Heartbreak Hotel

This is the song that killed a chicken, and that's hardly the most remarkable thing about it. That was in 1977, in Cale's mid-post-Glam-ish-whateverthehell period. He was doing polo shirts before the Talking Heads, I'm saying. Back then, in those innocent days of good friends, fast women, lots of drugs, and no studio recordings whatsoever, Heartbreak Hotel was pretty much camp, as it was from its debut in the Cale arrangement on June 1, 1974 (yeah, that's the name of the album it's on, too - and we all know what happened on May 30). He would change the arrangement a bit over the years, but through the end of the Seventies it was pretty much the same old bloated parody.

Something like this, from as late as 1981 (gawsh, that's Andy Summers! yet another Cale almost-producee):

And as over-the-top as Cale was through most of that period, and even as genuinely threatening as he could sound, Heartbreak Hotel never really seemed more than a bit of good fun - something to lurch through with some high-concept stage mischief.

But somewhere between playing mit der Polizei and coming out of his lost years, in the less innocent days of good friends, fast women, lots of drugs, and possibly too many studio recordings, somewhere around the time he seems to have hit bottom in '83/'84, he started playing it on solo piano. And no more was this man kidding around.

You can hit this version as being equally over the top, less pleasurable, pretentious, laughably melodramatic without the sense of self-satire that earlier versions had. Hell, audience members start laughing - albeit nervously, this not being what they were used to.

But whatever you think of it, it's hitting an entirely different set of emotional targets now. Like Cale's other piano in extremis songs - Fear and Guts and Waiting for the Man - there's a potent mixture of emotions here. I don't know if it would stand as well on its own without exposure to the Presley version, Cale's earlier and later versions, etc. - but you who haven't heard any of it before can tell me, eh? But IMO it's the definitive Cale version of the song - hell, the most affecting arrangement of the Axton/Durden/Presley song around, says I - and it's not really represented on any albums (John Cale Comes Alive is as close as you get).

But in a radio studio late at night in the winter of 1984, in the middle of an almost unbelievably shambolic performance/forty minutes of weirdness, Cale essayed the unbeatable performance. Anger, resignation, hatred, fear- everything surfaces in it like tongues of flame in a fire. The ending even shut up the annoying radio personality (who, to be fair, was probably panicking at the disaster on his hands). Hear it, if you haven't. Listen again if you have.

Cale gradually gentrified the arrangement, removed the screaming and scenery chewing. The new arrangement, different spins of which can be heard on Circus Live and Fragments of a Rainy Season, is fine - moving in its way, more emotionally resonant than the original - I say this lovingly - wankfest. But it's almost background music now, and doesn't grab you by the balls. I don't think it's coincidence that it's paired with Style It Takes both places.

Subtlety has its virtues, and you can't live like Cale was living in 1984 for very long. But thank God we have recordings of Cale at rock bottom.

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John Cale

[Grab this rare non-album track in beautiful gimped 96kbps mono here! (This one will be up for a week or less, so do it fast.) The song's twists and turns are worth experiencing before you read about them.]

Hey let me tell you 'bout my dream
There isn't really much to tell
At first I'm playing in the Velvet Underground
Then
I'm
speak
ing
Welsh
and
I
can
do
the
double-l

In the same vein as "Autobiography" (better be careful about using the same vein twice!), John Cale's postmodern classic "John Cale" is an examination of conscience, an attempt to evaluate his art, his legacy, his public profile through the eyes of another. Like Autobiography, it puts a humorous and self-deprecating spin on things.

And now I'm on the West Coast all
Fucked up on heroin and speed
And then I'm riding in the back of someone's car
And
I'm
Say
ing
all
these
nas
ty
things
a
bout
Lou Reed
Lou Re-e-e-e-e-ed

(Oh yeah, he went there!) Unlike "Autobiography," though, "John Cale" hearkens back to the pastoral instrumentation of Vintage Violence and the Brian Wilson melodies of his early career. It's a very capable pastiche of Cale's so-called classic period, and it's not unlikely that frustration with the overemphasis on that period leads to the cutting satire of the instrumentation: I mean, sleighbells?!

Nobody can take my dream away.
Nobody can take my dream away.
Nobody can take my dream away.
Away, away, away.

His ability to put himself, as a songwriter, outside himself and look back is stunning.

