John Cale - Paris 1919 Poll

this live show is gorgeous. not sure about the guitar solo on "Child's Christmas" but most of it is close to perfect. Cale's voice sounds great these days ...

love the Femme Fatale/Rosegarden Funeral of Sores mix, which I guess he's been doing for a while now?

^^ yes, by the time the live set was over i was not digging all that guitar at all.

kinda digging the psych-y guitar on Half Past France tho. Kind of unexpected.

always kind of hated this album but I feel like shit right now and it sounds great

I'll probably love this album forever now or something

hopefully!

http://www.uclalive.org/calendar/event_detail.asp?id=15

Cale rocking the soul patch

would love to see paris 1919 live.

$15 UCLA students, damn that's a steal

yeah, no kidding. kind of cool -- i think the original Paris was recorded with the UCLA orchestra

Go see this. It was fantastic at the Royal Festival Hall. Some songs are improved by the new arrangements - Half Past France almost had me in tears.

wish I could :(

I am hoping he brings the live show to NYC. It would be crazy if he didn't right? RIGHT?

right

also be pretty surprising if there wasn't an album released out of these shows ... Royal Festival Hall bootleg is great.

i would have voted andalucia.

"Andalucia" is knocking me out lately, in particular the melody of the vocal on "Andalucia, when can I see you". I am leaving you in a day and a year too, or at least I hope so, I love you.

I'm sorta caught in this album right now: it's kinda songwriting-by-Baedeker (Paris, Barbary, Dunkirk, Andalucia, Dundee, Berlin) but that speaks to me, looking backward but not inward.

yeah i have no emotional connection to this album whatsoever but it's still one of my favorites of all time because it's so damn pretty

gonna go with "andalucia"

Efficiency efficiency they say

this is the best album ever

yes

Thirded

Half Past France knocking me out all over again today

this is the best album ever

yes

would've been 'andalucia' for me

"there's a law for everything / for elephants that sing to keep / the cows that agriculture won't allow"

Cover art has always helped support the atmosphere of this record for me -- the arch Euro feel, the orchestral sweep, the pastoral elements.

s clover otm

always heard it as "elephants that sing to feed" imho iirc

I love you

"Macbeth" sucks though

this (like a lot of Cale's albums tbh) strikes me still as about 2 great songs and a bunch of interesting ones

I agree. He's an A- artist, i.e. at least two tracks with fascinating arrangements and lyrics that don't cohere.

"endless plain of fortune", imo.

could have sworn the amazing I Keep A Close Watch.. was on this.

More like 4 great songs per album IMO. Absolutely hate at least 1 song per album though.

At least it runs a modest 30 minutes or so. These days there are 78 min monsters with only two or three good tracks. But I pretty much love everything on this one and "Fear" (esp. the latter's ballads!). After that he descends into a description in line with Aero's.

xxp now THAT song i think is extraordinary, emotion breaking through his archness. "big white cloud" with those blown speakers breaks through that wall as well.

slow dazzle is really consistent, imo, it's that dumb long track with eno at the end that sucks.

for me the thing is that the best ones on any given Cale album tend to be among the best songs you'll hear that year. British Passport is not a spectacular album, but "Dead or Alive" is a monolithic fucking TUNE. Artificial Intelligence doesn't cohere at all, but fuckin' A, "Dying on the Vine"? I'd shave several years off the end of my life to write a song that good.

aero: I prefer this version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeFYJdW3xDg

the Fragments of a Rainy Season version of Close Watch is the definitive one for me

Christ that lyric is seamless. Seamless.

Wrote on "Macbeth" just now:

http://thisiheard.blogspot.com/2013/07/john-cale-macbeth-1973.html

(Sorry, that post was a little unclear. I think I fixed it OK.)

I used to feel the same way but recently started picking up his back catalog an album at a time as i come across them and, damn, i fall more under his spell as I take in each album as an entire work. his debut album, which i always just sort've liked, has really grabbed me. the same thing happened with "Honi Soit" and "Music For A New Society" last year. I'm on the lookout for 1919 next.