Those seven days since my last entry were the most intense of my life (so far) — and all the more so for Lucy. Discharged and readmitted to hospital twice, I clocked up one 23-hour visit, culminating in the arrival of the Boy, and another 15-hour one a couple of days later. Today has been the first to offer any true respite. I had no appetite for music until now, and heard none except for catching the last half hour of the Gideon Coe show a couple of times. Now here I sit with the Boy asleep in his moses basket, exposing him to his first sides of vinyl.
The title track seemed like it might be giving him bad dreams. Just as well it wasn't the version from Fragments of a Rainy Season, because the way he delivers lines like "When I'm on the prowl, you'd better run like hell" and "We're already dead, but not yet in the ground" is vastly more menacing in that live performance.
Then again there are songs like Emily with its (presumably Eno-originated) waves on the sea shore, which could almost be a baby's lullaby.
Never mind the elements of avant-rock, or the involvement of Eno and the early '70s glam-art clique. Never mind Cale's other associations with the downtown New York scene and early minimalism. There is something about this album that is rooted firmly in the Wales of 1974. The spirits that preside over it are not those of Andy Warhol or LaMonte Young, but of J.P.R. Williams and Gareth Edwards. Though I had no idea who John Cale was until a decade later, the album takes me back to my own childhood visits to our grandparents in Cardiff in the early '70s, where the family would gather round the TV to watch gladiatorial rugby matches. [Update, 14th August: I asked my mum about this memory, and she said my grandparents didn't own a TV until 1981. Wow, not even a black & white?]
I thought then, and later direct experience confirmed it in spades, that rugby was an ugly and incoherent game, except in rare moments like the above. The boy will only be exposed to it when visiting his own grandparents, uncles and aunts. He has, however, already both slept and screamed his way through the highlights programme for the current test match against South Africa.
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