And then it's nighttime in New York
It's cold and I can see my breath
It's cold. I think I'll maybe stop in for a drink
At
the
White
Horse
Tav
ern
where
I
drink
my
self
to death
to dea-ea-ea-ea-ea-eath

Ah, the classic shocking John Cale ending. He can't be dead, 'cause he's singing the song, but he just killed off his fictional doppelgänger! Audacious and deeply amusing. He rubs in the postmodernism with a final smirking chorus - it was all a dream:

Nobody can take my dream away.
Nobody can take my dream away.
Nobody can take my dream away.
Nobody can take my dream away.
Away, away, away.

If you want a more listenable version, buy the full-quality version (which is actually written and performed by Don Lennon) for pocket change at Amazon MP3 or somewhere else. Laughter, after all, is priceless.

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Waiting for the Man/Augustus Pinochet

AUGUSTUS PINOCHET!
I don't know what I'd have thought if I were in that audience. Cale is doing his usual mid-80s tour thing on "Waiting for the Man," hamming it up, performing it the way he did back then. It's really moving along. So of course he starts rapping about going to Chile in search of the great coffee bean.

Wait, what? Then he starts screaming at Augusto Pinochet? "I CLAUDIUS," he says. Which gives this modern monster of an "Augustus," a man unworthy of such a name, far too much credit. "Have another cup of coffee!" he bids the Generalissimo. "What's the matter, Augustus? Poison? I drink this poison to you, Augustus! I Claudius!"

Most amusingly, he changes the song's denouement - always the highlight of his versions - to a rather different sort of transfixion:

Augustus saiiiiiiiiid
Augustus SAIIIIIIIID
Augustusssssss aaaaaiiiii Claudius
He said-
Don't leave me, don't leave me Clau-
Baby don'tcha holler
Daaaaarling pleeeeeease don't bawl and shout
I'm Catholic too
I'm gonna work it on out
I'm feeling so good, feeling so fine
Until tomorrow
But that's just
Just another

WAITIIIIIIIIIIN
WAITIIIIIIIIIIN
WAITIIIIIIIIIIN

And what can you say to that? Nothing. You just shut up and listen.

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Vexations

John Cale took part in an infamous 18-hour performance of Erik Satie's "Vexations". While there is no recording of that performance (think of all that tape!), a video has emerged that's quite fascinating. Others have called it "astonishing", "jaw-dropping", "priceless." And I can't disagree - try to think of a network or channel that would play this today.

I've mentioned it before, and still don't really know what I think about the thing. It's certainly hypnotic, and enjoyable enough - it has that great late 19th-century crepuscular French mystic mood going, and that's worth something. You can read fascinating notes on the piece by a pianist who performed it in totum with only one partner, or the opaque Wikipedia entry on the piece, too, if you want a variety of nearly baseless speculation.

Try putting it on repeat, and see what you think after 840 playthroughs (to be honest, I'm not sure whether he plays one cycle or three). Volunteer for this experiment by downloading it here. The audience's titters may be distracting at first, but I find that they ultimately blend in well with the music, giving it some texture. God I'm being pretentious. Let me know how you make out, OK?

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Autobiography

I never wrote a song called "Cocaine"
I never wrote a song called "After Midnight"
My name is Cale
You can call me John

Poor John. Forced to differentiate himself - in 1983, for God's sake! - from the other John Cale, the one whose middle initial is J., the one who adopted the moniker "J.J." in the first place to differentiate himself from the Velvet Underground's bassist. It's all very sad.

"Autobiography" was a little tour rave-up concocted for the 1984 European tour and only played at a handful of shows, most notably at the Rockpalast show available in bootleg form in both audio and video. It's pretty shamelessly improvised, with unprocessed lyrics straight from the Cale cookbook ("Hmm, need lyrics - something about Wales! something about incapacitation due to drug use! something about friends!"). It even features shouted chord changes - appropriate enough for the Caribbean Sunset tour. Funnily enough, the riffs don't sound inappropriate for ol' J.J.

Nothing terribly memorable, but it's an amusing little bit of petulance. Have a listen. And, hey, Mr. Cale, happy birthday.

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American Psycho

Oh, it's typical, ladies and gentlemen. Sad, but so typical. We've established that Mr. Cale has written scores for many films: some films good, some not; some scores good, some not; some scores released on album, some not; some popular, the vast majority not. So what happens when he writes one of the best scores of his career for a film that, if not a blockbuster, was seen by millions of people?

Well, of course, the soundtrack album released for the film is your typical "various artists" selection. There are a few score excerpts, but they're voiced over by the titular psycho killer, Christian Bale, who, though f-f-f-far better than many narrators, is still an obstruction to my goal, which is hearing the goddamn John Cale score.

