John Cale - Paris 1919 Poll

"thoughtless kind" is devastating (on both new society and fragments).

Uh and then there's "Chinese Envoy". That destroys me every time that song. Even though the words are sort of nonsensical but then he pulled off the same trick on most of "Paris 1919", y'know, managing to make songs that are lyrically obscure and dense yet incredibly emotional.

yeah whenever i read cale's lyrics a lot of them seem pretty impenetrable on the page, but he makes 'em really resonate. i think he's said that since he grew up speaking welsh, he uses english more as a textural thing...

I don't know if he's ever admitted it but I think Eno's songwriting owes a lot to John Cale, or there are a lot of unintended similarities, something like "Half Past France" on this album reminds me a lot of Eno. Oh, and "Cleo" on "Vintage Violence" always reminds me of "Sound and Vision"!

JC talks about performing this album live , among other things, here: http://www.salon.com/2012/10/11/john_cale_every_time_i_hear_that_record_its_like_listening_to_it_through_gauze/

Also reposting live version of "Dying on the VIne" with Ollie Halsall from other John Cale thread:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et-Gk11mvqM

no I meant DOTV was seamless and did not know it was not by Cale!!

oh also I didn't realize we were talking about a tracks poll, I don't do ballot stuff I'm not up for taking poll participation any further than clickin' buttons

I never liked "Dying On The Vine", it sounded like somebody trying to photocopy every song on Paris 1919 at once

I've never heard that Wyatt Eno Nico Cale live record. Or the other live one, Fragments of a Rainy Season. Any good?

"Fragments" is essential IMO; almost all of his vocal performances on that album equal or surpass the studio versions.

oh yeah? I'll give it a listen this afternoon!

Fragments and the Rockpalast live record from a few years ago are essential. I really like the Circus live album as well.

I never liked "Dying On The Vine", it sounded like somebody trying to photocopy every song on Paris 1919 at once

ok this is contrarianism at its worst you flamboyant goon tie wearer. "Dying" is like the songs on P1919 written by a guy with more road under him who can now do that sort of thing better

Except it was written by Larry Sloman in a pale imitation of John Cale's Paris 1919 period, my man, accuse me of contrarianism all you want but it might just be that I have a different opinion than u

"Chasing ghosts and I don't like it" obv a rip on the ghost chasing of Paris 1919's title track, and afaik Cale to that point had never settled for an opening line with an ending as weak as "I don't like it"
Reference to random place ("Acapulco") check
Reference to a random arty celeb ("William Burroughs") check
"Living my life like a Hollywood"? is there some precedent for this shitty simile? I get it, "Hollywood and Vine" but surely Sloman could've set it up better

my problem with the studio version is precisely because the synth slog calls attention to every blech line

Hey, watch it, I'm posting here.

I want to start a Larry Sloman memorial thread where we write lyrics in the style of x but completely miss the point

Cordoba is where it's at

"Chasing ghosts and I don't like it" obv a rip onn improvement on the ghost chasing of Paris 1919's title track

idk man I'll take the imitation here - at least it doesn't have an "Andalucia/when will I see ya" rhyme and instead has the masterstroke of bitter sarcasm "you can bring all your friends along for protection/it's always nice to have them hanging around." didn't know you were an auterist about this kind thing fg! Cale as lyricist has always been two ok lines for every great one anyway, maybe old Larry should have hung around a little longer

B-b-but where has the iron drum gone?

hidden amongst the cows that agriculture won't allow

there's no possible improvement upon claiming ghosts with an iron drum lalalalalalalalala

I've got one minor complaint about Fragments: Cale settles for percussive playing; he doesn't develop the melodies.

Maybe I'm just more into the guy with a Welsh accent singing archly about Europe than I am into the guy with the Welsh accent singing sarcastically about L.A. :)

I loooooove "Andalucia / when can I see ya" p.s., what a perfect little doo-wop detail, this guy's lyrics are the best when he can be bothered. And I have a hard time believing a human wrote "Paris 1919" title track sometimes, break that song down and it is utterly utterly perfect, in message and setting and the right balance of menace and cuteness.

love fragments so much, if we did a live albums poll it would definitely make my ballot and genuinely annoyed that thing isn't on spotify esp if that means it's out of print. am i wrong or is that also kinda ground zero for cohen's 'hallelujah' becoming a standard? i know buckley and then american idol and shrek are the stages it went thru to its weird status but cale's version was all over college radio and that cohen album was only available on import in the states.

