Today's my favorite feast day in the old Catholic calendar: the beheading of St. John the Baptist. It so happens that our man Cale has the perfect song for it, too - a live dramatization featuring Judy Nylon on vocals. Dance of the Seven Veils is a somewhat cheesy recasting of the very cheesy Oscar Wilde interpretation of the biblical Salome story. I find a little girl childishly toddling around the room and then asking for the head of the great (loony) ascetic to be a lot more appealing dramatically than Wilde's psychosexual obsessive.
Cale & Nylon & Co. thankfully do not take the material overly seriously. Judy chews the scenery nearly as well as her partner - as morningside posted over here, Salome is recast as a sassy New York Girl. Nylon's narration proceeds through flirtation ("to tell the truth..."), lust ("take his lips and..."), murder ("I want the head of the Baptist!"), and denouement ("'Now get her.'")
The instrumentals are really appealing, building and building circularly in a very post-rock way before crashing into that coda. The coda, the part that actually features singing, seems a little rough/incomplete, but it's an appropriate conclusion to the piece. ANYWAY, I wish there were more and better recordings of the Cale band(s) of this period - they're among the tightest and rapport-ful of any of Cale's bands. The performances on Sabotage are better than anything on Cowgirls, but not by that much.
Somehow I suspect that there was a visual component to this. Damn shame we don't have a record of that.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Dance of the Seven Veils
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Decade
The slab of noise generously titled "Decade" was allegedly recorded on December 31, 1979. Though guitarist Richie Fliegler denies involvement with or knowledge of the band performing, it's a pretty convincing Cale band. What's most notable about it is, perhaps, the fairly conventional nature of the thing. It sounds like Rock Music. The guitar lead goes places (at least in circles), the stolid and martial drumming sounds like it should be backing a very unrehearsed garage band, and (Cale's?) bass part (which seems to appear only in the last third) thumps along.
After turning over in place with one feedback-loaded guitar explosion after another, it finally moves into some appealingly chunky rhythmic territory after Cale joins in. There's nothing particularly experimental or even very confrontational about it (unlike the title track or "Dance of the Seven Veils"). It sounds completely spur-of-the moment, a tune-up that turned into a "piece of music" - I think that's a virtue. It's just a loud, agitated-but-enthusiastic way to ring out one bad decade and ring in another.
Nothing changes but the numbers on the wall, so turn up your amps and say hello to 2008. Happy New Year!
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Casey at the Bat
Casey at the Bat is a political allegory. An impassioned song about John Cale's favorite professional sport, baseball*. A pure pisstake. An on-the spot improvisation that Cale didn't think much about. A rant about a friend or enemy or acquaintance or musical accomplice. None of the above. Take your pick. This Even Cowgirls Get the Blues track is notable on the strength of the vocal, which is a full-out screamer despite some note of mischief and humor in Cale's voice.
Like the wonderful namesake 1888 poem (this is a very lowbrow lit album, isn't it), it's about a failure. The difference is that this is an indictment of an intransigent guy who lets down his team and the fans by not showing up. That could describe any number of musicians! I like the idea of "Muddville" as an allegory for the Mudd Club (according to that Wikipedia entry, named after the previously discussed Dr. Mudd), and "Casey" as the star of an important band. It's an amusing idea, anyway.
It's an expansive and hard-rocking song that's musically a wee bit reminiscent of the Talking Heads' "Life During Wartime" (but that ain't no Mudd Club). It starts out with dueling guitars, surprisingly enough. An aggressive electric organ takes the lead once the vocal starts. Cale sounds like he's enjoying himself on this one, maliciously and mercilessly swinging away at the hapless Casey. It breaks down to simple piano to lead into the coda (apparently fooling the mastering engineers at ROIR - they cut it into two tracks). Electric organ and guitar come back with a vengeance, chain-gang backing vocals start, and Cale starts in on Casey again. It ends with lungs-out screaming: "You're a coward, Casey, a coward!"
Hell, try it out on me (login required; no-login AUTOPLAY! streaming version available here; suggestions for file hosts gratefully accepted). Anyway, it's one of the better tracks on an awfully difficult to find and difficult to like album.
* This is highly unlikely.
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
The novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, by Tom Robbins, has nothing to do with this song. That I can see. Nor does the Gus Van Sant film adaptation of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, narrated not by John Cale but by Tom Robbins himself. Having especially little to do with this song is the album Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by k.d. lang, the soundtrack to the film (though you have a better-than-average chance of receiving that album if you try to order this one on Amazon). There ain't no whooping crane in this song.
And yet, "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" is the first line of the song's single verse, repeated again and again and again, over an audience-driven clap beat that merges with a muted electric-guitar cough, then a kick-drum thud. And Judy Nylon's repeated, drawn-out, cat-in-heat moan. I don't mean sexy, I mean a sound from deep in hell.
