Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

I've made clear that I find Words for the Dying an affront. The instrumental and choral arrangements by Cale and Eno don't seem intrinsically bad, but between the completely affectless boy's choir and the sloppy Russian orchestra, the execution never gets better than tolerable. This feeling is amplified every time I listen to the unimpeachable stripped-down and focused solo piano arrangements featured on Fragments of a Rainy Season.

The chromatic harmonies and dissonant notes of the Words... arrangement of Dylan Thomas's most famous poem, however, add a layer of discontent to the oddly buoyant vocal and instrumental melodies that Cale uses for this poem that seems to extol senile dementia. For a while, I felt uneasy about it: the orchestral version that I disliked seemed to communicate the poem's tone more accurately than the solo version I loved.

A couple years ago, though, something extremely improbable happened: I found a useful YouTube comment. The author pointed out that the poem, after all, is a villanelle, a form originating in light pastoral subject matter. The poem subverts the form by taking this innocent form and twisting it to honor the incompleteness of even the greatest lives. The solo Cale arrangement does the same by taking more of the melodies into major keys and letting the dissonance out only in the connective tissue and certain vocal phrases.

(Not to give Dylan Thomas too much credit. "Do Not Go Gentle..." certainly helped repopularize the form, but it was on its way back already. Its resurgence in the 20th century led to many disturbingly effective poems, e.g. Sylvia Plath's "Mad Girl's Love Song".)

Here's the author himself reading the poem. It's striking how similar his meter is to Cale's - do you think that's a coincidence?

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Leaving It Up To You

So finally we're here, and I'm about to grab the third rail of Cale commentary. There's no way to successfully elucidate this song. It's been nice knowing you.

Almost impenetrable, murderous, regretful, cancerous, marinating in vengeance and resentment and loss, "Leaving It up to You" seems to be many people's favorite Cale song. It touches on assassination, Manson, the press, war in the desert, crumbling buildings, wastelands, and black magic. It makes very little rational sense. Our man even runs out of words in the last verse, repeating himself somewhat inanely, all bluster and threats of sorcery because he's got nothing else left.

So why do I get the sense that the song, like Close Watch or Ship of Fools, started as a reference to the pop music of the previous generation? The 1957 Don & Dewey doo-wop number "I'm Leaving It Up To You" didn't make much of a splash. Dale and Grace popularized it as a duet. Maybe that one caught Mr. Cale's fancy? Not only was it was the number 1 easy listening single the day JFK was shot, the performers were in Dallas attending Kennedy's motorcade that day, seeing him just before the fatal moment. I think that scene would be up Cale's alley.

But more likely: the song became a hit again, coincidentally right before the album this song appeared on, Helen of Troy, was recorded. At the accursed golden throats of Donny & Marie Osmond, no less. God, wouldn't it be great if exposure to those two drove JC to thoughts of murder?



But if there's any connection, it doesn't go any deeper than the chorus at best. Actual song commentary after the jump...

There's no way to avoid the obvious: the studio version of this song is almost unbeatable. The heroin-rock loping bassline, the chugging twitching drums, the eerie edge-of-the-mix organ, the tersely tremendous Spedding guitar stabbing, the unearthly Eno synth over the last verse.

And the vocal! It is surely one of Cale's greatest performances in the studio. Flat affect and boredom in the first verse, an edge coming on in the first chorus. The stakes raising in the second verse with the best lyrics - "all the buildings are breaking down like the whispering in your heart and it's sordid how life goes on when I could take you apart" - with threats and accusations building as his voice rises to a scream. The final verse features a rare instance of shamanism - Cale relaying images of the distant horizon, bobbling syllables, convulsing with the words as that synth bubbles malevolently. (This verse would prove hard to put across live without the backing.) And the resignation turning over to desperation in the end. "For God's sake, TAKE IT!" he cries, whispers, sobs. Sure, it sounds like there's a clumsy tape edit between takes at "I know we could all feel safe like Sharon Tate", but that's small potatoes.

The song was inexcusably pulled from the album - read the whole story in my writeup of "Coral Moon", the sweet nothing that replaced it - allegedly because of the Sharon Tate reference. I suspect Island actually pulled it because it scared the shit out of them. It did find wide and permanent release two years on the then-essential compilation Guts.

Live band performances on record are mostly wanting. Comes Alive features a mix of enthusiasm and diffidence on everybody's part, the almost excellent performance (with a great pleading-for-his-life coda) on the recently issued Rockpalast set is weighed down by ill-advised gang vocals.

But then there's the solo acoustic version, and it might even unseat the studio version. The chorus now features suspended chords that rise eerily, providing a weird pool of calm between each wrenching verse. Even his threats to get media coverage now seem less terrible. Somehow this makes the vocal even more powerful. Both released acoustic versions (on Live at Rockpalast and on Fragments of a Rainy Season) have a lot to offer, and you really ought to obtain both by any means necessary.

