Some Music News - New Releases And Live Gigs

Yo, beloved readership,

FBC! is still dormant for the art part - too busy writing something else to write on here - but we're still listening to music at our headquarters.

So in case you don't know it already, this week Swans has released a major, major record, The Seer while Dan Deacon's America is a pretty epic album (in the literal sense of "epic", it tells a majestic if conflicted story). And Richard Hawley's latest is finally available in the US.

Also John Cale has released a new video* for his upcoming record, the one with the absurd title Shifty Adventures In Nooky Wood.  The first leaked track, produced by Danger Mouse, was kind of meh, whereas this one is pretty good, so I'm getting excited about the record. Hopefully it will be possible to preorder the vinyl from the Domino/US site soon because at 30 GBP + postage it's prohibitive right now. Now please someone, have Cale record the excellent A Day In The Life Of The Modern Cold somewhere. He's been playing this song live for the past few years but alas it is absent from the tracks listing of the new record (out October 1st).

Locally, FYF is happening this weekend and I'm not going (too busy + I hate sets that last only 45 minutes) but with Liars, Dinosaur Jr., The Chromatics, James Blake, John Maus, etc. the line up is exciting, and it's only $89. Metro is running until 2 AM, so if you're fortunate to live near a stop, that's an option.

What else? Oh yes. Patti Smith will play at the Wiltern October 12 (tickets on sale next week). And before that Swans plays at The Fonda on Sept. 11 (and I'll be out of town, snap!).

And this Saturday, there will be a performance by Scott Benzel and Mark Hagen in homage to Mike Kelley, at LAXart.





*I tried to embed the video above, not sure it worked, the html does show up on my dashboard but each time I've tried to upload videos recently they were as invisible as our President being berated by Clint Eastwood at the RNC.

Happy 70th Birthday, John Cale!

Today, Mr. Cale turns 70 and celebrates decades and decades of music making. We at the FBC! headquarters wish him a fantastic fun day and a great time on his upcoming mini-European tour. A new record should be out I believe in May (?) courtesy Domino/Double Six records. If it's as good as his latest EP, we'll be in heaven!

Here's a short selection below of clips from John Cale. If he ever tours near you, don't miss him, he's always good on stage, and he works with the nicest and greatest drummer on the planet, Mr. Michael Jerome Moore (hi Michael!).


Here's an early Velvet Underground experimental track influenced by Cale's time with La Monte Young and  Tony Conrad, Loop:





Antarctica Starts Here, from Cale's most famous record, Paris 1919





Much later on, the song that made me discover John Cale's music when I was about 14 years old, Mercenaries:




John Cale is also a noted composer of film soundtracks (his most famous being for American Psycho), here's Wilderness Approaching, for the movie Paris s'éveille, also on his EP 5 tracks (2003)




Aside from the Velvet Underground and his later collaboration with Lou Reed when they did Songs For Drella, Cale is also a master of covers. Everybody knows his arrangement of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, which propelled into super mega stardom an hitherto unknown song, thanks to Jeff Buckley's histrionic cover of his arrangement. Cale has  also covered Elvis Presley, LCD Soundsystem, Rufus Thomas, Jonathan Richman, etc. Here's his version of a beautiful Nico song, Frozen Warnings.




You probably know that John Cale was born in Wales in a small mining village, Garnant. If you've ever read his great autobiography, What's Welsh For Zen?, you also know that Welsh is his first language, and that he learned English aged seven when he went to elementary school. Here's Cale interpreting a traditional Welsh song, Myfanwy.





John Cale has released many records, produced all the greats (Iggy And the Stooges, The Modern Lovers, Patti Smith, Happy Mondays, Squeeze...), worked with Brian Eno, Phil Manzanera, Chris Spedding and even Phil Collins on drums (yep!) ... and despite such a storied and trailblazing  career never really got the recognition he deserves. 
That hasn't prevented him from continuing and making music. Here's below a clip from his last EP, "Extra Playful", the song Whaddya Mean By That. Super catchy music, the lyrics are probably not his best...  but once you've listen to the song once it morphs into the earworm you'll crave for days. If you can lay your hand on the Black Friday edition of this EP, I particularly recommend you listen to The Hanging.





I hope this will have given you the curiosity to explore his fantastic musical career. We spent a summer doing just that at the FBC! Headquarters two years ago and it was an amazing experience. Lastly, if you would like to wish John Cale a happy birthday, please join his official Facebook page and leave him a note.

We're Vaguely Baaaaaaaack

above, John Cale, Catastrofuk

Hello, beloved and cherished and thinning readership!

I hope you had a great time during FBC!'s latest hiatus. I've been asked yesterday what was going on with FBC! (Hi Jennifer!) to which I answered "nothing". Basically yours truly has been on a lot of deadlines over the last few months, then traveling a lot, then getting rather sick. The "meeting deadlines" and "traveling" were art-related, for some forthcoming publications, etc. but I in fact have seen very little art since the beginning of the Fall opening season in September. For one thing, I've missed all of the PST-related events here in Los Angeles, and I do intend to go see Under The Big Black Sun at MOCA, the shows at the Getty and LACMA, and also the Wallace Berman and Robert Heinecken shows before I travel again in late December. If I have the time I'll write some recension of the shows, but I am currently drowning in paperwork so we'll see.
I shouldn't even be writing this post, but I haven't written anything since mid-October and I'm starting to miss it. It's likely I won't resume any Your Social Life posts until early next year, if only because this blog is an unpaid labor of love and I'm starting to have trouble to keep up. I mean, I just have to turn my back 5 minutes and twenty new galleries pop up in LA (while a dozen other close or merge).