A-and it's a hell of a score. It's a little mushy in the late middle, but starts with a bang and ends the same way. The spirit of Bernard Hermann is here (notably on "The Men's Room") - unique for a Cale soundtrack. The piano figure on "The Ritual," while rather unimaginative, is haunting for what's done with it. On "Packing for Paul" Cale recalls his theme for director Mary Harron's earlier film I Shot Andy Warhol. There's a lot of rhythmic tension throughout - unlike some of his more meandering soundtracks, this is mostly a frenetic and tense experience.

When it slows and calms down, though, the effect is powerful - on "The Office," for instance, the eastern-European-feeling horns give the piece an off-kilter nature that's simultaneously threatening and laughable, while the Ligeti influences on "The Second Time"/"The Bloodbath - The Chainsaw" are more effective for being isolated. The churning strings on "The Police" and "The Wrong Building" lose me out of the context of the film, but the Eastern European folk intro of "The Confession" grabs me again.

The most striking track of the score is "The Day Planner" - the weird vocals (by the Mediaeval Babes) are creepy and beautiful, and the sudden appearance of voice has an impressive transformative effect on the soundtrack, allowing for a transition into the drone and serenity of "The End." "American Psycho (Reprise)" provides a smirking, sprightly, sinister finish to it all.

Great stuff! Of note is an interview Cale did about the score, giving a little insight into how he approaches film composition. Screaming rabbits? Yow. He is into music for interrogations!

Psst... there's something nice hiding in the first comment...

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Empty Bottles

It's a shame that the only official recording of this unknown classic is from the essential, horribly recorded, and shadily published Reed/Cale/Nico album Le Bataclan 1972. "Empty Bottles" does better as a mainstream ballad of loser love than anything else Cale would write, and could have perhaps gone somewhere as a single. So of course he gives it to Leonard Cohen accompanist and "(I've Had) The Time of My Life" singer Jennifer Warnes, whose 1972 album Jennifer he was producing at the time, and never bothers recording it himself. (Jennifer, naturally, would never see reissue or CD release - though a 2007 twofer rerelease confusingly reused the name.)

It's interesting to hear Lou Reed providing lead acoustic guitar work over Cale's rhythm, even if the two sometimes seem at cross-purposes. The instrumental track is pretty unremarkable G/C strummy stuff. What makes the song is the knowledge of the narrator that this relationship is mutually self-destructive, and his commitment to it anyway. The lovely vocal melody helps, especially on the bridge:

And I do love you, against all odds
Though you don't know what I want
We're much poorer than that bottle
More foolish than that wine

John Cale and Miss Cindy of the GTOs would marry that year.

I'd post contemporary indie band The Ladybug Transistor's cover of the song, but it's up for sale on Amazon now. So, have a listen to a speed-corrected version of the Bataclan performance instead and raise a toast to Mr. Cale.

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Model Beirut Recital

When I think about the fine modern people trying to run the world... Well, something must be done about it. Something must be done right now, about the fine modern people trying to run the world. We're whistling in the dark. I'm whispering for a friend. Whistling in the dark again.

(This is not fiction.)

I love Lebanon. I look at photos, or hear my Lebanese buddies reminiscing, and I want to get to know it. But then I always get to thinking about how easy it is for people to start killing their neighbors. A Christian friend of mine is loudly proud of his small role in the civil war, and I swear he gets a tear of joy in his eye from time to time when he remembers his killing days.

But he shares these reminiscences in mixed company: with Lebanese and Yemeni Muslim and Lebanese and Chaldean (Iraqi) Christian immigrants. They've been in the US a long time and have gone through many of the same experiences. They're friends, though politics and religion often leave them regarding each other with an uneasy but more or less good-humored incredulity. In this particular circle, I haven't seen old angers simmer back to life as I have among Serbs and Albanians who are acquaintances in the New World, but it makes me wonder at how the human brain can switch contexts so entirely.

I don't doubt that Tony would gladly pick up a gun again; he's joked (with a seriousness behind his humor) about it from time to time. And I don't understand how you can go out to lunch with people from the same groups you resent that much. But I can't understand what their formative years were like, either. So I listen to them talk, and break bread with them, and think about this civilization thing.

And we all fall down in a model Beirut recital, in that modern Beirut again.

Here's the original, with profane Lebanese intro by a military man Cale met somewhere. ("Beirut, you're a whore and I spit on you.") Here's the 2006 fragment from the Circus Live DVD.