It's not just the Welsh throat and tongue that gives the acoustic arrangement its power; it's one of my favorite songs to play live, and impresses even the people who are horrified by it. The third verse is really difficult to put across, though - what tanks? why are they crawling across the desert? why are the tanks breaking up your spell? what spell? why are you casting spells anyway? and what are you looking on on the ceiling at the back of the room? Maybe I just don't play the shaman very well. Mr. Cale doesn't always do it so well either, though.

I have to confess that I have no idea what this song means. I think I'm happier that way.

Phew, dodged that one. Say, who's that behind me? Excuse me, I-- *ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZAP!*

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Paris 1919

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 away

It'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

0. 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.
   
1. It's strange how evocative a word as vague and unconnotative as "vague" is in this context. Perhaps we appreciate vagueness in our haunters.
   
2. George McGovern. Or... hm.
   
3. He sings "Mondays" on the record. The significance of this is unclear.
   
4. 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?
   
5. 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.
   
6. He actually sings, I believe, "I'm the Church," which accords better with footnote 12.
   
7. The symbol of power-hungry oppression. Or perhaps the original Ghost Trap. Who ya gonna call? JOHN CALE!
   
8. This could refer to any number of political, religious, or cultural events. Speculation is imprudent.
   
9. 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.
   
10. 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?
    
11. A tableaux of the spoils of war, one assumes... but of the Second World War? It fits Paris 1919, I suppose...
    
12. A Catholic or Episcopal ecclesiastical middle manager. They have been known to haunt the cathedrals of Paris.
    
13. An old Norman saying. Or possibly an old Welsh saying. Or I could be making this up.
    
14. A red wine from the Beaujolais region, duh. Made trendy recently through the brilliant marketing of a mediocre wine from an increasingly mediocre winery.
    
15. The sort, one assumes, conducted by drunken politicians.
    
16. La plus belle avenue du monde. Notably the avenue that passes under the Arc de Triomphe.
    
17. As in the Treaty of Versailles. What, Korea or Vietnam? And how does this relate to Graham Greene?

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Ship of Fools

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.

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Thoughtless kind.

[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.

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Heartbreak Hotel

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.

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Fear (Is a Man's Best Friend)

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?

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(I Keep a) Close Watch

(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:

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Child's Christmas in Wales

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.

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Dying on the Vine

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.

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On a Wedding Anniversary

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.

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Darling I Need You

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.

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Buffalo Ballet

“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.

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Cable Hogue

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.

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Chinese Envoy

Like many a former conspiracy theorist (don't ask), I'm a sucker for songs in code. Songs dressed up in political or historical trappings particularly appeal to me; I used to spend hours puzzling over "Games Without Frontiers" and pondered over the pseudo-Biblical vibe to "The Weight" (yeah, I know, there really isn't any code there at all-- I was twelve, OK?). So, I find the estimable Mr. Cale very satisfying in this regard.

Turning up first on the bleak and bereft Music for a New Society, “Chinese Envoy” is a mysterious little vignette, one that revolves not around the titular envoy but a “princess,” the “mistress of something, she thought.” The princess can talk to the French and the Germans, but they aren’t listening, and then the envoy himself shows up, and everything is ominous in a very Cale way (things galloping out of the darkness like furniture). Eventually we leave the Chinese envoy, or rather he leaves us, “in his brokenhearted pagoda.”

Terrible lyric, that. Probably the worst in the entire song.

The “hook” is what David Byrne called “plink plink plink Chinoiserie,” but in a subtle way, and it works. Musically, it bears the signature of classic Cale, with slide guitar and strings woven together in a haunting tapestry. The music grows so dense that Cale’s voice is half-submerged by the bridge. It’s atmospheric and melancholy and really quite beautiful; everything hints at a tragedy that is never made explicit-- this is one of Cale’s sadder songs, which is saying a lot. (An excellent piano version of this, with the chinoiserie less evident, is on Fragments of a Rainy Season.)

As for the lyric, “Chinese Envoy” belongs to that peculiar Cale Storybookland visited on Vintage Violence and Paris 1919. All times and all places are one; Cardinal Richelieu and the Chinese envoy and the “princess” inhabit a world that is neither here nor there. It might be the France of Louis XIV, or the declining Europe on the eve of World War, or maybe it’s some slice of Cale’s modern life, relayed in code a la Dylan. It strikes me, listening to this one, that what Cale seems to be doing, again and again, is crafting his own invisible cities. Some common thread links the shadowed scenes in his Storybookland. With Calvino’s cities, the key to understanding it all is Venice; I don’t know the origin of Cale’s key, and can’t say whether it’s New York, or Wales, or something far more obscure.