I first heard Cale's "Hallelujah" on the Basquiat soundtrack, and it was the first time I heard it on college radio.

kinda wish cmj chart stats were easier to find (though tbh i've never tried, i just know they're not automatically listed in wikipedia entries like billboard data usually is). sketchy as hell and way less accurate than even normal presoundscan charts but at the very least a good picture of what was being promoted heavily to college radio.

Cale settles for percussive playing

I don't know the whole album, but that's what I was getting at with regard to what I LIKE about that clip of "Do Not Go Gentle" - that it has that early minimalism sound.

am i wrong or is that also kinda ground zero for cohen's 'hallelujah' becoming a standard?

the first time I heard "Hallelujah" was Cale doing it solo live at Royce Hall circa '88 I think

I feel it must've made a mainstream appearance somewhere else before Shrek. It is weird how long I knew who John Cale was but didn't know his solo music aside from that song

Cale chose the verses (out of 44 or so) that we now know as that song

a guy i know i always end up talking about eno and cale w/ at parties mentioned seeing cale solo a few years back and the show was no smoking (before that was super common and before there were indoor smoking bans in athens) and some guy near him lit up a cigarette and almost immediately cale stopped playing and did this deathstare at the guy and let out this gutteral welsh "PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUUUUUUT!", guy said it was mindblowingly terrifying.

the wikipedia article on this turns out to be really good http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallelujah_(Leonard_Cohen_song)

some guy near him lit up a cigarette and almost immediately cale stopped playing and did this deathstare at the guy and let out this gutteral welsh "PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUUUUUUT!"

hopefully while singing the last part of "Guts"

I've got one minor complaint about /Fragments/: Cale settles for percussive playing; he doesn't develop the melodies.

whenever i read cale's lyrics a lot of them seem pretty impenetrable on the page, but he makes 'em really resonate

Yeah his best lyrics for me seems like dreams where the details and signifiers remain obscure but the general feeling pretty eloquent.

Was thrilled when Fragments was released, after having seen Cale play with Chris Spedding in 87 and solo in 88 and having loved the stripped down versions.

Also, Cale's percussive piano playing seems to have had a huge influence on Peter Jefferies.

am i wrong or is that also kinda ground zero for cohen's 'hallelujah' becoming a standard?

Worth keeping in mind that the Cohen song really isn't that old. "Various Positions" was, what, 1984, 1985? So Cale started covering it only a few years later, and it appeared on "I'm Your Fan," which was itself sort of a ground zero of hipster Cohen reappreciation. Obviously there is a book out about this now, too, but "Shrek" (the film) featured the Cale version, though the soundtrack featured Rufus Wainwright. Buckley's version was a big deal, but I want to say only belatedly.

buckley used cale's arrangement too. cale's version is really the only version for me. don't care if it's overexposed at this point. i think it's kind of a miss that cale and cohen have never worked together, seems like it might be a good match. and they probably crossed paths back in the 60s, cohen was super into nico early on, i think.

I bet he was, if you catch my drift.

he remembers her well at the chelsea hotel if you know what i'm saying

they had sex if you grok my meaning

to be serious tho, cohen was a big fan of nico's music around the time of chelsea girl, it seems, going to all her shows etc. never romantically involved.

One woman who resisted his charms was Nico, whom he met at Andy Warhol's club in 1966. "The most beautiful woman I'd ever seen." She said she preferred younger men, but introduced him to Lou Reed, who had some of his books. "We told each other how good we were."

nico was probably like "whooooo eees thees canadian dork?"

lol that reminds me that when cohen met iggy pop he showed iggy this personal ad from a woman looking for a man with "the passion of iggy pop and the sensitivity of leonard cohen" and cohen told iggy "we should find this girl and fuck her!"

haha! all these old rock guys should just have a talk show where they reminisce about girls. filmed live in the basement of the chelsea hotel.

haha and bringing it back to 'hallelujah' (and tangentially john cale) apparently dylan recognized its greatness pretty early and covered it on tour in 1988. and of course this old story:
That ["Hallelujah"] was a song that took me [Leonard Cohen] a long time to write. Dylan and I were having coffee the day after his concert in Paris a few years ago and he was doing that song in concert. And he asked me how long it took to write it. And I told him a couple of years. I lied actually. It was more than a couple of years.

Then I praise a song of his, “I and I,” and asked him how long it had taken and he said, “Fifteen minutes.”

lol yeah that's classic.

dylan's hallelujah seems like a great idea on paper, but the versions i've heard have been not amazing.

Ie fucking terrible