Burned Out Affair

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

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

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

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

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

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