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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Ski Patrol

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.)

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Gun

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.

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The Man Who Couldn't Afford to Orgy

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.

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The Jeweller

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

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All I Want Is You

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.

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Baby, What You Want Me to Do?

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.

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Mary Lou

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.

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Coral Moon

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.

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Sylvia Said

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.

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Bamboo Floor

A might-have-been classic of the "apocalypse pop" genre, this Slow Dazzle outtake wasn't really properly recorded. The mix is questionable and there's a certain "demo" quality to the vocal (which is pleasant enough). Still, there is ample reason to be glad it appeared on the Island Years/Gold quasi-compilation. It's another mixture of extremely pleasant, jaunty music with dark lyrics. Not just any pop song can carry a chorus of, "Another monsoon's here and it feels like judgment day."

The first thing you'll notice about Bamboo Floor is the constant bell-like burbling organ (?). It's extremely distinctive and, oddly enough, soothing. It's key to the optimistic sound of the music, and makes this otherwise straightforward track stand out. The dominant piano part sounds very upbeat and a bit retro (unsurprisingly - musically, this is a far superior rewrite of the fey and corny "Dixieland and Dixie", a Vintage Violence-era pisstake allegedly written solely to fulfill a contract.) A very conventionally strummed acoustic guitar follows the piano chord change for chord change, and the drums and a completely unsurprising bassline complete the aural scene.

The lyrics, though, aren't conventional for the genre. They're a fractured glimpse of adventuring life, or something - robbers and drugs and houses with bamboo floors. It sounds like an extra-sordid ninteenth-century adventure novel: "Watch out for the eagle's eye or the opium on the breakfast tray, and the laughter of the dying monk from the poison of the tsetse fly." (Pedantic aside: Either it's a bit sloppy or the scene changes from continent to continent: the tsetse fly, the infamous carrier of sleeping sickness, is indigenous to Africa; in the chorus, though, we're reminded that "you can see it all in the rivers of Shanghai" - that China fixation again.) It's a nice little lyric - doomy and amusing at the same time. The roughness of the vocal lends a certain credibility to the narrator.

Have a listen and see what you think:
Full quality flash player
or
Low-bitrate mp3

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