So,  I haven't seen much in Los Angeles recently except the opening yesterday at anotheryearinla, You Are Me which could be relabeled "Stephen Kaltenbach and friends". As you may know I am a HUGE fan of Kaltenbach's work, and the show last night was a mini-survey of sort of his early work, with other lovely works by, among others, Cathy Stone,  David Stone, Peter Coffin, Mark Rodriguez, etc.  I forgot to take my camera with me, so you'll have to trust me on that, but it is a lovely, lovely show of conceptual art that underscores the humor at play in Kaltenbach's work (and the others). Don't miss it!

Outside of LA the only art I've seen was at the Tate Modern where I had the luck to see the Gerhard Richter retrospective, as well as the very beautiful Tacita Dean film in the Hall of Turbines.
A Gerhard Richter retrospective looks like another Richter retrospective, that is a beautiful winner, but if you've seen a half dozen already like I've done, there won't be anything much new save for the white abstract paintings, which are as gorgeous as the gray ones. But, you know, he hasn't started making ugly, "Picasso-at-Vallauris-rediscovered-60-years-later"  vaguely figurative paintings, he's still the supra elegant Richter of old.
The Tacita Dean movie was very short, very beautiful, and also basking in nostalgia. Her struggle to find 16 mm film is well-documented, so I won't say much about that. The movie itself I thought was yearning for the golden age of experimental cinema, and even included the clichéed shot of a moving escalator. It was all about a descending movement (waterfalls, etc) and a little bit sad, with references to modernist images (I thought a bit about Rodchenko). What really struck me when I watched it was the very peaceful atmosphere inside the Hall of Turbines, and the very sweet,  smothered atmospheric quality of the acoustics therein. There's a certain softness to the way sounds don't reverberate much inside such an enormous  and crowded space, which made me think about how interesting it might be (or maybe too challenging?) for composers or musicians to stage something there. Maybe Tate Modern should commission some composers to do live events there? Have they done it already?

The other art I've seen was at the FIAC art fair in Paris, a fair I remembered as really provincial when I was living in France and which has come a long, long way since then. It is now very blue chip, with many NYC galleries (Metro Pictures, Paula Cooper, Chaim & Reid, etc), a few LA ones  like Marc Foxx, etc. I was delighted to see some Analia Sabans at my old friends Praz-Delavallade, and some beautiful Matthew Brannons at a Belgian gallery named after a Matta-Clark piece, Office Baroque. But, aside from this, it's just yet another art fair.

Outside of the art stuff, I also went to two concerts while I was away, and missed another one by The Monochrome Set, because the suburban venue that hosted it moved their gig back to midnight, knowing full well the last subway was at 1.15 AM, and yours truly had to get up at 5 AM to catch the Eurostar to London, so alas it was not meant to be. I'm very happy to hear that they will likely tour in NYC and LA next year, hopefully I won't be traveling when this happens.
The two concerts I went to were John Cale in my hometown, and Pat Fish at the 12 Bar Club in London. I was delighted that Cale played in my hometown, as you would imagine,  but after what happened there I'd be ready to bet he will never, ever play again in Caen.

The thing that first disappointed me was that the venue didn't advertize at all for the concert, no posters, no nothing, no more than one reminder on their Facebook page, not even on the morning of the concert. This, in a  (very provincial) city that boast  of an independent rock radio station (which didn't do much itself in terms of John Cale airplay before the concert, though I may be a bit unfair there because I didn't listen to much radio during the 4 days I was there). Cale played two sold-out dates in Paris in the following 2 weeks, and my hometown is only a 2 hours train ride from Paris, so a bit of advertisement wouldn't have hurt the venue.

Anyway,  in the afternoon before the concert I had the great pleasure of meeting Cale's drummer, the very talented Michael Jerome Moore, who's also a very cool guy in person. It was very gracious of him to spend an hour with me, when he could have had a nap instead, since Cale and his band had spent the night on their bus traveling to my hometown. It was also a bit surreal because Michael and I live in the same city, so it was strange meeting in the small town where I grew up. And where, in my youth,  could have never imagined Cale to play.

That evening, only 150 people had come to the concert. Before Cale and his band came onstage, the local contemporary art center had Guitar Drag projected in the adjoining room, a video by Christian Marclay that is far more superior, IMHO, to The Clock. I overheard a couple of dickheads saying "Oh, contemporary art is so lame, and it cost millions". Fuck you, dickheads, and shitty hometown, I know why I have left you forever.  You sure don't deserve John Cale.
Cale came on stage with his band, and despite the small audience proceeded to deliver an extraordinarily good gig, the second best of his I've seen (best one was Paris 1919 at Royce Hall last year) out of 4, with an incredibly varied set list that mixed old songs ("Big White Cloud", "Captain Hook") and the newest ones from his last EP, (available in the US on CD on Black Friday) as well as that charming and funny oddity, "Satellite Walk".
He seemed to have tons of fun on stage, told us he did, came back for an encore (Chorale, one hell of a beautiful song), and came back after the encore to inform us that while he was playing, someone had stolen his computer and phone from the dressing room. Apparently "someone" had forgotten to lock a back door, which, given the amount of security guards at the venue sounds like a load of bullshit to me, so my money's on a couple of assholes working at the venue taking advantage of their cushy, local-government-supported jobs to rob Cale blind and take off with his possessions (and his manager's). Of course the local police hasn't recovered anything, not a surprise given how they recruit their best and brightest in my home country (you don't need to even have finished middle school!).
I was so very sorry and still am that this is the way some goonies chose to welcome Cale in my hometown. May the Holy Mother of Belphégor punish them with anal cancer and much worse, and my most sincere apologies to Cale and his manager for what these people have done to them.




