If You Were Still Around

Another Music for a New Society cut, you say? Yes, yes. Bear with me. I've been thinking about it a lot for reasons that will soon become obvious.

Probably the simplest, sparest track on the album, "If You Were Still Around" packs one of the strongest punches even so. There's hardly any music to speak of: The drum machine at the edges of perception, barely more than a metronome. The organ, nothing but a few chords with some very sparing accents, offering a scale climb where the middle eight should be that serves as the song's only ornamentation. No harpsichord, ghostly electric guitar, electric piano, viola, electronics.

And then there's the vocal. Not the most sober of the album - that's "Close Watch". Not the most carefully expressed - that's "Taking Your Life in Your Hands". But perhaps the one that most carefully keeps to the edge between performance and exorcism, mimicking the underlying tension of the whole album. And the control on display here amplifies instead of soothing the tension.

The lyrics, a contribution from Sam Shepard, seem unusually clear. Addressed to a friend lost to self-destruction, marinating in powerlessness and frustration, they bargain with the lost. The images of cradling and of resuscitation of the first verse, slipping into recollection of the self-harm: "You could ride, like a panther, whatever got into your veins. What kind of green blood swum you to your doom." The most arresting moment, confronting lost opportunities to help: "If you were still around, I'd tear into your fear, leave it hanging off you in long streamers, shreds of dread." And finally giving way to voodooistic avenues for resurrection: "If you were still around, I'd turn you facing the wind, bend your spine on my knee, chew the back of your head till you opened your mouth to this life."

So it may not be very uplifting, but on THIS album it's one of the more heartening and life-affirming tracks.

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Damn Life

Everybody knows the Kübler-Ross model of grief. First the grieving person faces denial, then anger, then bargaining, then depression, then, finally, acceptance of their situation. Like many things that everybody knows, it's bullshit. Kübler-Ross herself originated the hypothesis dealing with terminally ill patients facing their own deaths, though she later expanded it to encompass all grief. She did not believe that her stages were the only emotions people experienced, only that they were common; she did not believe they happened in any predictable order; and she did not think that one simply moved through them. In the real version of her model, they are states that may be visited repeatedly while processing the life-altering event. Beyond the popular misconceptions about what the model is, there is no compelling evidence in scientific studies that the stages even exist, and the idea that they do may be harmful in pressuring people to fit their emotions to them.

My own experience of grief is like a fire, flickering and flaring up and dying down, with hot spots moving and the flames dancing unpredictably. You can't point to one place in my emotional landscape and say what it is; the map is forever changing. One hour I am filled with joy for having experienced what came before; the next, with anger and looking for somebody to blame; emptiness and blankness; guilt and self-loathing; then resignation; paralyzing sorrow; an urge to do something useful to honor the lost or to avenge the loss on the guilty; elation at release and freedom; hopelessness, and hope renewed; then, hope dead, peace and tranquility restored. (When this process has struck me during the working week, I'll tell you, the mental gymnastics involved while keeping external placidity and professionalism are nothing short of Olympian.) And then I sleep, and I wake, and it all starts again.

And that's how this song goes.

Arguably the emotional climax of Music for a New Society, occupying the penultimate spot in the tracklist, "Damn Life" starts out with warm-up-y piano and synth burbles before absurdly breaking into Beethoven's Ode to Joy. It begins in disconnected jagged fragments of lyrics over that damned joyous beer-hall melody, the wistful and hard-panned guitar and synth, and the eerily funereal lagging kick-drum-driven beat. "Damn life. Damn life. What's it worth. Getting on without... This city... It's just self-pity. Damn life. You're just not worth it. You're just not worth it. ... Oh no, respect, respect, what's respect? Cause and effect. Self-respect." It might be funny if there were any sign of humor in his voice. There is not. Just dejection, depression, despair.

