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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Guts (the compilation)

Happy Friday the 13th! No, Jason Voorhees fans, my man John isn't dressing up like your guy. Cale may have been the first to popularize the hockey mask as a symbol of derangement and murderous intent. He took up the mask sometime around 1975 for his increasingly insane live concerts. I have no evidence that the filmmakers swiped it, but they had five years and this weirdo compilation's album jacket artwork to help them do it.

And Guts is a weirdo compilation. Cale was, apparently, not a favorite of his Island Records bosses, who, as we just established, released Helen of Troy unfinished, without his consent, and deleted the best track after the first pressing. According to Robert Christgau, they didn't release Helen of Troy in the US. I've also heard that the Island albums were not very heavily promoted and were deleted quickly, though I'm failing at finding sources at the moment. Maybe Island thought the albums were too weird, veering from the pastoral and sentimental to the murderous to the parodic and absurd as they all did.

But then they decide to take a selection of Cale's most insane tracks from the three albums (along with an outtake*) as a compilation? Go figure. I've always been biased against the album because of its checkered history and the fact that it appears to have been an attempt to cash in on schlock rock in its glory days. And yet, listening to the vinyl quite a few times in the past few weeks, I have to say it works. The mood swings are what make the real Island records such interesting listening, but Fear is the only stone-cold classic in the bunch. Honing it down to a bunch of songs that occupy different places in the continuum from crazily debauched to crazily dangerous makes for a smoother, easier-to-grok listen.

You have to be in the mood for crazy, but, man, look at the cover. Hell, it's Christgau's favorite Cale record, so it worked for somebody.

* yes I realize I covered this ground pretty well in the writeup for "Mary Lou", but hell, it's Friday the 13th and this is my blog dammit.

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Mercenaries (Ready for War)

"Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe; for they are disunited, ambitious and without discipline, unfaithful, valiant before friends, cowardly before enemies; they have neither the fear of God nor fidelity to men, and destruction is deferred only so long as the attack is; for in peace one is robbed by them, and in war by the enemy. The fact is, they have no other attraction or reason for keeping the field than a trifle of a stipend, which is not sufficient to make them willing to die for you."
- Niccolò Machiavelli, 'The Prince' Chapter XII

Back in January 1980, with a nightmare awakening in Afghanistan, Thatcher getting comfortable at Downing Street, Reagan waiting to be inaugurated, and decades of mercenary-assisted bloodshed in Africa, John Cale released a topical single that he'd been playing live for a year or so. A rocking little ditty with prescient and sinister artwork, "Mercenaries (Ready for War)" was a studio recording of the lead-off track of the previous month's live LP of new material, Sabotage/Live.

The circumstances being what they were, then, you may be surprised to know that the song's not about war. It's not about killing and terror and bloodshed and death. It's about money. Sort of the dog-o-war version of Barrett Strong's "Money (That's What I Want)", when you get down to it. Just another soldier boy, looking for work, cleaning his rifle, and above all making sure he gets paid. Sure, the song ends with a guitar-based "charge!" bugle call and a run on Moscow, but that's just the new frontier of the bank account.


If the single were the only recording of this song, it would be a highlight of the catalog. The vocal is one of Cale's most intimidating studio attempts; the sound of the band is raw and live like few of his other studio cuts. The guitar tones are exceptional. (The bass could be heavier, but let's not nitpick.) Even the fadeout doesn't sound cheap - Cale goes out screaming. (The b-side is worth a listen too.) Too bad the masters of the single are presumed lost forever.

... but fortunately the definitive version of the song had already been recorded. The live version that opens Sabotage starts with Cale declaiming a much pithier paraphrase of the Machiavelli quotation above over the disjointed solo bassline. Then the guitar storm starts, and every compliment I just paid to the studio version applies tenfold. Cale delivers every word right. In the live/LP environment, the song is allowed to unfold in a more frighteningly relaxed way, and the tension by the ending raid sequence is intolerable.

"Mercenaries" formed a set staple through the geopolitical insanity of the early 80s (e.g. the decent version on Live at Rockpalast), then was left behind with most of the more martial stuff. It was resurrected in odd fashion at a memorable concert at the Amsterdam Paradiso in 2004. Redone as a electronic jazz poetry-slam number with synth backing vocals, with "Taps" replacing the "Charge!" call, the song was one of the more controversial moments of a controversial concert, but it works for me.



Perhaps at that time of madness and paranoia, anything that engaged seriously with the horrifying mistakes my country had made and the amount of money flowing to the Halliburtons and Blackwaters of the world was bound to connect. With a possible invasion of Iran looming, hearing the inspired "Let's go to Tehran / find the back door to the Majlis, kick it down and walk on in..." hit buttons I wanted/didn't want pressed. (This version was released on Circus Live, but with an unnecessary and detrimental layer of "drone" added for reasons I don't understand. To drown out the audience chatter, I imagine.)

