JOHN
CALE + LIAM YOUNG
Barbican
Theatre, London, Sat 13th Sept
The
selling point of this gig was that John Cale, pioneer of drone music
from his early days in the Theatre of Eternal Music, would be playing
alongside actual drones - buzzing round the auditorium. Something
like Stockhausen's 'Helicopter Quartet', where a
string quartet played inside four helicopters, and alongside their
whirring rotors. Only with scaled-down helicopters.
My
natural assumption that he was returning to those drone roots seemed
confirmed by speed-reading the programme beforehand. The piece was
titled the catchy 'LOOP>>60Hz: Transmissions from The
Drone Orchestra', while Cale's sojourn in the legendary
Velvet Underground somewhat downplayed. Liam Young it seemed was not
a musician but “a speculative architect who operates in the spaces
between design, fiction and futures”, in charge of the overall
concept.
And
indeed things started with Cale strumming an acoustic guitar as a
lead-in to a mounting drone-fest. Stage lights stabbed straight
upwards, like London was expecting another Blitz. The promised drones
then took off, their rotor blades adding to the sound but ebbing and
flowing in and out of your ears as they traversed the auditorium. As
a drone aficionado, I settled warmly into my seat.
Yet
after that initial track, things turned into a much more conventional
set-list gig. Ah well, let's focus on what we got rather than what we
didn't...
As
the set focused heavily on Cale's more recent albums, I kept mentally
comparing it to the last time I'd seen him. So surprised I was to get
home, read that previous write-up and find that in my ways my reaction
was the polar opposite of before.
Cale
chose to stack the ballads early. Now my two favourite albums of his
are both effectively ballad-led, 'Paris 1919' and
'Music For A New Society'. Yet I found this a bit
of a formatting error, with the result something of a slog. They
songs were also mixed in quality, with a rather lacklustre version of
'Half Past France'. If buses are supposed to all
come at once, this became like all your waiting-for-a-buses at once,
and I started to yearn for some scrapes of the viola.
Plus,
though the drones kept diligently taking off and landing again, they
added little to this more song-based material. They were superfluous
or at times actively intrusive, like an over-sized mosquito had
buzzed in the window and now couldn't get out. It might have been
wiser to hold them in reserve until that section was over.
Later,
things picked up and we were treated to a set quite similarly sourced
to the earlier one from Brighton. Though many of the newer songs were
quite splendid, best of all were the radical reworkings of classic
old tracks – a distorted 'Mercenaries' and
'Sanities' set to a lurching heigh-ho Tom Waits
beat. Several tracks I only recognised some way in, 'Sanities'
I only picked up through the words. Then, after not having played a
single Velvets song all night, he closed with an extended 'Sister
Ray', as if rewritten for a disco in hell which neither
closed nor played any other number.
Despite
the common assumption that we fans like to hear old albums intact and
in full, what we actually want is something we
couldn't have heard by simply staying home. It's more interesting to
hear their creators come at them from some new angle.
Though
of course too young for their actual era, I first got into the
Velvets before they were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of
Fame – when they were still a cult act. I can remember when putting
on one of their records was a guaranteed way to clear the room. And
'Sister Ray' seemed the most extreme track by the
most extreme of bands. It seemed less challenging than
disruptive, it seemed to melt down every
assumption you had made about music in order to re-use the materials
in something new.
But
of course it can't keep that shock in perpetuity. It's only by
reworking it, by making it simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar,
that it can reignite. It reminds you of the stunning moment when you
first heard it, while at the same time it's something totally new.
That's what we want. More stuff like that.
So...
the drone-fest didn't happen and the drones themselves were
ultimately not much more than a gimmick. And the gig was uneven.
Well, Cale's career has been uneven. (It's only comparison to Lou
Reed's wildly oscillating musical fortunes which obscures that.) But
the high points flew higher than those drones. If now in his
Seventies, Cale isn't content to lay on his laurels. His brain seems
as active as ever at trying out new things and at reworking old.
KING
BUZZO
The
Haunt, Brighton, Sat 30th Aug
No,
your eyes do not deceive you. That is an acoustic
guitar. And it is in the hands of one of the most
recognisable haircuts this side of Sid Vicious – Buzz Osborne of
the Melvins. (As enthused over here, after their earlier visit to Brighton.) In a not altogether expected development, the man whose spent the
last thirty years presiding over a shotgun marriage between punk and
metal has undertaken a solo acoustic tour.
However,
don't go getting any notions he's decided to show us his sensitive
side. Nick Drake this isn't. He's titled the new album 'This
Machine Kills Artists', in a twist on the Woody Guthrie
quote. And the twist is important. He strikes chords rather than
plucks melodies, while vocals are fulsome and full-throated – often
quite theatrically delivered. There can be quite long instrumental
sections. You could call it 'mighty acoustic' if you had a mind to.
If
anything, it seems more rooted in rock history than the parent band
which spawned it. I took to thinking about how the Black Sabbath/ Led
Zeppelin influence is more apparant on these new songs, just as he
back-announces the last tracks as Melvins numbers. Maybe it's the new
sound which more greatly exposes those influences, like different
chassis being placed over the same engine. It reminds you how all
that music was rooted in the acoustic to start with, though not
always through a chronological journey back to the acoustic blues.
There's all the bombast and swagger here too, and that can be a good
thing. A large part of the appeal of rock music, when you first start
listening to it in your teenage bedroom, is that it seems a means to
finally get the world listening to you.
It's
ambiguous which is in the driving seat - necessity or invention? Did
Buzzo hit upon this new sound and run with it, or was the most
cost-effective way to set up a solo vehicle to make the new combo a
one-man band? He often employs a technique of playing overlaid bass
and lead parts, and a habit of striding the stage like he's trying to
fill the boots of a band. Which might suggest the latter. Then again,
this is a guy whose collaborated at one time or another with pretty
much everybody from the heavier end of music, so volunteers shouldn't
have been that hard to come by.
The
Melvins are of course a band known for their sound. Its like they
built that sound up thirty years ago and have been inhabiting it ever
since. But this new mighty acoustic business, that might be a
narrower base. If the Melvins were a fortress this is more a bedsit.
It works well for each and every track. No numbers come across as
filler. But as the gig goes on it lacks for something in sonic
variety, and each new number starts to feel like another slice of the
same. Its a bit like visiting an art exhibition to find its all of
pencil drawings. You can admire each and every drawing, but part-way
through start to long for the odd splash of colour. In many ways it
marks an adventurous break from business as usual. But maybe its a
sound to visit rather than move into.
Some
edited-together clips, with much audience chat about his wife for
some reason...
Just while we're on this sort of subject... this is a pretty awesome full-length clip of the Melvins/Fantomas Big Band in full assault mode. See how long it takes you to recognise the opening number. I swear I didn't get it until the first line (which happens some way in), whereupon a great big “of course” expression filled my face…
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