Later on, I missed The Monochrome Set in Paris, but was rewarded with the very lovely Pat Fish in London, who did a really good short solo gig,  playing some of his own songs,  some covers including one of Max Eider's, and played the song  I was listening to when my train was coming in St. Pancras that very morning, Shirley MacLaine. I owed the gentleman a beer, so I had the pleasure to meet him after his set. I was very shy, so apologies to Mr. Fish for my lame conversation, but really it was lovely to meet him. I recommend my wide and varied readership to hunt down some Jazz Butcher, Wilson and Pat Fish songs and better yet, buy his music and go see him play live whenever possible.



Lastly, this weekend in Los Angeles there are lots of openings, as usual, and I'll miss all of them because I'll be at the Great LA Walk trying to cover the almost 20 miles from downtown to the sea, as I do every year. If I weren't,  the one and only opening I'd attend tomorrow would be the Destroy All Monsters one, so if you go, please pass on my regards to Mike Kelley and Jim Shaw.
Have fun everybody, and thanks for following FBC!

The Fall - Victoria and Leonard Cohen - Queen Victoria

Latest in our weekly summer music series, The Fall's cover of the Kinks classic, Victoria. The Kinks were certainly the greatest British band of the 1960s that ever was (not the Beatles, not the Rolling Stones, not the Who... tho I like all of them!) and it's pretty much foolproof for any band to cover them. The Fall's video is really fun, and their cover doesn't depart much from the original (below).




While I'm at it, and in a totally different register, here's another song about Queen Victoria, titled, strangely enough, Queen Victoria, by the great Leonard Cohen



It was  also covered by the no less great John Cale, but I can't find it on YouTube.

Your Social Life, Bringing You Sparks! And Ann Magnuson and Guy Maddin!

Hello, hello, dear readers, it is a time of wonderment and joy in Los Angeles, as summer is finally upon us, for a long, long time that may stretch into fire season, and also because this Saturday, at 8.30 at the Ford, Sparks are having the world premiere of The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman, with no less than Guy Maddin giving stage directions to quite a few people, including veteran performance artist Ann Magnuson. And, yes, if you wondered, I was going to do a lame joke with Sparks/lighting up the stage/fire season soon upon us, but I'm too lazy for this. Or, more likely, it wasn't going to come out as a good joke. But I am totally fired up for the event, and in case there are some tickets left, they are only $18 so it would be a crime if you were to miss it.

In other visual arts-related news, longtime FBC! pal Peter Wu's exhibition at Galerie Anais is closing on June 30th, and there is an event on Saturday if I'm not mistaken.  And even if I am, go see the show!
Another show closing, one that has a "finissage" as they say is at Greene Park Gallery, tomorrow, for the exhibition Unfinished with the event "The Artist Is Not Present", organized by Warren Neidich. In case you wondered,  "finissage" is a bad French word (i.e. it doesn't really exist in French, we would say "la fin") that some European galleries started to use when having a closing event, in opposition to the French word for opening that does exist this time and that everybody uses in Europe, "vernissage" ("varnishing").  So this is a very laborious way to explain to you, readers who never studied French, that Greene Park Gallery is making a pun on the very title of its exhibition. And one on the Abramovic exhibition at MoMA last year.

Something that is opening this Saturday is the CalArts MFA show, at the Farley Building in Eagle Rock, where Mike Kelley and Michael Smith presented their joint exhibition last year. It's up only for 2 weeks, so if you can't attend the opening tomorrow, like me, make sure to go visit before July 10. A group show is also opening at Richard Telles, Six Pack.

And now, some blog-related news. FBC! is going to be a bit dormant this Summer, because, if you've been going gallery-hopping in Los Angeles recently, you have noticed that LA galleries have started importing a very East Coast habit, the *Summer Show*. It used to be that there was no hiatus around here at all, but these times are over. Instead, what's happening is many non-profit are having their fundraisers and gala, and auctions, etc. which replace openings for all the people involved.
Which doesn't mean there won't be any openings at all this Summer (there will be Taft Green at Human Resources on July 9th, for a start), just fewer than usual. So, I may announce them or not, or maybe I will just perpetuate the Summer tradition I had started last year when I posted some John Cale videos once a week. Incidentally, John Cale is in the studio right now, so hopefully there will be a (very good?) album soon.
I think this year I'm going to do a Summer of videos by The Fall, a band I have never seen live. I feel they *should* come play  in Los Angeles very soon.

Lastly, for those of you who would like to spend their summer working on their dream novel/novella/poetry, etc. and would like to try the first ever Not Otherwise Specified book contest organized by Les Figues Press, please read all the guidelines, write your masterpiece, and send it along with  $25 fee for a chance to have it published by a super rad press, make $1000 in passing and get a book of your choice from their Trench Art series.

And with this, dear readers, let me wish you a great weekend and a fantastic summer!

Your Social Life After The Rapture!

