John Cale Paris 1919 Rar Free For Much

As I explained to him, I was trying to keep my thoughts brief and feared overstaying my welcome.

Ive had the album, in its cover featuring a harsh, black-and-white, scary yet serene closeup of Cales large-featured face sitting in front of my stereo for the last month.

One day I even sat at the piano - an instrument I cant really play - and easily plucked out the chords and basic licks in each song.

It was a good way to get further into the slightly overlooked sibling of the classically trained Cales influential and universally acknowledged masterpiece and rock snob rite of passage, the sly, elegant Paris 1919.

Few album covers better represent the music thats contained within that the cover for Fear.

After the backstory of his founding of the Velvet Underground, which followed time spent receiving classical training and later studying under avant garde composer LaMonte Young (perhaps the most referenced artist in rock criticism that rock critics have never actually heard thanks, RTH), the leadoff track of Fear, Fear Is a Mans Best Friend follows Paris 1919 in intermediate studies in the artist.

I wont bore you with further cut-and-pasted details, although some of them, such as Little Feat backing up Cale on his acknowledged masterpiece, are fascinating for folks like myself, folks who cant get enough of this stuff, right down to the participation of rocks forgotten street poet, Garland Jeffreys, on Cales solo debut, Vintage Violence.

I will waste no further words, and get back to the trick that Fear s title track ( click and wait out final 25 seconds of the previous song on a WFMU broadcast to listen ) pulls off: it far outdoes John Lennons Mother in kicking off an album with rock n rolls long-sought primal scream intensity.

When the genre of rock n roll was created, surely one of its objectives was to allow yon teens an outlet for letting the world know just how crazy and mixed up their inner lives were.

Combine this with existential philosphy, Freudian analysis, and a Neanderthals sense of reggae rhythms on the chorus, and youve pretty much got the recipe for Cales very own Scream.

Throughout the album, Cale receives major contributions from Roxy Music-pedigreed guitarist Phil Manzanera and knob- and perspective-twiddler Brian Eno.

Even the mellow songs, of which there are a handful, have that sense of menace.

When he sings, in the stately Buffalo Ballet, the refrain of Sleeping in the midday sun., a less-than-peaceful sleep is promised.

The third track in, Barracuda, is pushed along by a grotesque walking bassline and is punctuated by an oddly placed, descending synth run that comes and goes at just the right time.

Its another song that confidently - and almost gleefully - bodes bad tidings.

John Cale Paris 1919 Rar Free For Much

This is getting at whats made this album so right for me over the years.) Manzanera, under the meddling fingers of Eno, is allowed to run free for much of the album, and thats always a good thing.

Over the rollicking barroom piano-led rhythm track, Manzaneras guitar wails through all levels of filtered devices.

Too often, in albums that would follow Fear, Cale meaning business would mean Cale exhorting a lot of overwrought horseshit.

Maybe its that sound, a sound that has much more with Roxy Musics For Your Pleasure than any other Cale album or Cale production.

So, I procrastinated in writing what I had hoped would be a profound and informative piece on John Cales Fear.

However, as I come to terms with the knowledge that the ocean will have us all, as I play this album, as I learn that theres a time to deflate the balloon I work too hard to maintain, I take solace in and celebrate the dark visions that are put across on this album at just the right pitch for my sensibilities.

I always thought Fear was the canonical Cale album -- maybe just because I took those Christgau books too seriously -- and I love it, still come back to it.

For some reason, it took me years to try any other Cale albums; these days, I like Slow Dazzle just about as much.

A friend called me on the lack of the Thompson appearance too.