The song may not be all that deep, but it still offers us something to reflect on. We still live in the world of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, of the realpolitik American use of coup and assassination and cooperative dictatorship to fight its ideological opponents, of the British partition of India and Pakistan and Bangladesh, of the Mongol destruction of the irrigation canals of Iraq. (And we kill in it.) We even live with some of the mercenary murderers of 20th century - the greatest son-of-a-bitch of them all is still alive! The past is with us always, even when we don't see it; each decision we make could, invisibly, one day prove fatal. Sleep tight.

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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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People Who Died

Ian I miss you more than all the others. I salute you, my brother!

Jim Carroll was a poet who drifted into music under the influence of Patti Smith. Despite a lack of commercial success for his music, he lucked into having a song from his debut album, "People Who Died", included on the soundtrack to, of all things, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, earning him royalties for the rest of his life. Later on his acclaimed 1978 novel The Basketball Diaries would be turned into a meaninglessly controversial Leo DiCaprio film and would eclipse the rest of his work in popular imagination.

Then our man covered it in 1995 for the soundtrack to Antártida, an obscure Spanish film for which Cale composed the whole soundtrack (which as you might expect features several variations on "Antartica Starts Here"). Why? Who knows. Basketball Diaries fever, perhaps. But wow the band he put together: Chris Spedding of 70s solo notoriety, roving bassist Erik Sanko (who also worked with Carroll), and, oh, just Moe Tucker and Sterling Morrison.



Cale's version loses the demented celebration that is the original's chorus and is really the main reason the people who love the song do. His vocals are very restrained and precise, lending the song a bizarrely nerdy feel. And yet... I can't dislike it. Obviously I'm addicted to his voice. But calming the song down helps amplify the hot spots in the verses Cale used. Cutting it down to the first three verses doesn't really hurt the song - in Carroll's version the additional and repeated verses seem like padding to justify doing the chorus over and over, louder and crazier each time. (Works for Carroll, wouldn't have for Cale.) I admit I've always been disappointed by Cale's flat affect in the emotional high point of the song for me: "Eddie I miss you more than all the others - I salute you, my brother!"

Instrumentally the band pulls it out pretty well. The lead guitar part floats new-wavily above the mix in a pleasing way, and the basic track chugs along sweetly. Moe seems to get some backing vocals in, but they're mixed way low if they are really there. It's not a stellar reunion, but it's not an embarrassing one.

Sterling Morrison died of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma soon after the recording. Carroll left us in 2009 from a heart attack working at his desk. Two more friends who died.

Carroll version video from the Leo flick after the jump.

(Skip to 1m20s if you want to miss the meatheads.)


P.S. How does one OD on Drano? Apparently buying heroin from the wrong dealer, i.e. a "hot shot." Jesus what a way to die.

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Been away

But now I'm back.

What did we miss? A new compilation album of Cale productions, some limited reissues of 70s records, and, oh, right, a new record. (And a remix album, but that didn't do a whole lot for me.)

I did at last manage to see Mr. Cale live at the Brooklyn Academy of Music last month with the Wordless Music Orchestra. He performed Paris 1919 and a selection of new and old songs. I only caught him one night of the two, and apparently missed a live performance of Do Not Go Gentle... (which might be the first thing I discuss in this brutal new year).

A little review: Paris went well, with some interesting spins on some of the songs. To be frank, Child's Christmas was a wreck, with guitar wanking all over the track and a little something off in everyone's timing. I steeled myself for an unpleasant evening, but things improved markedly on Hanky Panky Nohow. I wish I had written down my notes the same night, but precision is unnecessary. Some songs got dronier, some songs got poppier. Half Past France got a raga development that worked surprisingly well. The most pronounced change was Graham Greene, which lost its reggae completely and transformed into a Latin number, meanwhile achieving its ultimate destiny... well, I guess I ought to write about it. Macbeth was awkwardly grafted onto the end of the album. Why, I don't know.

The second set was on the whole less awkward. Opener Hedda Gabler is a song I've heard too much; I still like Ibsen too much to entirely approve of Cale's use of the name, but the coda was worth the rest of the song. Captain Hook was catastrophically powerful, though Marka did not care for the guitar pyrotechnics. New song Cry was OK, but seemed a bit generic as many recent relationship songs have. I quite enjoy Living With You on the record, but except for a few moments where everything gelled it felt unworthy of stage time. Riverbank was a complete surprise and really hit the spot. A keyboard-driven I Wanna Talk 2 U (whose name still hurts to type) was boring live and not half as good as the album version, to me, but Marka liked it. The Hanging took me a while to place; it's an awfully strong song to bury on a Black Friday special edition!

The orchestra then left the stage. Wordless Music includes many performers I like, and they mostly did very well, but I have to say, things felt much more natural and visceral with just the band. Nookie Wood blew the audience quite away, vocal effects and all, and Venus in Furs was the only way to end the night.

I'm looking forward to the next time I see the band. Hopefully sans orchestra.

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70 Years Of John Cale

A group of Cale fans got together over the last few months to put together a tribute to John Cale on his 70th birthday. I contributed my recording of Sanities. It was a very cool project to be part of and well worth your eyes and ears.

For convenience of listening to all of the songs as a set, you can check out the project's Soundcloud directly. Happy 70th birthday, Mr. Cale. I'm looking forward to the new album!

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