As you may know, at least if you live in the US, the Rapture is supposed to happen this coming Saturday, whoozah! I say, if you live in the US, because curiously, no mention of the phenomenon has arisen abroad, and I do read a ton of foreign media. Apparently they don't have the same Christians overseas, so Jesus does discriminate after all, even though his message was supposed to be one of brotherly love for all*. It's all very puzzling, if you ask me, but I can't wait for Sunday morning to come and go out to count out all the enraptured Christian who will have disappeared. I kinda want to take care of their material goods while they are away, and possibly recycle their assets to buy myself a plane ticket and attend John Cale's French tour in October. I'm sure Jesus would approve.

Meanwhile, while up to 20% of the US population will vanish on Saturday, thus solving our national unemployment problem and a whole load of other issues, life continues for us heathens, with a bunch of very exciting things.

Starting with many galleries in Culver City having openings, with Angles, Blum & Poe, China Art Objects, LAXart and François Ghebaly joining in the post-Rapture exhibitions. On Saturday evening, the event FBC! has been waiting for is finally arriving with the Paul Thek retrospective opening at the Hammer. Paul Thek was truly an underdog during his life (gay, post-Catholic if I remember correctly), and his work was virtually ignored until Mike Kelley wrote about him in the 1990s, then European art spaces organized retrospectives, and finally US institutions followed suit as they always do, and voilà, here we are. Can't wait. Just wishing they had used something a bit less harmless than "the diver" as the title/image for the show. Just look up that relic-style arm above, isn't that appropriate for a post-Rapture exhibition?

These galleries and institutions are all familiar to you, faithful readers, but do you know the Vincent Price Art Museum? I bet you don't, and it's a shame. It sits in East Los Angeles and was founded by the actor Vincent Prince and his wife, and it's reopening tomorrow Friday after a renovation that has been going on for a while.They do a fantastic job with under-privileged youth who would otherwise not really access museums. And, it's been founded by Vincent Price, how rad is that?
Another institution that is a bit under the radar is the Craft And Folk Art Museum (CAFAM), and it's really a place you should visit because it is conveniently located across from LACMA and the Page Museum, and it has an opening this Saturday, too, from 6 to 9 PM.

Something else that can occupy your post-Rapture weekend, after which you can go loot take care of the assets left at enraptured Christians homes, if you can locate them, is music. So, if art isn't what you intend to spend the Rapture weekend with, fear not!
Because something called the Silver Lake Jubilee is taking place, too. I have no idea what this is, except that many local bands are playing. It costs only $5, far less than a lifetime of Christians alms given to so-called Christian non-profit churches, and instead of draining our deficit-laden collective finances with Christian tax breaks, these $5 will go a long way toward a musical and pleasurable weekend. I'm linking to their Facebook events page because I'm told their website isn't live yet.

*I did read the New Testament, admittedly a while ago, but I don't remember anything about discriminating within Christiandom. I mean, if Jesus was OK with hookers, I don't see why he wouldn't be OK with gay people, non-white folks and the like. And I don't see why some Christians would be enraptured while others, non-American ones, wouldn't.

Paul Thek
Warrior's Arm
1967

From the series Technological Reliquaries. Wax, paint, leather, metal, wood, resin, and Plexiglas. 9 x 39 x 9 in. (24.1 x 99.1 x 24.1 cm)Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; The Henry L. Hillman Fund, Mr. and Mrs. James H. Rich Fund, Carnegie Mellon Art Gallery Fund, A.W. Mellon Acquisition Endowment Fund, and Tillie and Alexander C. Speyer Fund for Contemporary Art, 2010.3. © The Estate of George Paul Thek; courtesy of Alexander and Bonin, New York. Photograph by Jason Mandella.

Happy Birthday, John Cale

March 9, 1942, saw the birth of the immense John Cale in Garnant, Wales, the son of a coal miner and a school teacher. The world without John Cale would have been a helluvah lot different and very boring, indeed. Whereas the world could very well continue without Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, the Black Eyed Peas and the Jonases, you know, the prepubescent siblings whose name rhymes with "asses"?

But without John Cale and his talented cohorts, no Velvet Underground, so no indie songs for you, Williamsburg and Silverlake hipsters who think the music started with Sonic Youth  and ended with the split of the White Stripes - it didn't, in fact, but that's another story.

Cale has had the most amazing trajectory, from the musical avant-garde pioneering experiences of John Cage and LaMonte Young to the mythical Warhol's Factory. He produced the first albums of Iggy & the Stooges, Patti Smith, Happy Mondays and load of others.
He  has represented Wales at the Venice Biennial in 2009, has played at prestigious venues, old world theaters and dingy bars  alike,  has issued dozens and dozens of albums spanning all genres from pre-punk, noise, experimental music, contemporary classical music, scored the soundtracks of famed movies (American Psycho), resurrected Leonard Cohen's career by re-arranging Hallelujah (subsequently played to death by reality TV hacks, alas), was Nico's everlasting musical éminence grise, created music to the words of Dylan Thomas and William Burroughs... The list is endless and the resume would put to shame lots of stalwart musicians out there.

In short, he has had a career like no other and he keeps on touring and composing music, but alas hasn't issued an album since 2005. And it's a shame, so let's hope a record company will see the light and will help Cale deliver something fantastic in 2011.

We've been posting a lot of John Cale music on these pages last year, since the Welsh genius graced our shores with a concert at Royce Hall, his only one in the US in 2010 and so far, no other show is planned here in 2011. Which sucks, as Europe is seeing a lot of him these days. He just finished a mini-tour of Portugal, and is going to play at a few festival in Spain, Austria and the UK this Spring. Check up the Primavera Sounds Festival in Barcelona, the line-up is to die for, in passing.

