The John Cale Song Of The Week - Thoughtless Kind

Hello happy readers,

Hope you're having a swell time in Los Angeles,  post-openings. Yours truly only went to Ruben Ochoa (very good, as always) and Lari Pittman (ditto, but overwhelming, love the very early works on paper) and that will be it for this week, as I have too much work to do to go out tomorrow. In passing, I think I screwed up re: Steve Roden opening date at the Pasadena Armory Center For The Arts (that was tonight, ha) and I totally forgot the openings at 6150. Oh well.

Meanwhile, lest we should forget (ha, ha! like we would, right) that John Cale will be playing Royce Hall in exactly 19 days, here's today's installment of The John Cale Song Of The Week, Thoughtless Kind, from Music For A New Society, my all time favorite Cale record, and yes, certainly the bleakest and most depressing of all. If you thought Joy Division was somber, try John Cale. Music For A New Society was released on the excellent ZE music label, and also contains my favorite version of Close Watch.
Thoughtless Kind is said to be reflecting Cale's feelings toward his fellow Velvet Underground band members who kicked him out, at Lou Reed's behest, the latter wanting to go, ahem, more commercial, or is it less experimental?

In any case, it's a perfect song to reflect on falling outs with friends, or "un-friending" people on Facebook for the modern version, and also, why not, on the best behavior to show in the art world when one has fallen foul of the Establishment. Right?

Now, I have to confess that when I started the "John Cale Song Of The Week" series, I hadn't realized that the concert would be something like 15 weeks away, and that I would have to sustain that series for so long. Luckily, Cale's back catalog is so big and there's so much quality in it that I never run out of good songs to put on the blog (I've been toying with the idea of putting some of the crap too, but that will wait for another time).
I've always liked his music (hell, I bought Sabotage/Live when I was 14), but as I was telling friends tonight (hi Mark! hi David!) I was never the sort of fan to own all his records, nor to obsessively collect and track down every snippet of info about him, his band, his career, etc.
So it's been very pleasurable to explore his career and listen a bit more carefully to his songs over the Summer. Now I have even more respect for him, in addition to really loving his music, and I sure hope Los Angeles, his recently adopted hometown, will give him a warm welcome when he plays Paris 1919 at the end of the month, and that we'll emulate Paris and Brescia by having Royce Hall sold out. There are still tickets available, hurry, hurry, so you can tell your future grandkids "I was there!".