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Frozen Warnings

The Marble Index is, for my money, one of the most difficult records to listen to Cale ever made (well, helped make). It's hostile and atonal, cold in a way the New York 1960s recordings aren't, and relentlessly SLOW - not to mention Nico's voice and melodies are more than usually soporific. It's an album I admire more than I enjoy: Nico's vision is singularly intense and Cale's "arrangements" are some of the most interesting music he's ever written, but I find it almost impossible to identify with the mindset behind it.

The song I most enjoy is the most tuneful thing present, "Frozen Warnings." The vocal melody is a weird blend of Gregorian chant and Indian raga, and shows more movement than most other tracks. The backing music builds up around an organ/viola drone, creating a feeling of suspended animation. I don't know what else I can say - this is hard music to talk about.

Well, here's something. Cale wrote a piano part and performed this in the Nico retrospective film Nico: Icon. Below is a video; here's an mp3 of that performance. Great stuff.

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Child's Christmas in Wales

I can't really talk about John Cale collaborations without talking about Dylan Thomas. It would be a mistake to harness these two oxen together or to put a Cale cart behind a Thomas horse. Still, there's a real sympathy between these two men's work, and Dylan the Elder was clearly an inspiration to our Mr. Cale. A long-lived inspiration - long before he was setting sea poems to music with Brian Eno, Cale was filching a title for the leadoff track of 1973's Paris 1919.

There's no direct connection between the kaleidoscopic short story "A Child's Christmas in Wales" and the equally kaleidoscopic song, only a shared spirit of wry reminiscence upon the wonderful and laughable circumstances of their authors' childhoods. Dylan Thomas references dot the song ("long-legged bait" and something else that escapes me), but it's very much Cale on the whole, with wonderful lyrics that perk up the ear on first listen ("Did he say 'murdered oranges'? Bled on board ship? Huh.") but carry emotional resonance ("Take down the flags of ownership, the walls are falling down.") while keeping a reserve of mystery ("Sebastapol, Adrianapolis, the prayers of all combined...") And only on Paris did Cale write lyrics like "The cattle graze bolt uprightly. Seducing down the door..."

I have to admit, I like the song better in its stripped-down solo piano incarnation. It's unadorned and unornamented, one of the barest tracks in a library of stripped-down recordings. It helps that the vocal on the Fragments version is superb, hitting all the right notes of warmth, scorn, admiration, longing, pity. But at root the song deserves to be heard without the thick coating of instrumentals laid on it in the studio.

In fact, I'd say I like the live version much better, but then you'd think I don't appreciate the warmth and fullness of the studio version, the way the slide guitar and bass and piano and organ interplay to wrap around you like the heat from a fireplace. And I do! I wouldn't trade it for anything. I'm just glad I have both versions to enjoy.

Either version's better with some cognac-enhanced eggnog. Whatever your yuletide traditions and innovations may be, I hope they've been grand. From us and ours to you and yours, best wishes and Nadolig Llawen!

P.S. Here's a little present. Nico sings and Cale does his distorted piano thing at CBGBs in 1979. "There's a lady with class," Cale says appreciatively. And even if her singing's not great here, you know I think he's right.

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Audio file hosting

Speaking of mp3s... I signed up with Google Apps to get hosting for a site. I don't want to abuse their TOS, so I'm going to be deleting anything I post up there within a month at most. I will only post unreleased and well-out-of-print stuff - if anything I post is available in print, digitally or otherwise, please let me know and I'll take it down.

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Secrets

"What do you think is going on here?" the old man said from his chair.
"D'you think this is anything new? Now look here, son. This is just like
it was back in the old days before the last war. Then the politics
changed, the scene rearranged and became how we know now is quo.
Oh, yeah, there were times when everyone smiled and agreed and the
good times would roll, but a heartbeat away was the crime that did
pay - the shot that was heard around the world."

"But nevertheless, there ain't no money," said the kid.

Ah, the magic of collaboration. You take a spoken and entirely un-Cale rant about intergenerational differences, anti-futurism, world war and global change, slam it into a reggae-ish music (with harmonica!), and have a five word chorus come in now and again, and you get the improbably lovable "Secrets." In fact, "improbably lovable" is how I feel about the lumpy, extremely imperfect Last Day on Earth in general - it's not great, but it's charming, absolutely unique, and something only a collaboration this weird could accomplish.