Anyway, since it's already the 9th on the East Coast and in Europe right now, let's wish Mr. Cale a Happy, Happy Birthday and a most excellent health for the next couple of decades or so. May he continue to invent innovative music and rock the house everywhere he plays, and may the gods of Fortune shower him with wealth, because he deserves it much more than, say, Kanye West or the aforementioned and forgettable pimply teenage youth who pollute our airwaves and ear canals without contributing anything remotely interesting to music.
So, dear readers, to celebrate Cale's birthday and help him out to get that wealth thing covered, please buy some of his records* today, or if you are in Europe, book tickets for a festival he's playing at. You won't regret it.






* all of his records are excellent but one is dispensable, IMHO,so it's OK if you don't buy "Walking on Locusts".

A Child Christmas In Wales - Non Sucky Non Christmas Music With No Less Than John Cale

You really didn't think I wasn't going to post any more John Cale this year, did you?

The Committee For The Improvement Of Christmas Music continues its evangelical work with a song that has "Christmas" in its title, more as a homage to Dylan Thomas than as a *real* Christmas song.

This song famously begins the Paris 1919 album, which Cale beautifully played in its entirety at Royce Hall's UCLA at the end of September, the high point of 2010 for this Frenchy.  Here's a bootleg of Cale doing the same song in Brescia earlier this year (with newer arrangement by Randy Woolf), so you have an idea of how it was.

If you're in Barcelona this Spring, Cale does it again at the Primavera Sounds Festival , where other luminaries include a reformed Pulp, Nick Cave's Grinderman, Animal Collective, Belle & Sebastian, Half Japanese, and others. There's also Suicide playing, I have seen them twice, and it's EXACTLY what you would expect.
I hope for lots of good jamming and guests spots for all the musicians and the audience there. Alas, I cannot go, but if you live in Europe the festival tickets are really inexpensive, so I guess a combination of  low-cost flights and cheap hostels can make it a great experience.

Meanwhile, it's still non-sucky non-Christmas music season here at the FBC! Headquarters, so ladies, gentlemen and transgendered readers, enjoy!

Your Social Life, A Free Hammer Museum Interlude and John Cale OBE

Einstürzende Neubauten, Ein Seltener Vogel


It's Thanksgiving holiday, most galleries are closed, and next week they will all be going en force to Miami (for Art Basel, Pulse, etc.) so there's not much going on in Los Angeles until the week after next.

FBC! takes advantage of the hiatus to let you know that rather than go spend the money you don't have on items you don't need on Black Friday, you could make a better use of your time and dough by going to the Hammer Museum today. The Hammer is turning 20, and for the next 20 days the entrance is free, so you can go see the Eva Hesse, Mark Manders, Julian Hober Hoeber and My Barbarian shows, in addition to the selection from the Grunwald Center by Frances Stark (I think it's still up).

Meanwhile, I also want to remind you that Einstürzende Neubauten will be playing 2 dates in Los Angeles next week, at the Music Box in Hollywood on Wednesday and at the Echoplex on Thursday. FBC! will be there, hoping for a great experience. I always heard great things about them on stage, but it will be my first EN concert.

Lastly, congratulations to John Cale, O.B.E, (does that make him the new OBE Wan Kenobi?) who came to pick up his chocolate medal from Prince Charles last week with a tie that matched his hair colors (while, pink and blue).  Cale proves once again he's the real Prince of Wales, as for the medal, some people seem pissed off he accepted it. Me, I think it's pretty cool, maybe he'll be invited to sing Guts at Prince William's wedding, who knows, with Chicken Shit as an encore?
As long as it doesn't distract him from coming up with the new album the world has been waiting for during the last 5 years...

[I don't know where the image of John Cale with Prince Charles comes from, except for the PA watermark. I'll be happy to attribute proper credit if someone directs me to the right source, thanks!].

Your Social Life - This Time REALLY Give A Fig

Everybody's in London for Frieze this week, meaning we're having a peaceful moment to go see exhibitions in Los Angeles. That is, if your  vehicle doesn't keep on dying on you every two days or so, and that, unlike me, you don't spend precious time and elusive cash dealing with it.
This explains, among other things, why your truly is being very absent-minded these days, to the point I totally confused the date for the Give A Fig benefit at LACE in the last blog post. It's this Sunday, so apologies to whoever has been confused by last week's post.

So what's going on in LA this weekend, you will ask me? Plenty of things!
Doug Harvey has a show at the excellent ALIAS bookstore, the branch in Atwater village. It opens tomorrow, 7 to 9 PM, and you can peruse books as well. Harvey also has a show at Jancar next week.

Pearl C Hsiung has an opening at Steve Turner on Saturday, and so does Roger Herman, on Saturday evening, while in Chinatown the excellent Jennifer Bolande has an opening at the no less excellent Tom Solomon.

Thursday next week, Zoe Crosher has a show with Dan Graham (the "space", so to speak, not the artist, and they still don't have a website?)  and at Charlie James, if I understand the press release correctly.

Now, speaking about the LA crowd currently roaming the Frieze art fair, I warmly recommend you go attend two events. Tomorrow you can attend Aleksandra Mir and Assume Vivid Astro Focus book launch party at White Cubicle Toilet Gallery, a.k.a the toilets of the George & Dragon pub. The other event will happen at the exact same location on Sunday where Elmgreen & Dragset will perform "a public act", between 9 and 11 PM.
These are the only two things that make me regret not being in London.

