Music Arcades: Lou Reed and John Cale: Songs for Drella

I remember the day Andy Warhol died. I was doing my Masters in Sheffield, living on a very steep hill overlooking the university. That day I went to the course wearing black, or black and white; whatever I had that approximated to some kind of mourning statement. No one else cared, or even noticed. I cared quite a bit about Warhol's work then, viewing it though the lens of Christopher Lasch's Minimal Self, which I'd read the summer before. Conceptually it was easy to understand.

I don't know why I mention that, because it wasn't Warhol or his death that prompted me to buy this CD. Actually I suspect the reason is that I have little to say about the music itself.

I bought the CD during my mini-obsession with John Cale in the late '90s. I like the bits of the album that are clearly Cale (those Welsh melodies again, and the less concrete lyrics), I don't care much for those that are clearly Reed, and I'm kind of in-between on the parts of indeterminate origin. I assume the Reed stuff is that which sounds like his New York album of around the same time, which I had on tape for while, and tried to like, but failed. The monotone delivery of words that sound like they're trying to be Hubert Selby Jr with musical backing — doesn't do anything for me. There was a time when I was sufficiently seduced by the aura of the New York Scene that I probably knew who Billy Name and Ondine were and what they did at the Factory — but now I've forgotten, and suspect that much of the Scene comprised a bunch of canny self-publicists. And not so canny, in Reed's case.

As usual with all things Cale-related, you'll get more/different/better over at Fragments of a Cale Season.

…

I feel like I've been flagging here recently. Maybe it's the baking city heat, maybe it's the waiting. One day soon, nothing will be the same again. Until then no one is stoking the boiler and we're nearly running out of steam.