they have a style that grates
Oct. 27th, 2021 09:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishTwenty years ago, when prompted to "name an album that is perfect all the way through, no filler," I immediately responded "Songs for Drella."
I just listened to it for the first time in *mumble* years. I vaguely remembered it as being kind of slow and dragging in bits, and maybe not entirely to my taste anymore.
Wrong. It holds up.
Erin and I watched it last week. It's good, I think. Lots of neat split-screening, sometimes with the sound of a recorded interview rolling (sometimes from the sixties, sometimes contemporary) and a Warhol movie portrait of the speaker on one side of the screen.
I'm a John Cale fan from way back and got into the Velvets as a result of that, so there weren't a whole bunch of surprises. The doc spends a lot of time on Cale and on Lou Reed, where they came from, how they got together, how they made that first amazing album as part of Andy Warhol's Factory. It's got less to say about White Light/White Heat, and after Reed fired Cale even less to say about the last two albums as the Velvets turned into The Lou Reed Backing Band. But, you know, the Warhol and Cale stuff is what I'm interested in, and that was well done and neat.
I came into this with a belief that Lou Reed was an egomanic asshole, and I was not disabused of this notion.
There exists a video for the album, which I guess is a concert film; it was released on VHS and is available here on Youtube. The description reads in part "Cale is fantastic on keyboards and viola and for once Reed actually sings and plays well," which is accurate.
I dunno. I don't know how to talk about music, even less than I know how to talk about books or movies. It works for me. It is my favourite John Cale album, narrowly edging out his other 1990 collaboration, Wrong Way Up with Brian Eno. I don't listen to it often but it's maybe more effective for that.
Lou, apparently, remained an egomanic asshole and control freak. He and John kept civil long enough to do the Velvet Underground reunion concert in 1993, and then never worked together again.
That movie... that movie. It is probably not, objectively, a good movie; it's certainly not an accurate depiction of Jean-Michel Basquiat's life. But it's still compelling. It's why I started following Jeffrey Wright and Claire Forlani, it got me interested in Warhol. And the soundtrack... the last track was Cale's cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," which was enough to send me down the John Cale rabbit hole.
He's been prolific since leaving the Velvets but his stuff tends to be obscure and go in and out of print. So it was another few years before I tracked down a copy of Songs For Drella.
Listening to the album again just feels like the late nineties, living in a rundown four-bedroom apartment with Mandy and Justin and Kym later replaced by Vond, next door to Emily who basically never slept at her place. Late nights with Jonathan and Stephen, role-playing games with whoever run by whoever. Road trips to DC or Origins, a box of CDs to hand, making other people listen to Cale's "Pablo Picasso" or "Heartbreak Hotel" (yes). And sometimes, just sometimes, putting on "Songs for Drella" and listening to it all the way through.
I'm not that guy anymore, and I'm mostly glad for that, but sometimes he had really good taste.
I just listened to it for the first time in *mumble* years. I vaguely remembered it as being kind of slow and dragging in bits, and maybe not entirely to my taste anymore.
Wrong. It holds up.
This is a rock group called the Velvet UndergroundI only know Todd Haynes as the director of I'm Not There. I've not seen this but I am told it's sort of a biopic of Bob Dylan, with multiple actors, including Cate Blanchett, playing Dylan. So I guess I shouldn't be too surprised that he made a documentary on the Velvet Underground.
We show movies on them, do you like their sound?
Erin and I watched it last week. It's good, I think. Lots of neat split-screening, sometimes with the sound of a recorded interview rolling (sometimes from the sixties, sometimes contemporary) and a Warhol movie portrait of the speaker on one side of the screen.
I'm a John Cale fan from way back and got into the Velvets as a result of that, so there weren't a whole bunch of surprises. The doc spends a lot of time on Cale and on Lou Reed, where they came from, how they got together, how they made that first amazing album as part of Andy Warhol's Factory. It's got less to say about White Light/White Heat, and after Reed fired Cale even less to say about the last two albums as the Velvets turned into The Lou Reed Backing Band. But, you know, the Warhol and Cale stuff is what I'm interested in, and that was well done and neat.
I came into this with a belief that Lou Reed was an egomanic asshole, and I was not disabused of this notion.