Meanwhile, for the few John Cale nutcases fans now following FBC!, I have the pleasure to announce that our favorite Welsh legend will be performing in Melbourne, Australia for the International Arts Festival, doing When Past And Future Collide (the Paris 1919 + medley) on Saturday, something called Seven Songs to Leave Behind next Saturday and "noises in my head - an intimate evening" where presumably he will talk about his career and there will be a Q&A. The Australians seem to really like John Cale, as you can see, and there's an excellent radio interview here to prove it.

OK, have a great weekend everybody, with tons of art, music, friends and fun.
It all made me nostalgic for Melbourne & Australia, I wish I could go back one day, it's such a fantastic city.

(pics above, Jennifer Bolande, from Tom Solomon's website)

Your Social Life - Give A Fig!

Your Social Life is back in semi-hibernating mode, which have more to do with FBC! being behind in doing the underpaid work that (sort of) pay part of the rent, than with whatever isn't going in on art-wise in LA.
Though I doubt anything can top up seeing John Cale last week, art-wise. I hear our Welsh genius is playing Paris 1919 next week in Melbourne, as well as participating in something called "Seven Songs To Leave Behind", and another event called Noises In My Head, so to my huge readership Down Under (hi mates!), please go see Cale (and have a couple of yo-yo cookies for me, will ya? thanks).
For pictures of that epic  Royce Hall gig last week, please visit the UCLA/Live Facebook page. This man is 68 years old. Amazing, no? He has also the work he made for the last Venice Biennial opening in his native Wales at the National Museum in Swansea this weekend.

Anyway, this week there are a few things going on in Los Angeles, including Encounters I May or May Not Have Had With Peter Berlin at Human Resources, tomorrow at 7 PM or Saturday at 12 PM.
FBC! will try, work permitting, to attend the opening at Las Cienegas Projects, Theroadtohellispaved... a group show, with no less than two additional solo shows by James Benning and Isabell Heimerdinger.

The other opening I almost forgot to mention is the inaugural exhibition of Greene Park Gallery in Chinatown tomorrow, with Charnel House Scraps, a group show that includes FBC! pal Peter Wu. Don't miss it!

Lastly, FBC! will unfortunately miss this because I work on Sundays, but if you're available don't miss Les Figues Press annual benefit/auction at LACE, tickets $15 to $50 depending on when you get them. Readings, performances, art, food and drinks, all of this to support a courageous and cutting-edge avant-garde publisher.

And, if you are in NYC this weekend, don't miss the Matthew Draper opening at Theodore Art. It will be good!

A Night Of Magic - John Cale And Band At Royce Hall

Last night's concert was every bit as magical as FBC! had anticipated, with only one caveat: Royce Hall wasn't sold out. Which might have been due to some unfortunate scheduling snafu, since John Cale was playing on the same night as Pavement/Sonic Youth/No Age at the Hollywood Bowl, and they share the same type of audience. *Of course* the smarter, wiser, savvier crowd was at Royce Hall, while the vulgus pecum went to the Bowl.
I know quite a few people who would have loved to go see Cale, but had booked their Hollywood Bowl tickets months ago. Next time, dear UCLA Live programmers, please be a bit more savvy in establishing your calendar, you will make music fans happy.

So, onto the concert.
Cale came on stage in a neat gray suit, white shirt and dark tie, and started right away after a vague "hi LA" or "nice to see you". He's not known to be chatty on stage, and he didn't fail his reputation one bit.
Instead, he marched on with A Child Christmas In Wales that started off a bit wobbly, but that didn't matter at all because by Hanky Panky Nohow it was obvious it was going to be a great concert.
Cale's voice has deepened with the years and has become truly beautiful, and unlike many band frontmen, he can actually sing and in tune to boot (I'm looking at you Lou Reed, but also at you Blixa Bargeld). Shows you what a real musician can bring to rock'n'roll.

From the Paris 1919 part (the first half of the concert), I think my favorite moments were the arrangements on Graham Greene, with a fantastic horn/brass section from the UCLA Philarmonia, and on Half Past France, especially the beginning. I'm linking to a bootleg video of the Brescia concert so you can have an idea about what Graham Greene sounded like.
 Antarctica Starts Here was as beautiful as you would expect, and he concluded the Paris 1919 first half of the concert with a luscious and bouncy Macbeth.

A few people unfamiliar with Cale's music were surprised at how fast the entirety of Paris 1919 went by, but since the original record lasts about 31 minutes, it wasn't that must of a surprise, especially since Cale isn't given to long talks between songs, à la "and I wrote this song while thinking about blah blah blah one night in 1972 when etc, etc".
Clearly the only thing he's interested in is to get on with the music, and beautifully well he does it.
Everybody seemed to have a good time on stage, including the Philarmonia and its very lively conductor.

A short intermission later, the second half of the concert made up in length for the shortness of Paris 1919 and was equally magical, but in a different way. Cale came back in an untucked white shirt and what looked suspiciously like leather white pants(?) in which he managed to look awesome, bless him. How many 68-year-olds look good in leather pants, whatever the color? Cale does.

