We Can Be Weirdos: VU Alumnae

Nico

John Cale

The Time of Your Life vs. No Time At All:

Having recently retired, I veer between two contradictory ideas:

1. I now have all the time in the world, so I will get every Bob Dylan bootleg like my friend Nutboy recommends.
2. I am nearer to the end of my life and time is thus limited. Therefore I must be unrelentingly focused on the best of everything, not in every weird byway.

While my default approach is number one, lately I've been opting for number two.

WYHIWYG vs. WTFITS

Most pop records are pretty straightforward. In the olden days, there was a thing called "airplay", which was needed if a record was to become popular. Thus artists, "encouraged" by the record companies, would try to not scare off DJs, whose motto was "what you don't play can't hurt you". The song had to be short, sweet, and catchy right out of the gate. Thus, the end product tends to be what you expect. They hold no secrets and offer no mysteries. And it's good, even great, sometimes. You get what you pay for. Or, to put it another way, What You Hear Is What You Get (WYHIWYG).

Then there are records that, when you put them on, an unprepared listener is likely to say "What the fuck is this shit?" Call it the WTFITS (pronounced what fits?) Test. I'm not talking about records like Ruby Vroom or Second Edition whose first impressions are quite daunting, but that eventually pull you in. I'm talking about the ones that - after dozens of listens over the course of, ahem, decades - still make you shake your head.

I will never know who the WTFITS GOATs are, but I am aware of some real contenders. In Pop Music there's Pere Ubu and Captain Beefheart. Scratching the surface of Jazz reveals Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman. And out there in Classical Music, there's Steely Dan fave Cathy Berberian. And if there are Country and Western weirdos I don't want to know about them. I don't need Deliverance vibes.

In this series about, well, weirdos, I will try to limit myself to new purchases. Of course, my mind wanders, and now that I mention Pere Ubu I ask myself why I have not gotten anything else by them since Dub Housing in the early eighties? Oh, because that record scored highest-ever (in the Jaybee Universe anyway) WTFITS score with a 10 outta 10. Even Trout Mask Replica (9.5) can't match that. And my one listen to Metal Machine Music reveals it to be only a 9.0, as you get the joke rather early in the proceedings.

My reaction to such music can be perverse. Sonic Youth, for instance, has enticed me to buy at least six albums while not fully satisfying me on any of them. How did they do that? Is it like having an argument with someone and you keep going back hoping to come out on top of the conversation. 

This might explain why, after getting two rather mystifying Ornette Coleman albums I'm tempted to put this on my Christmas list.

But deep, deep (deep) down I realize the really really real reason is that cool people like these albums/artists and I want to be cool, too. Never mind that when I actually meet any of these cool people I guard my wallet and look for the exit. It turns out the cool people I meet via the written word tend to be the same ones I avoid on the D train.

So before I do any further damage I'm pulling out all my WTFITS albums and, before I die, come to some understanding of/with them.

In the meantime, I will look at some new (for me) records that are kinda strange. This time I'll limit myself to two Velvet Underground alumnae.

Nico: The Marble Index (1968)

Take Chelsea Girls, subtract the good songwriters (Jackson Browne, Dylan, Lou Reed, etc.) and add random background noise to announce that it's art. Nico mostly disavowed Chelsea Girls, and here she wants to prove her avant-garde bonafides, so she dragged John Cale - producer and fellow VU alum - into this project. Good soldier John doubled down on the Art with a capital A and thus must accept some blame. I imagine Nico standing erect wearing a Viking hat when "emoting" these tunes (a term I use loosely) from the top of Mt. Bindingsnuten.

If the theme is "life sucks and then you die" that's fine, but don't actively try to make it so. I like a lot of music that could make one want to slit one's wrists but this could take out an entire neighborhood.

It starts off okay, with an off-kilter little ditty that sets the doomy tone. Okay, fine, I'm thinking, you're preparing me. So I get comfortable in my chair and wait. Then she does it again. And again. And so on. 

I will admit that after repeated listenings, a few songs do emerge, but alas, they recede again as the accompaniment (again Cale) is erratic bordering on random. On one song the background adds tension and thus improves things a bit, on another song it just gives the sense of two blind people occasionally bumping into each other in a dark room.

The climax is "Evening of Light", which - as you can see below - belongs in a cheap '70s horror flick. It reminds me of the worst parts of Pleasures of the Harbor and the best parts of The Wicker Man.

And yet, I don't hate it. It just needs a label, like "Warning: Pretentious, Bordering on Silly".

B-

John Cale: Paris 1919 (1973)

Having spent last summer with Lou, I felt it only fair to dip back into John Cale's oeuvre (I always  have wanted to write - but not necessarily pronounce - that word!). I've got his three albums on Island Records, which are good, if not exactly catchy. His 1990 collaboration with Eno is a lot more fun.

Cale, by the way, was born in Wales, was quickly recognized as a musical prodigy, and ended up in America playing with avant-garde luminaries like La Monte Young and Terry Riley, and playing 18-hour concerts as one does. 

He then met Lou Reed and formed the Velvet Underground, playing, among other things viola. After he got tossed out of the band (just Lou being Lou) he went on on to produce numerous artists including the Stooges, Patti Smith, Nico, the Modern Lovers, and Squeeze. And his own solo career would be singularly idiosyncratic without all the Lou Reed nastiness.

This is probably his most accessible record. Quite lovely and way more enjoyable than anything Lou was doing at the time. I guess this is Cale's stab at commercialism, just to show he could do it. But he can't without it coming out weird anyway. How does one recruit half of Little Feat and get them to sink into the mix without a trace? (Well, they do manage to bust out for "MacBeth".) I guess after years of trying to bend Lou Reed to his will (and vice versa) Lowell George was a piece of cake.

It's a bit baroque, rife with literary and historical references. What undermines it is his not exactly unpleasant but kinda shaky voice. He sounds like he's hanging onto the melody for all it's worth, and occasionally falling off. If it were sung more skillfully, it might have been one of the best records of the decade.

Alas, it's only pretty freaking good.

A-

Next: It gets weird(er)