The trouble with personalities, they're too wrapped up in styleAfter Andy died, Lou Reed and John Cale collaborated (their first collaboration since White Light/White Heat) on a 1990 album called Songs For Drella, subtitled A Fiction. It's sort of a bio of Andy in bits and pieces, and sort of Lou and John processing their grief and anger and pain at Andy. It's a bare-bones production: Lou, John, Lou's guitar, John's piano and occasionally viola.
It's too personal, they're in love with their own guile
There exists a video for the album, which I guess is a concert film; it was released on VHS and is available here on Youtube. The description reads in part "Cale is fantastic on keyboards and viola and for once Reed actually sings and plays well," which is accurate.
I dunno. I don't know how to talk about music, even less than I know how to talk about books or movies. It works for me. It is my favourite John Cale album, narrowly edging out his other 1990 collaboration, Wrong Way Up with Brian Eno. I don't listen to it often but it's maybe more effective for that.
Lou, apparently, remained an egomanic asshole and control freak. He and John kept civil long enough to do the Velvet Underground reunion concert in 1993, and then never worked together again.
It's a Czechoslovakian custom my mother passed on to meTwenty-five years ago this past summer, Steph and I showed up late to the movie theatre in Dupont Circle. We clumsily made our way past seated moviegoers to our seats, where I proceeded to explode a packet of Reese's Pieces all over the place. We were there to see Basquiat, because it had David Bowie playing Andy Warhol, and we came in in the middle of the "suicide hotline" montage, so we had basically no idea what was going on.
The way to make friends, Andy, is to invite them in for tea
That movie... that movie. It is probably not, objectively, a good movie; it's certainly not an accurate depiction of Jean-Michel Basquiat's life. But it's still compelling. It's why I started following Jeffrey Wright and Claire Forlani, it got me interested in Warhol. And the soundtrack... the last track was Cale's cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," which was enough to send me down the John Cale rabbit hole.
He's been prolific since leaving the Velvets but his stuff tends to be obscure and go in and out of print. So it was another few years before I tracked down a copy of Songs For Drella.
Listening to the album again just feels like the late nineties, living in a rundown four-bedroom apartment with Mandy and Justin and Kym later replaced by Vond, next door to Emily who basically never slept at her place. Late nights with Jonathan and Stephen, role-playing games with whoever run by whoever. Road trips to DC or Origins, a box of CDs to hand, making other people listen to Cale's "Pablo Picasso" or "Heartbreak Hotel" (yes). And sometimes, just sometimes, putting on "Songs for Drella" and listening to it all the way through.
I'm not that guy anymore, and I'm mostly glad for that, but sometimes he had really good taste.
no subject
Date: 2021-10-28 10:24 am (UTC)Just butting in to say I would love to hear The Pet Shop Boys do an end-to-end cover version of this album. (Which is the sort of crazy thing they sometimes do.) Anyone got Neal Tennant's email address?
no subject
Date: 2021-10-28 05:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-10-28 02:54 pm (UTC)Reading your post makes me nostalgic for the tiny bit I was part of that scene, and a tiny bit regretful at the choices I made about where I spent my time. (I know, I know water and bridges and shit)
So here's to John and Lou and Andy and Art and process and shit.
no subject
Date: 2021-10-28 05:29 pm (UTC)Cheers.
no subject
Date: 2021-10-28 02:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-10-28 05:27 pm (UTC)In case you're a) not kidding and b) curious: The Velvet Underground are the band about which Brian Eno said "they only sold about 5000 copies of their first record, but everyone who bought one went on to start their own band." Sort of the epitome of "commercial failure but highly influential." Lou Reed, lead vocalist and songwriter for the Velvets, went on to some amount of fame and radio play; you've probably heard his "Walk on the Wild Side".
The band started out as a collaboration between Reed and John Cale, a classically-trained Welsh violist who moved to New York in the early sixties and got involved in some deeply experimental music with the intellectual heirs of John "4'33" Cage. The band got more or less adopted by Andy Warhol and became his house band. Reed fired Warhol as their producer/manager after their first album, and then fired Cale after their second.
There's no particular reason you should have heard of John Cale. He went on to produce a bunch of rock albums and record a bunch of his own, but never really had any kind of mainstream success.
Jean-Michel Basquiat was a graffiti artist and later painter in NYC in the eighties; died of a heroin overdose shortly after Warhol's death. There was a movie about him, which, again, is probably not actually good but which had a disproportionate impact on young Tucker.
no subject
Date: 2021-10-28 06:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-10-30 01:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-10-30 04:26 am (UTC)