He went deep into his back catalog to bring us Hello There, and then a groundbreaking version of Heartbreak Hotel that I hope someone recorded for posterity. God knows how many interpretations of Elvis' hit Cale has done over the year - Hell, I posted 5 different ones in these very pages - but the one he gave last night was breathtaking, experimental in an electronic way (Cale used a vocoder!), but with the heart and soul brought by his band. Probably the most awesome I've ever seen.
I can confirm what everyone says, Cale's musicians are amazing, especially his drummer Michael Jerome (whom you can see later this Fall at Royce Hall again because he's also Richard Thompson's drummer) and his guitarist Dustin Boyer.
If Cale really goes back to the studio soon to bring us a new record, I have fervent wishes he will continue in the vein he's been exploring with that cover of Heartbreak Hotel, definitively the most amazing song he's done last night.

It was followed by Ghost Story with Mark Lanegan on vocals, introduced by Cale as "my friend Mark Lanegan", it was OK, but nothing to write home about, thankfully followed by a very good Ship Of Fool with his other friend Ben Gibbard, who went on to sing Gideon's Bible, the surprise of the evening for me. No Buffalo Ballet, alas. After that, Cale told us "this song has been written by Nico" and he and Lanegan went on with a beautiful rendition of Win A Few.
Lanegan then left and Cale gave us his new, unreleased songs Catastrophic (which I find meh, hey, even geniuses can have a bad day) and then Whaddya Mean, really nice in fact.

The orchestra came back a couple of songs later to help out with a majestic Hedda Gabbler that sounded miles ahead from the album version, and then we had the privilege of getting 2 encores, a kick-ass medley of Gun and Pablo Picasso which should make any indie band that sprouted during the last 3 decades more than envious, proving that at 68 Cale is much younger and creative than whatever crap has come out of Williamsburg via the Midwest (people do *really* listen to The National?).
Jerome and Boyer particularly shone during that part, and Cale was being, you know, pure raw energy and talent.

The second encore was a magical conclusion for the night, with Lanegan, Gibbard and Cale singing Chorale, from the Sabotage/Live album, with a capella parts, that send shivers down our spine and made yours truly a bit teary-eyed.
Pure beauty, indeed.
Cale left with a vague "see you soon", and that was all, and from now on our lives will be as shitty as they ever were until Mr. Cale has the grace to issue a new album and go on tour again (hint, hint).

Thank you Mr. Cale and band, thank you Mr. Randy Woolf for the orchestral arrangements, and thank you the UCLA Philarmonia.

This concludes  The John Cale Song Of The Week Series, otherwise known as The Year When FBC! Went Batshit Crazy Over John Cale's Music.

Next week, back to normal with art crap and all that, meanwhile have a nice weekend ya all, and regret bitterly if you haven't attended the concert yesterday, you missed something historical and beautiful.

Waiting For My Man - John Cale at Royce Hall Tonight

Just a few more hours to wait before the John Cale concert at Royce Hall tonight, which isn't even sold out, unlike his European concerts earlier this month. Los Angeles, you're so lame.
Well, FBC! had done her part to, you know, get you excited about the performance (and lost a shitload of art people readers in the wake of all the John Cale posts, bye-bye, shitload of former readers!), so this will be the penultimate John Cale post - next one will be devoted to the concert review and then that will be all for the 2010 John Cale lovefest on FBC!

To make you patient and salivate until tonight, I'm posting a few Cale covers of the Velvet Underground era "Waiting For My Man". As you can see, no one can scream like John Cale. Above, the 1983 and 1984 Rockpalast concerts.

Below, La Edad de Oro, Madrid, 1986.



See you tonight at Royce Hall, and let's give the man a warm welcome!

And to finish, an abstract video, so to speak, of Cale doing Waiting For My Man earlier this year, I think in Australia. As you can hear, he may be 68, but the man still rocks like nobody.

The John Cale Song Of The Week - Paris 1919

On Thursday, John Cale will grace the stage of Royce Hall and play his mythical record Paris 1919 in its entirety, with the UCLA Philarmonia and with his band. I never had the chance to see the band before but, according to musicians Pat Fish (of Jazz Butcher fame) and Tom Watson (The Red Krayola, Mike Watt and the Missingmen) they are absolutely wonderful. I've been told to pay particular attention to his guitarist and his drummer.
So to keep on celebrating the event, today's John Cale Song of the Week will be the song title of the eponymous album, Paris 1919. Yes, you've noticed I hadn't posted anything from it yet, right? We've been busy exploring his back catalog, and I figured you guys could just go to the concert and discover the album then and there. And hopefully go buy lots of Cale's music after you realize what a genius musician he is.
I'm putting up the original album version above, as well as a recent bootleg of the live version in Brescia (fantastic sound, eh?) below. You will notice that Cale's voice sounds much more beautiful now, but he has lost a bit of his Welsh accent when he sings (but not when he speaks, fear not).

So the way it goes during the concert, Cale and band and orchestra do Paris 1919 first, and apparently they play Macbeth at the end (a bit of a shame as Antarctica Starts Here is  such a great song to end the cycle), there's a short intermission during which everybody madly scrambles for the restroom, the bar, then rushes back because at Royce Hall they do everything exactly on time, so don't come in late people, and then during the second part they do a medley of older and newer songs. I wish he'd do Buffalo Ballet, but it seems Cale hasn't played that one in a while.
There are special guests whose name I can't remember, one is a guy from boring indie band Death Cab for Cutie, if I recall correctly, and the other was on the Nico tribute that Cale organized. I hope they'll guest on the second part and won't spoil Paris 1919. Or maybe they'll play covers of Cale, who knows?




