching, and the US cavalry got called in-- to protect the landowners, not the peasants.

Cale’s Old West, like his Old Europe, is his own creation, another Invisible Cities job. I’m not saying he definitely watched Shane or Heaven’s Gate (though his contemporary Roger Waters of Pink Floyd certainly was influenced by Shane, so it’s possible), but he’s taken the name of Abilene, a name nearly as rich in connotation as Deadwood, South Dakota, and done something with it that just doesn’t gel with Abilene but does transpose onto Johnson County fairly well. I’ve no proof one way or another, but it does make me wonder.

FWIW, I don’t care for the choir and much prefer the solo version off Fragments of a Rainy Season. Cale’s matured voice suits the song even better than do his vocals circa Fear.

Cable Hogue

2007-08-03T12:30:00.001-04:00

SHACKLE AND IBERT (Excerpt)

Shackle: Finally, we'll look at a new Western: Cable Hogue, a Sam Peckinpah remake by Welsh auteur John Cale.
Ibert: He gets his shots in, but does he get his man? Let's see.

Cut to clip:
I just wanted to say goodbye
I wanted so much to say goodbye
I wanted to say goodbye to all my friends
In case I die

Ibert: You know, even with all the remakes in recent years, I didn't think we'd be seeing one of this film. Peckinpah's 1970 original, The Ballad of Cable Hogue, was the director's favorite, but not anybody else's, I think. A fine film, but a minor one.
Shackle: I agree with you there, Reg. This is an odd choice for a remake. Cale succeeds, though, by changing the story in surprising ways. He really makes it his own, especially with original scenes like this.

Cut to clip:
Please don't leave me here... like... this...

Ibert: He took a Romantic film touched by revenge, and turned it into a revenge film.
Shackle: Yeah, he really changed it. Now it feels like Poe. The Cask of Tequila or something.
Ibert: It doesn't seem as original or honest as Peckinpah's, to me.
Shackle: I think its honesty is one of its best characteristics.

Cut to clip:
Something inside me tells me that you won't show
I know you carry heat, but what for God only knows.

Ibert: The most impressive thing to me is that he has a coherent movie that splits its action across three settings. In the setting closest to the original, it's a straight, direct movie Western: barroom piano, guitar, a little bass, lots of clumsy mumbled words. Evocative of the old West. In the next setting...
Shackle: It's like Aeschylus.
Ibert: Greek tragedy, yes. Simple staging, oversized characters...
Shackle: Fate.
Ibert: Fate. And then the third setting, it's modern, it's about how we live now. Technology interferes; there's phased instruments and echoes, a clattering, modernistic drum track - a simulacrum of train wheels.
Shackle: That setting seems forced to me, I have to say. And it's a mistake to end it so slowly - the other settings cut off abruptly. Like life. The majestic guitar solo is way out of place here, and it leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
Ibert: It's a clumsy mistake in the midst of some very high-quality work.

The film as a whole is not as good as its source material, but I give it a thumbs-up. Jean?
Shackle: It has its warts, but it's unique and meaningful. I give it a big thumbs-up.

CUT TO CREDITS

The settings described by my guests were the 1975 original from Helen of Troy, the 1992 solo piano version from Fragments of a Rainy Season, and the 2006 Circus Live recording.

Me, I'm in favor of Greek tragedy. Take a listen to the Fragments version here, or download a low-quality mp3 here.

Streets of Laredo

2007-08-01T14:17:00.001-04:00

At the center of Honi Soit, an album obsessed with foreign affairs and all the sordid relations of men, lies a cover of an ancient cowboy ballad: "The Streets of Laredo." Why?

Back in 1974, Cale had tried, unsuccessfully, to convince Nico to record a cover. Seven years later, he recorded it himself. Why did an overexposed Traditional song, already performed and recorded and arranged to death, hold appeal for so long?

The arrangement here is terribly slow, stop-time with a dragging beat. Each instrument sounds as if it's playing in its own world, only dimly aware of the others. A two-chord synth part drones on in the background, bass and drums occasionally play at roughly the same time, an acid guitar call bursts forth once per measure. The only thing pretty on the track is the mournful, passionate viola cadenza, but it's played over the ugly, metallic strumming of muted strings (a sound used prominently on Music for a New Society).

The production recalls his work on The Marble Index and foreshadows the sound of his next album, Music for a New Society. What merits so much investment of the John Cale Sound?

And why is such a shambolic performance of a tired song one of the most arresting things on the album?

Sold Motel

2007-07-31T14:33:00.000-04:00

Into the West. The most recent of Cale's trail songs and gunfighter ballads, Sold Motel is also the most contemporary and the most surreal. It describes a land of motels, Tommy Hilfiger couture, "beach-blanket bourgeois sunning themselves." But the chorus clues us in:

"Send out the messenger, pick up the word
Wild Tchoupitoulas, have you heard?
Send out the messenger, pick up the word
General Custer, have you heard?"

Clues us into what, precisely, I'm not sure, but whether he's talking about Indians or the Neville Brothers in the chorus, the song feels of a piece with earlier Cale Westerns. It's a calculatedly Badass lyric, in the tradition of "Guts" and "Fear" and "Gun": "Down that way they see death everyday, in one form or another / They're no different from there to here, they've just learned how to handle the fear." It doesn't have the emotional heft of those songs, but it's a good lyric full of great sounds.

The song starts out with a rather stereotypical-sounding choppy garage-rock riff. ("Stereotypical garage rock" being one of the dominant sounds, but not the only one, of 2005's blackAcetate - one of the reason the album sounds so uneven.) But the sound gets weirder and weirder, with pitchshifted backing Cales all over the place - and then you hit the angelic choir and strings on the middle eight. Then a guitar solo that briefly turns into a trumpet solo (and back). Take that, Jack White. It's a great production job that survives the heavy sonic layering.

An all-time great song? No. The best on the album? Probably not, but a lot of fun. He performed an acoustic version at the Paradiso in Amsterdam back in 2004. Have a look.

Church of Anthrax

2007-07-30T16:24:00.000-04:00

It's rare that a John Cale composition evokes Kraftwerk, but the title track of 1971's collaboration with Terry Riley, Church of Anthrax, achieves just that.

Sounding for all the world like Ruckzuck's overly shrill little cousin, "Church of Anthrax" piles on just a few too many instruments for the static nature of its main modal progressions. It's a fun listen, but the high-pitched organ irritates and distracts from the clever and brawny exchange going between the bass and... er, prepared piano? or horns, or something. (It's a strange sound, but a good one.) The piece's component parts drift further and further from one another as the song goes on, and don't really mesh again until halfway through. That's four and a half minutes. Once they mesh, they do nothing much in particular for the next two and a half minutes. It's a pleasant nothing much, but such things only go so far. A low drone comes in at the seven minute mark and swells, adding haunting brass, while everything else fades, and the song finally falls apart. It's a satisfying ending.

What's cool is that Terry Riley's playing the organ here, so I can't blame Cale for the worst bits.

Its flaws aside, it's quite odd to hear a Krautrock piece by John Cale. The "Krauts" had been working for a while at that point, so it wasn't all that original, but it's surprising anyway. He never did come close to this style again. It's a shame: there are some good ideas here, and it appears many of them were his. I wouldn't sacrifice any of his Seventies albums for the great lost Cale prog-rock album (OK, maybe this one), but I'd be interested to hear it.