4ZZZ

Music For A New Society. 1982.




Taking Your Own Life In Your Hands indeed! Slow, melodic, haunting, lyrical.
"The children are all leaving school today
Mama said, don't worry, I'll be back one day
The blue men in uniform smiled and waved goodbye
She was hiding those tears in her eyes."

Thoughtless Kind. Keyboard introduction. A machine in perfect metronomic timing. Bleak! Found sounds:- crying, laughter, bagpipes. A swirling soundscape.
"When we grow tired of the friends we make
In case we mean to say something else
Say they were the best of times we ever had
The best of times were the thoughtless kind and does not stop"

Sanities. Cale voice! Mad talk. Intense lyric. Periodic beating drum, a church organ, hard to understand background talk! Demanding. But demanding what? A listen? Rejection?
"She was so afraid
Since her mother, white with time,
Told her
She was a failure."

If You Were Still Around. Cue church organ. Cales plaintive singing.
Morbid organ hanging. He sings.
"Shreds of dread
If you were still around
I'd turn you facing the wind
Bend your spine on my knee
Chew the back of your head
Chew the back of your head
'Til you opened your mouth
To this life"

I keep a Close Watch On This Heart Of Mine. Melancholy but...?
Those bagpipes. The drum beats. Fading to the distance.
"I keep a close watch on this heart of mine
I keep a close watch on this heart of mine"

Broken Bird. Cales voice sad. Always that sadness. A slow song, a sad song.
"Like a broken winged, like a broken bird
She senses every damn thing that's near her
And nothing in the light of day could see how
Her happiness faded away
Her happiness faded away with the night" but then uptempo and almost uplifting but in the end no.

Chinese Envoy. Acoustic Guitar. Viola. Cale sadly sings, more sadness
"She was a princess, much lower than people thought
A master of nothing a mistress of something she thought"

Changes Made. Out of place. Electric Guitar, almost funky, what is going on? Mood shift?
"Cause I'm a lofty man
I'm a hungry man
Gonna be, gonna be, gonna be, gonna be some changes made round here"

Damn Life. (In)sanity restored. Ode To Joy? Like hell! The irony.
"Damn life
Damn life
What's it worth?
Damn life"

Risé, Sam and Rimsky-Korsakov. Risé speaks Sam's words. Almost monotone. Rimsky-Korsakov in the distance.
"I knew a guitar player once, who called the radio friendly He felt a kinship, not with the music so much as with the radio's voice,"

In The Library Of Force. Cales voice, his voice he just talks and talks and that voice and that swirling synth and that freeform guitar and that voice. Always the insaneness of his voice!
"From the Last Day of Language
Beaten
Bludgeoned
Ransacked
Stoned
The Written Word
The Written Word
Written Word
Commands to the Sky to Starve the Sky
And the crawling skin of God"


10/10. 0/10.
5 stars. No stars.
Brilliant. Trash.
Sane or "Cale was clearly nuts" Ask James Young.

"John Cale is a ****ing elitist. He did not like the people he was playing for. He's Welsh, and they're all nasty bastards."
Nat Finkelstein