Then the tempo quadruples. Piano chords. Guitar scales. Tambourine. Constant drum fills. Fucking ? and the Mysterians "96 Tears" style bubbly organ. He's talking about somebody else now? "She was the one that got left behind, she was the one got lost." He sounds almost happy. "Never took from anybody, self-sufficient at any cost." Then... non-sequitur? "No, nothing can break this heart of mine!" Celebratory and defiant vocals. God, the drum fills. It's like somebody different in the kit. "It stands invincible all the time. Can't always get what ya left behind. Seek and you shall find, yes seek and you shall find. Oh, the daaaa" and here everything slows and Ludwig returns, "aaaaaaaamnlife!"

And back to the slow chorale, sans vocals, the drummer lagging even further behind the beat. And now the Mysterians return, then leave again.

And again we're left with the Ode and the mysterious lady. "So she's still wandering her heart away; doesn't even know if it's night or day." And here... his voice... is that all... contempt? "And even if someone helped her up, she'd stand little hope of recognizing those friends she had." Yes, definitely contempt. "And in many, many ways, those friends were GLAD." Holy shit what just happened. There may even be an element of triumph in that final scream.

I have listened to this song so many times now, and every time I still wince at the end. My heart cannot help but go along for the ride. Sometimes I sympathize with the depressed narrator, sometimes with the defiant, sometimes with the contemptuous. Who is "she"? Nico? His stalker? Who knows. It doesn't really matter.

Feeling this song might make me a worse person. But it represents the fire of loss better than almost anything else I can think of. There are better-known songs on Music for a New Society, but there's nothing more powerful. Make this your own at your own peril, but it bears the truth among the flames.

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Sanities redux

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.

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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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Taking Your Life in Your Hands

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.

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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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Risé, Sam and Rimsky-Korsakov

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

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Sanities

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.

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Changes Made

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.)

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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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In the Library of Force

[I was going to start this with, "You might wonder why I didn't include 'Music for a New Society' in the essentials list." Then I noticed a comment on the introduction post calling me out on the omission, heh heh. Fair enough. I keep vacillating on it. The material is generally strong, it's a unique album in modern music, and it has one of the best album titles around. It is Cale's nakedest-feeling recording. On the other hand, I think it a bit overrated, at least insofar as most of his catalog is underrated and neglected. Its extreme low-fi nature is effective, but it gives me pause, as well - the mistake on Chinese Envoy, while surely intentionally left in, doesn't add anything. Finally, it doesn't entirely gel as an album. Quibbles aside, if it were in-print and affordable, it would certainly be on the list. However, I paid 12$US for my cassette tape of it and more than twice that, nearly a year later, for my CD copy. It is a great record, but I can't call it essential until it comes back into print. ]

The difference between the original version and the reissue of Music for a New Society, other than a vanishingly small sound quality improvement on the CD, is "In the Library of Force." It's a unique track. Like most of Music for a New Society, it's incredibly spare musically. Silence keeps poking through the noise like sunlight filtering through clouds and torn cloth. It's more or less atonal: disconnected instrumental bits (synthesizer, drum, acoustic guitar) play randomly, occasionally interacting with one another or the vocal before breaking off again. Meanwhile Cale rants about "the library of force," seemingly a metaphor for the political enabling and rationalizing of violence. It's not the most coherent metaphor - I think the lyrics are improvised - but the vocal is compelling and the images memorable: "Glittering from pages come the precious stones of guilt." Maybe it's the way he sings it, I dunno.

And then the clouds pass, and a beautiful and serene new melody is played on a piano. This darkens with forcefully played minor chords, then brightens, then goes mysterious. The piano piece ends without resolution. A kick drum sounds, and silence reigns.

I think very highly of this piece. It's one of the most satisfying "classical" compositions Cale has done, and yet here it is on a "songwriter" album. If you treat the lyrics as stage dressing and the music as the real content, you'll get more out of it. I'll admit most people would find it unlistenable. There's only one way to find out if you're one of them.

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