Often nonsensical, often funny, mixing cliche with potent images, Bob Neuwirth is in raconteur mode here. I don't know much about him, except that he recorded a number of albums and was part of Bob Dylan's long-term coterie. But with the sharp and self-deprecating DIY aesthetic he shows on this album, I feel I should find out more. It's odd that he sounds so much like Bob Newhart, though - whom I can't help imagine delivering this rant.

Neuwirth and John Cale provide the chorus vocals, singing the sweet but prickly chorus: "Secrets, secrets, dirty little secrets." I don't know how much input Cale had on the music here - it sounds like him on (terribly outdated) synth keys, but it's not exactly characteristic. In any case, it works with Neuwirth's clipped diction to provide some syncopated appeal. There's not much really that stands out - the guitar tone is nice, and harmonica! on the coda, but otherwise it's more than the sum of the instruments.

The fast patter, the repetition of the chorus verse, the repeated objection by the kid that "there ain't no money" have an incantatory effect that build up over time. I think I didn't much like this track the first time I heard it, but the "Secrets, secrets" bit got stuck in my head anyway - possibly after one listen. It still pops in frequently. Often too (too often, say those in the know) I can't resist quoting "'But nevertheless, there ain't no money,' said the kid" at moments of varying appropriateness around the house and town.

Here's an mp3. I'd really like to know what you (yes, you!) make of this oddity. Try to hear past the sickly synth tone and the prissy production job, if you can.

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Dying on the Vine

It's Día de los Muertos. Why not enjoy a sugar skull with this post?

A note about Robert J. Widlar.

Besides many other distinctions, Bob Widlar was the father of the operational amplifier, an arrangement of transistors and biasing circuits that easily slotted into more complicated circuits, becoming a core building block of the technological revolution of the late 20th century. He did not invent it, but he set the standard for integrated circuit op-amps and designed some of the best and most versatile that have been created. After making Fairchild Semiconductor the leader in the IC market, he started the linear IC division at National Semiconductor.

This is where, over the course of four years, he established a reputation as an excitable boy. He brought a ewe in to mow the lawn. To stop people from raising their voice to him, he created and secretly installed in his office a device called the Hassler, which would echo any noise in the vocal frequency range at a higher frequency, on the edge of the ear's range; as the volume increased, the frequency offset dropped proportionally, making the echo more noticeable, and giving the effect of a ringing in the ears. He smashed nonfunctional components into a fine powder to ensure they had zero chance of causing him trouble in the future.

And then, after that four years was up, he got in his car and drove down to Mexico, to Puerto Vallarta, leaving no forwarding address. He took a single-room adobe apartment, where he could concentrate on his alcohol and write technical papers on electrical circuits without so much as an electric lightbulb around. National Semiconductor sent a mission down to track him and reacquire him. Eventually he signed on as a contractor, but kept his Mexican residence. He died at fifty-three during a demanding jog. He wasn't identified for several days.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled fragment.

I think of Bob Widlar when I hear this song. I don't only think of him - I think of the Katharine Anne Porter novel Ship of Fools, as well, and of Ambrose Bierce, charging down into Mexico despite his age to join Pancho Villa's army, disappearing from the face of the earth.

To be honest, I think of myself. Even though I'm not an alcoholic, nor a gringo in Mexico, nor hanging out among troops and criminals. I don't think it's self-dramatization; there's something about the song that reaches out and pulls you into it. It's an epiphanic moment, a passing instant of understanding crystallized into a song. Despite the very particular scenario, it's a song with a weird universal resonance.

That's a big claim, but consider this: "Dying on the Vine" is a fairly obscure song in Cale's catalog, its definitive version a live take, the studio album entirely forgotten. And yet I have heard from several other people who call it their favorite Cale song. It is my favorite Cale song. It is not his best song, it is not his most characteristic song, but it is the song that most reaches into my chest and clamps down on my heart.

Two albums feature this song: Artificial Intelligence as an inebriated slow-motion dance, a life observed from the bottom of the bottle; Fragments of a Rainy Season as a flood of illumination. The video above comes very close to a perfect hybrid of the two. Of all the versions, the Fragments version (mp3 here) is the most essential; it's the most accessible path into the song. (It's worth noting that the version included on the Close Watch compilation is indeed the Fragments version.) I was very disappointed by the studio version on first listen, but I've come to understand and appreciate it.