But, as literal meaning is not the point when listening to Cale, I can only say-- great song.

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Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed

It's easy in these days of ubiquitous recorded music to confuse recordings with compositions, a particular version of a song with the song itself. OK, not that easy, but hear me out. A recorded version of a song may not grab you, even after repeated listenings, while a live version or a rerecording may enthrall you. (The opposite also happens: great performances of mediocre songs are easy to come by.) We could get into the notion (illusion?) of performer authenticity and all that, too, but that's old hat.

Well, The Falklands Suite runs into that problem. It's an orchestral and choral setting of four Dylan Thomas poems that is the main content of Words for the Dying, Cale's ne plus ultra of weird tracklists. However, unlike most unsatisfying recordings, three of the four songs got a do-over on Fragments of a Rainy Season, and we're all the luckier for it. On record, the suite is one beast; live on solo piano, quite another.

The difference is pronounced on Cale's setting of "Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed." The Russian television orchestra is clearly more engaged than it often is, and the boys' choir isn't too sloppy in the beginning. Cale's vocal is decent, if a wee bit overwrought. And yet, the elements stubbornly refuse to emulsify, remaining a lumpy mixture.

Individual elements are worthy of praise. The strings feel organistic in the "middle 8", as if they're driven by bellows, matching the tone of the (synthesized?) harmonium - hi Nico - they're playing with in an interesting way. The winds and brass do amazing work at creating a feeling of adriftness. The use of the boys' vocals even seems warranted at first.

The welcome of the vocals wears out quickly, however. It seems that Cale tried to assign vocals to himself or the boys based on the perspective he felt the poem was using. In practice, it feels totally random and very irritating. As elsewhere, when Cale sings together with the boys the result is horrifying - somebody isn't in key, or maybe the voices just don't work with his. Where they trade poem fragments, it feels lumpy as well. The choir probably should have been used for only the first line ("Lie still, sleep becalmed, sufferer with the wound | In the throat, burning and turning.") and the last ("through the drowned"), with Cale doing the rest. Cale's added coda, "We will obey the drowned, the drowned of Falkland," wasn't really necessary to get the drift, either.

Live, though, Cale's amazingly expressive vocal communicates his reading of the poem irresistibly. The free tempos provide an expansive feel, the changing piano inflections representing a powerless drift over the open ocean almost as well as the full orchestral treatment. Maybe it's so focused that it makes the original recording sound worse than it deserves to.

In any case, he had a great text to work with. I'm not a huge fan of Thomas (another contribution of Wales to the arts), but do enjoy his work. I can't say whether I like this poem so much because of the quality of its arrangement or enjoy the arrangement so much because of the quality of the poem. Although it uses more advanced poetic techniques than Cale usually does, Thomas's tendency for phonetically rich language fits well with Cale's. It's easy to imagine Cale writing lyrics like: "Under the mile-off moon we trembled listening to the sea."

[P.S. If I recall correctly, the poem was written for Thomas's father, dying of throat cancer. I don't really want to speculate about Welsh fathers in general, but it's an interesting subject worth considering, especially given that "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" follows this track in both the full and the redacted suite. There's also the title of the album to account for.]

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Cordoba

I tend to prefer accessible Cale. While I first heard this song on the excellent and accessible Fragments of a Rainy Season, it wasn't until I heard the studio original that "Cordoba" really grabbed me. The live version may technically be superior, but I can't say I prefer it. The studio take of "Cordoba" unfolds with a quiet, eerie menace; while I grokked that something bad was going down in the Fragments version, in the sense that something bad is almost always going down in a John Cale song, the Wrong Way Up track grabbed my attention, made me sit up and say, "What the heck is happening here?"

Bombs in suitcases are happening, from the sound of things. This one ranks with Talking Heads' "Listening Wind" as a tune you probably shouldn't be blasting on the car radio whilst going through a border crossing. And especially on the coda, it shows how subtle Cale can be more powerful than angry, screaming Cale; compare the recitation of "the lift stops between two floors... I'll walk towards the station... you walk towards the bus" on here with the more ranty vocals on Fragments. The quiet, detached, perhaps faintly sorrowful vocals on the studio track hint at something horrible yet inevitable-- events are in motion, and cannot now be stopped. It's a cinematic sequence, highly visual in the way many great Cale moments are. The tinkling little backing track reminds me somehow of the ending theme of Koyaanisqatsi (the bit with the burning satellite), and the resemblance to a music box gone wrong makes it all the more affecting. So, while the Fragments "Cordoba" may be another solid track off a stellar live album, I'll take the flawed but involving original.

See a slow and ghostly performance from Amsterdam in 2004 at Fabchannel or listen to the audio:

[Audio Flash Player][Low-quality download]

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