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A John Cale live concert is nothing short of an
experience. Once you've got past the realisation that
you're in the presence of a true legend, a man who has
had more influence on modern music than virtually
anyone, who was pioneering the classical/rock
crossover before rock'n'roll was out of its infancy,
you usually notice that being in the audience of the
great man is something of an endurance test.
You WILL
sit through three and a half hours of feedback and be
grateful for it and if (if!) you last the distance,
you might get an old Velvet Underground song at
the end of it, if you're lucky and he's in a
particularly good mood. But don't bet on it, and don't
feel short changed if you don't.
This makes Circus Live, a two-disc set that weaves,
wriggles and feeds back through Cale's five decade
career, a tad more user-friendly than the real thing,
as straight away you get rewarded for pressing play
with a droned out, haunting and (dare I say it?)
improved version of Venus in Furs, heading up a
23-song package that covers virtually his entire
career, from the Velvet Underground through his ludicrously
prolific solo career of the early to mid 70s - songs
from Fear, Helen Of Troy, Paris 1919 and Slow Dazzle
are all present and correct - and brief late 80s
reconciliation with former Velvets bandmate Lou
Reed (the Andy Warhol tribute Style It Takes from
Songs For Drella) to more recent offerings from 2003's
Hobosapiens and 2005's Black Acetate.
The trip in time doesn't go back quite as far as
his dabblings in feedback and drone with early
experimentalists The Dream Syndicate, except, of
course, that the music they pioneered is seared all
over this package, from its opening moments to the
final track on disc two, titled simply Outro Drone.
Apart from the two otherwise unnamed Drones,
there's nothing on Circus Live that doesn't have a
home on a previous album but, like actually being
there, that doesn't really matter as Cale's constant
fiddling with songs that you previously thought were
already perfect means that there's something here for
even the most ardent completist to enjoy. He's one of
the few performers from whom "here's one from my new
album" is never a dirty sentence, with everything he
touches sounding as fresh, vibrant and timeless as is
humanly possible.
Highlights? There are of course, too many to
mention. The gentle ballad of Buffalo Ballet, a song
too clever to be simple but too beautiful to be
forgotten; the juxtaposition of this with a hypnotic,
darker and updated Femme Fatale, spliced with
Rosegarden Funeral Of Sores, a song he originally
tossed away on a B-side before Bauhaus rescued
it from obscurity, is in itself a work of pure genius.
So is the ethereal Magritte and the funky stomp of
Dirty Ass Rock And Roll it leads into.
Hanky Panky
Nohow is as sublime and languid here as it has ever
been, and Zen is, as you'd expect, meditative and
wistful. Possibly the weirdest is his Caleised,
virtually unrecognisable cover of the Elvis
Presley standard Heartbreak Hotel, pared down and
sparse until it becomes a paranoid and decaying
midnight lament, tail-ended by a frankly surreal
'thankyuhvermuch', just in case you didn't think he
had a sense of humour. It doesn't get much better than
this.
If John Cale deserves to be lauded for one thing
above all others that he's achieved over his
incredible career it's his ability to sound as avant
garde, as relevant and as challenging today as he ever
has. This is a truly remarkable album from a truly
remarkable man, a real treat that's almost as good as
actually being there. Any live album that achieves
that has really done its work. Brilliant.
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