It's interesting to think about the choices behind Cale's different approaches to the song: play up the Spanish motif or not? play up the emotion or hide it? emphasize the choruses or the verses? what spin do you put on the narrator? and how much of him is you? I've gone through six solo guitar arrangements of this song myself, and tweaking each of these parameters has a substantial effect on the nature of the song. But the song stands up to everything! There are few songs I've encountered that can stand up to as much resculpting as this one does, and yet it always seems to retain its soul.

I'm not a reliable guide to the lyrics of this song; my interpretation is completely personal and extremely idiosyncratic. Just part of the magic of the song is the sentence fragment in the chorus: "I was living my life like a Hollywood..." A Hollywood what, he doesn't say, but it evokes so many Nathanael West-type possibilities.

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Sabotage

Life is short and love is very sweet.

Why, John, how... romantic!

Look at all the people running for their lives in the street.

Well, I knew that wouldn't last.

What they running from? What they running to?
Goddamnit, ask them! I wanna know, too.

The title track of Sabotage/Live is one of the best songs in the John Cale oeuvre. It is also one of the weirdest songs in the catalog. I mean, it's not very songlike. The chorus consists of the title. The verses are spoken/sung. The various instrumental parts, for the first several listens, seem to have very little to do with one another.

And yet, you put it all together and let it gestate in your mind, and eventually the thing won't get out. If I'm going to be playing something alone with a heavily amplified guitar at 2AM on a Wednesday night, odds are very high it's this. (I'd like to take this chance to apologize to my neighbors.)

Read and destroy everything that you read in the press.
Read and destroy everything that you read in books.
It's a waste of time and a waste of energy.
It's a waste of paper and a waste of ink.
Whatever you read in the books, leave it there!

It's not as if the lyrics are particularly poetic, or tightly written, or sharply observed. I mean, they're striking, but they're also formless and a bit flaccid. ("in books"?) It must be the frenzied way they're shouted. There's malicious intent. Malicious, but morally ambiguous.

There's a word for that:

(For what? Wasting time and energy, paper and ink, you and me? Or leaving what you read in the books there?)

Sabotage!

And yet, I don't know if there's any more glorious moment in Cale's catalog. It's the apotheosis of Cale's confrontational tendencies that first surfaced in his post-VU solo career on the coda of "Fear (is a Man's Best Friend)." With him and Deerfrance screaming "Sabotage!" over a churning set of solo performances: his outlandish bass part, the bizarre lead guitar, the stop-start rhythm of it all.

Military intelligence isn't what it used to be.

The lyrics are striking, and sort of one-of-a-kind. If I had to extract a message from it, it would be that the military industrial complex, aided and abetted by British and American governments up to and including the Thatcher and Carter (???) administrations, had created and perpetuated a climate of fear intended to batter consciences and spirits into submission, cogs sarcy cogs swrking round in the machine. This is hardly an original premise!

So what?! Human intelligence isn't what it used to be either.

(Pardon the American politics, but Cale was a genuine New Yorker by that point: OK, it seems to have been written in the summer of '79, so maybe it was inspired by the Reagan campaign. But Reagan didn't take a lead until the infamous second presidential debate, on October 31, which gave birth to modern-day campaign cliches like "Are you better off today than you were four years ago?" That debate more or less cinched the election for Reagan - his election looked not especially likely until that point.)

Maybe not an original premise, but the implementation is unique in its mixing of carefully parsed New Frontiersman and Foreign Affairs language with atonality and controlled chaos. The arching vocal on

It's a riii-sing expecta-tion! It's a riii-sing of the tides!

is powerful beyond reason. And, what can I say, it's an atavistic, primitive, brutal song.

The wards will discharge all their patients in the street.
Are they hurting? Yeah, they're mine. (???)
There's a word for that: sabotage!

Er, atavistic, primitive, brutal, crazy song. (No idea what that last bit's about.)

All I know is that it tickles my lizard brain like very little else. And that it's a crime against the catalog that it's left off every anthology. And that it should be used as the theme song for the film of Watchmen, whose atmosphere it anticipates brilliantly (provided, of course, that the film is any good). Oh, yes, and that you should hear it. Download here.

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Grandfather's House

Like "Cordoba," Wrong Way Up outtake and One Word b-side Grandfather's House uses lyrics taken verbatim from Spanish in Three Months, a textbook from the Hugo language series. Like Cordoba, "Grandfather's House" seems to tell a story of crime - this time, the story of a white-collar criminal from a good family. It's as detail-oriented as Cordoba, recounting family activities, dinners, flights and scenery. It conjures up a very intriguing story for me: the man, whose grandfather was a magistrate who oversaw the construction of the city's courthouse, embezzled money from his employer (the city?) to relieve his financial woes. I don't know what Cale and Eno saw in the text, but that's my reading. As with Cordoba, many gradations of meaning can be read into this small patch of found text.