It might have been improvised on the spot - the CBGBs audience clap seems to start before the instruments, I think someone calls "Encore!", the lyrics in their entirety are "Even cowgirls get the blues when they're living down in Peru, moving on to Caracas on their bellies just like little rats. But it's only love.", and the whole song feels like a malaria-induced hallucination. Maybe it's a shot at someone he knew, maybe it's free-association, maybe it's just a Greek chorus for a Pynchon-lite anarchohippie novel.
Why'd they name the album after it? It's sick and unbalancing and will appeal to very few. Oh, right, I guess it is appropriate after all. Like the album in general, I find it an intense experience - unpleasant but worthwhile.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Jack the Ripper
If you're frightened by the strength of genteel words, how about a plain ol' unpretentious pop song? "Jack the Ripper (in the Moulin Rouge)" may not sound like one, but it's got an up-tempo shuffle thing going, a pleasant vocal, and a hell of a chorus hook. I don't think anything I can say will prepare you for the weedle-wee synth that pops up here and there. Just listen to the interplay between the crunchy, bouncy guitar and the electronic piano. Enjoy it.
Click here for a full-quality flash player , or here for a low-bitrate MP3.
OK, so the lyrics are about murder, paranoia, sexual uncomfortability to the point of violence (Don't touch me, I'm a real live wire!), and the shattering of the illusion of civilization ("Are we dreaming? No we're not, I know because I'm here."). The title character (well, just like Jack the Ripper, not the man himself) is presented with a great deal of sympathy. The failure to specify what was done is effective - a decent horror film doesn't show the villain.
Nevertheless! It's still a great pop song. I'd love to hear it on the radio, even if just once. God, those ersatz-Beatles backing vocals.
(N.B. Besides Seducing Down the Door, this song appeared on the IRS compilation These People Are Nuts! They meant it.)
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Somebody Should Have Told Her
"It was easy to identify her body when she found her way back home." Beautifully ugly. As I said here, "Dead Or Alive" and this song seem to share a central idea. Where "Dead or Alive" yoked an allusively-told noir tale to a poppy tune, this song from 'Even Cowgirls Get the Blues' combines a dark and oppressive guitar-and-organ piece with more specific lyrics.
I get the feeling that maybe the lyrics weren't quite settled when this live recording was made and/or the lyrics that have been transcribed are maybe a bit wrong. (I also get the feeling that ROIR took Cale out for a drink or twenty to get him to approve this sub-bootleg quality recording for release.) Nevertheless, there are nice touches throughout: "I could have worked so hard to tell her / She would never have listened at all." The narrator's anger and frustration with both the victim and himself is a trick the song shares with "Dead or Alive."
Musically, it opens with a loping drumbeat, long organ chords, and Ritchie Fliegler's guitar. Cale's electric piano vamping and vocals come in next for the verses. The song brightens up at the chorus, with drums sounding on the beat and the organ doing some vamping of its own. The chorus, which modulates up into a major key, doesn't sound very depressive, Cale's hoarse vocals notwithstanding.
The last chorus gives way to a Fliegler-led coda (sharing the chorus lyrics and many of its characteristics) that in spots sounds almost triumphant. I suppose it's possible this is yet another murderer. Psychologically speaking, a very interesting song. It's a great song, really. It's just a shame that a glorified bootleg is the only way it's available.
Friday, May 11, 2007
Dead Or Alive
'Honi Soit,' Cale's tenth studio album, was a very strange album. Although there are signs that someone wanted commercial accessibility, "Dead Or Alive" and "Magic & Lies" chief among them, most of the album was nearly as far from accessible as possible. It's a very good album, hurt by the poorly miked drums and questionable and very heterogeneous mixes.
Of course, "Dead or Alive" is really only commercial by comparison to the rest of it. I think it's the story of a lover of the narrator who drifts from the party lifestyle to pornography to prostitution to death. Lyrically, it seems a reworking of the CGBG's-era song "Somebody Should Have Told Her," though they share virtually nothing musically. Both are full of frustration and regret, mixed with an element of "told you so." This one has the standout line, "She turns and smiles/says goodbye in her inimical way."
The song has one of the strangest guest instrumentals I can think of in the Cale ouevre: a trumpet plays baroque phrases over the intro and choruses. The guitar tone is great on this one. More stacatto guitar chords for the verses, merging into long, low growl on the verses. I'm not sure I like the piano: the live solo version I have (which I'll try to get an mp3 up for next week) has the same piano part and still feels dated. Anyway, underneath the mediocre and mushy arrangement there is a painful and fairly powerful song. That's the story of Honi Soit, really.
I should note that this album is in print in Great Britain via an on-demand service. That is, they burn you a CDR when you order it and print out cover art. It's better than nothing, I suppose.