Unlike Cordoba, though, it lacks a convincing musical development. It seems as if they couldn't figure out the right way to approach the song, so they just threw their favorite techniques and noises at it: stop-start construction, tinkling synth, electric piano, ethereal guitar, bass, a background drone. The vocal melody steals liberally from Music for a New Society's "Broken Bird," but the performance recalls Last Day on Earth's "Broken Hearts" - unctuous, rich, with an uncomfortable feeling of insecurity (or insincerity?). The song's one transcendent moment: the wordless Eno/Cale duet with viola accompaniment on the middle eight.

Since this track wasn't included on the US release of Wrong Way Up, and since the CDEP is long out of print, I'll post an MP3. It didn't deserve a spot on the album, but it's worth hearing. Enjoy.

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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.

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Eat

This piece, a soundtrack to the film Eat by Andy Warhol, was composed by Cale in the early 90s and, along with its companion, Kiss, was first performed with Moe Tucker and Sterling Morrison at the Warhol Museum in 1994. It was recorded with some revisions the next year, after Morrison's death. I'm regarding it as a single work and only as an audio track, since I haven't seen the film.

The first movement, for pedal steel and 12-string guitar, is a glacial exploration of minor chords. After the first few notes sound in the silence, like a Bach fugal theme, the 12-string plucks through one chord after another, slowly, disconnectedly. An synth or organ interjects "boat horn" sounds (yes, John Cale is on keyboards). Weird, rippling infinite guitar hangs like a canopy over the middle of the movement before gaining its own voice and injecting a new melody into the last quarter of the movement, as the boat horn is silenced.

The transition into the second movement is imperceptible. Suddenly, Cale's voice rings out - the first time on the disc, so it's all the more surprising. The slide guitar gains a more sinister metallic edge, and moves into the back left; the 12-string moves right (but keeps playing the same sort of arpeggiations). Cale's voice hangs at center, the central instrument of the movement.

He dispassionately and thoughtfully reads the parable "Melanethon", by Emanuel Swedenborg, an 18th century renaissance man, amateur mystic/theologian, and accidental founder of a religion. It's an excerpt from Swedenborg's most famous work, Heaven and Hell, detailing the damnation of a theologian for his belittling of the virtue of Charity. In tone, the writing is closer to Kafka or Stanley Donwood than Christ. It's a haunting little vignette.

After the final word ("demons") has passed from Cale's lips, sinister strummed chords sound. You know, like the "dun dun duhhhh" of movie soundtrack cliché. The infinite guitar spirals around like a metallic buzzard. But then the 12-string modulates up, begins strumming nice, comfortable major chords. A violin joins, banishing the slide guitar, and starts singing a pretty song. Soon enough, Moe is adding a light drumbeat and the rest of the strings join. Yes, movement three is an elegant little hot club shuffle. (Well, on downers - this is all very slow music.)

It all fades for the last movement. The slide guitar started singing at the end of the third movement, and it oversees the transition into Cale piano work. It's pensive and graceful and slight, this waltz duet. And then it's over, the audience claps and we can all go home.

I don't know how this music matched a home video of a guy eating a mushroom, but maybe you had to be there. It's interesting that Cale's mentor and nemesis, La Monte Young, did the soundtrack for a group of Warhol excerpts including Eat and Kiss. Perhaps coincidence, perhaps not?

It's interesting music, but the first two movements are a little too loose and the last two are rather conventional. It's fine listening, but it doesn't really stand up to "Kiss." Cale's reading of "Melanethon," though, is definitely worth a listen for Kafka fans and lovers of creepy radio serials. The guy's voice is just mesmerising.

By popular demand, here's the 'Melanethon' segment. High quality flash player, low quality MP3.

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Cable Hogue

SHACKLE AND IBERT (Excerpt)

Shackle: Finally, we'll look at a new Western: Cable Hogue, a Sam Peckinpah remake by Welsh auteur John Cale.
Ibert: He gets his shots in, but does he get his man? Let's see.

Cut to clip:
I just wanted to say goodbye
I wanted so much to say goodbye
I wanted to say goodbye to all my friends
In case I die

Ibert: You know, even with all the remakes in recent years, I didn't think we'd be seeing one of this film. Peckinpah's 1970 original, The Ballad of Cable Hogue, was the director's favorite, but not anybody else's, I think. A fine film, but a minor one.
Shackle: I agree with you there, Reg. This is an odd choice for a remake. Cale succeeds, though, by changing the story in surprising ways. He really makes it his own, especially with original scenes like this.

Cut to clip:
Please don't leave me here... like... this...

Ibert: He took a Romantic film touched by revenge, and turned it into a revenge film.
Shackle: Yeah, he really changed it. Now it feels like Poe. The Cask of Tequila or something.
Ibert: It doesn't seem as original or honest as Peckinpah's, to me.
Shackle: I think its honesty is one of its best characteristics.

Cut to clip:
Something inside me tells me that you won't show
I know you carry heat, but what for God only knows.

Ibert: The most impressive thing to me is that he has a coherent movie that splits its action across three settings. In the setting closest to the original, it's a straight, direct movie Western: barroom piano, guitar, a little bass, lots of clumsy mumbled words. Evocative of the old West. In the next setting...
Shackle: It's like Aeschylus.
Ibert: Greek tragedy, yes. Simple staging, oversized characters...
Shackle: Fate.
Ibert: Fate. And then the third setting, it's modern, it's about how we live now. Technology interferes; there's phased instruments and echoes, a clattering, modernistic drum track - a simulacrum of train wheels.
Shackle: That setting seems forced to me, I have to say. And it's a mistake to end it so slowly - the other settings cut off abruptly. Like life. The majestic guitar solo is way out of place here, and it leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
Ibert: It's a clumsy mistake in the midst of some very high-quality work.

The film as a whole is not as good as its source material, but I give it a thumbs-up. Jean?
Shackle: It has its warts, but it's unique and meaningful. I give it a big thumbs-up.

CUT TO CREDITS

The settings described by my guests were the 1975 original from Helen of Troy, the 1992 solo piano version from Fragments of a Rainy Season, and the 2006 Circus Live recording.

Me, I'm in favor of Greek tragedy. Take a listen to the Fragments version here, or download a low-quality mp3 here.

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Riverbank

Having learned very little about origins or substance of the China attraction, then, let's break this "theme" thing by jetting over to Vietnam. Or Great Britain. Or something. On Riverbank, Cale's major theme seems to be the suffering of those that soldiers leave behind, but the particulars are mysterious.

In concert he claimed the song was about Liverpool, home of shipbuilding and dockyards. On the other hand, the lyrics reference Madame Nhu, the disastrously powerful fascist at the heart of the corrupt and "Catholic" South Vietnamese government. 'Course, he may have been obliquely referring to another legendary Dragon Lady, Maggie Thatcher, but gentlemen never tell. (The comparison, if it exists, is manifestly unfair.) You might think the song was inspired by the Falklands War, but that's impossible: the album Honi Soit preceded the war by a number of months.

So out with historical context! This is a song with a magnificent melancholy and a straightforward first two verses that quickly careens off into "satisfied as heretic vicars" and "foulmouthed pupils, broken heart surgery creatures crawling back inside of you," only returning to the main topic in the last verse. Lyrically, it seems to be another child of the moment, with composed lyrics sitting alongside improvised ones in a marriage made in frustration.

Instrumentally, you can't knock it. A tentative, chiaroscuro piano part starts out the song with a single cymbal being tapped fast. Other instruments encrust the sound before the vocal comes in: organ and restrained bass, then finally guitar. The guitar meanders, a bit randomly but in counterpoint to the vocal melody. It's a committed and sincere vocal from Cale. The structure is funny: though no lyrics are repeated, a chorus-type section comes in once at the end of the first verse, then twice after the second. This "chorus" music, with choppy guitar and martial drumrolls, turns into the middle-eight. Then comes a final verse, and a vocal coda based on the verse music "the stones around their necks are the stones of the riverbank." And an instrumental coda, which sounds awfully like "Hey Jude" and, despite some nice arching guitar lines, doesn't make itself worthwhile. It's a good song but not a great song, and I'm not sure why it occupies valuable space on the only in-print compilation album, Close Watch: An Introduction to John Cale.

A much finer ending was used for the solo-piano renditions of the 1983 tour. Cale sings that same vocal coda with halting piano accompaniment, then ends the song with single-note piano stabs that seem to go on forever. An audience member keeps trying to start applause and Cale keeps playing. It's extremely uncomfortable. Despite the much rougher vocal, this is the version to listen to. I've posted a high-quality MP3 from the show in Hamburg here.

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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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