So I'll post one more song on the day of the concert, and maybe a last one Sunday next week to wrap up the series. Meanwhile, you can read a recent interview of Cale here.
If you haven't done so yet, buy yourself a ticket, and see you at Royce Hall on Thursday night! 
And, remember, rumor has it that Cale hates when people take pictures of him on stage so avoid at all costs, since the legend says that he either walks out of stage if he notices someone filming/taking pictures, or, if you're rude enough to use your flash, he's said to threaten to slit the offender's throat, and much, much worse. So, don't disturb our Welsh genius  and his musicians while they are at work, and enjoy the concert.

Your Social Life - Waiting For The Man

Hello, beloved readers, Your Social Life is getting out of semi-hibernation/strike/doing something else to first of all remind you that Thursday next week, September 30th, is the day of John Cale's event at Royce Hall/UCLA "When Past And Future Collide" where he will, along with his band and the UCLA  Philharmonic Orchestra, play his masterpiece Paris 1919 in its entirety. If by now you don't know it, I suppose it means you're desensitized to my relentless pounding and promotion of the Welsh genius.

There are still tickets available, and if you decided to go to the Hollywood Bowl see Pavement/Sonic Youth/No Age instead, it just means you have a very bad sense of priorities.
You can see any of these bands regularly, whereas Cale hasn't played in Los Angeles since 2005, even though he lives here. And LA is the only North American stop for "When Past And Future Collide", your next/last chance to see it will be in Melbourne, Australia, next month. So, go honor a living legend while you still can.

Now that this is taken care of, onto the art stuff. Easy this week: You can either go with the great unwashed in Santa Monica to see GLOW, where the crowd control and budget issues have taken care of the pesky problem of showing too much art (fear not, there's less of it); OR go to Glendale to see the Jan Tumlir-curated Jerry/Jury Rigged at the Glendale College Gallery.

Full disclosure: the idea for GLOW come from the French series of art manifestations called Nuit Blanche in Paris, which started when I still lived there, 7 or 8 years ago.
Thanks to its State support of the arts, France has gone through about 2 decades of public art as entertainment, with not that much of an intellectual investment, so as not to shock viewers and cause funding problems in the future. The premises were noble (bring contemporary art to a wide audience) but the results point to what's about to happen here in the US with all our shiny new public art programs and structures: art with less and less challenging or interesting content, sanitized for an undemanding, if large audience.

So, been there, done that, and yes you get a gazillion people going out at night (good for cafés, bars and restaurants business) but that doesn't translate in a better, more educated, smarter, audience. But it sure prepares people for performers such as Lady Gaga: visual fireworks, spectacular sets,  not much valuable content. 

Which is not to say the art at GLOW will be bad (for example, there's the excellent Celeste Boursier-Mougenot or LA own's Steve Roden), just that it doesn't feel like a satisfying venue for me. I don't really relish the crowd experience, that's all.

Meanwhile, in Glendale... on Saturday evening, you're guarantied a peaceful and smart art experience with such luminaries as Chris Burden, Jorge Pardo, Amanda Ross-Ho, Skip Arnold and the excellent Jennifer Moon, who will be showing for the first time in 10 years her masterpiece, the Facility/the Motherfucker (the Motherfucker is its unofficial name, you need to understand). Don't miss it because you may have to wait another decade to see it again after this.


Before all this exhausting art experiences, should you feel inclined to actually mingle with regular folks, you can attend the Watts House Project volunteer gardening weekend, for which I couldn't find any link on their website, dammit (you can find all the info if you search Facebook, but because of today's FB issues I can't link to the event, sorry).
It's on Saturday at 10 AM, and then on Sunday at 4 PM, 1726-1750 East 107 Street, Los Angeles CA 90002, at the same time as the Watts Jazz And Drums Festival Weekend. The Sunday gardening session will be followed by a BBQ, and if you want to join/help during either (or both) day you need to RSVP to trinidadwhp AT gmail DOT com.
So, not only you will have a nice communal experience like at, say, GLOW,  but you will have had the satisfaction to help a community that needs it,  and you will get to see Simon Rodia's Watts towers.

Have a nice, art-filled weekend folks, and see you next week at Royce Hall!

The John Cale Song Of The Week - The Man Who Couldn't Afford to Orgy

11 more days to wait, and we'll all be able to see John Cale redoing Paris 1919 at Royce Hall!

Tickets are still available, hurry, hurry, as Italian friends who saw the gig in Brescia  (and are not, in fact,  particularly fans of Cale) said it was "intense and magical".

In the meantime, enjoy this week's installment in our ongoing series,  The Man Who Couldn't Afford To Orgy.

Your Social Life Is (Somewhat Vaguely) On Strike

Or, not totally here. Not that I necessarily want to comply with the always excellent Doug Harvey's hope (demands ?) that I totally kick off the art stuff (see comment on the latest John Cale Song Of The Week), but I have other fish to fry this week, and there's too much stuff going on, dammit.

So, quickly, if I have to recommend something this week, it's that amidst the shitloads of openings tonight, yesterday, tomorrow, you go and see the Stephen Kaltenbach show at anotheryearinla (review to come soonish), which opened on Wednesday night.
And then if you go hopping in Culver City tomorrow, please go wish good luck to China Art Objects at its new location.

Pics: short correspondence between Stephen Kaltenbach & Clement Greenberg.

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!".

The John Cale Song Of The Week - Adelaide

This is the last week during which FBC! will be entirely devoted to John Cale, as we'll be resuming our regular "Your Social Life" column mid-week, what with the trabzillion openings scheduled for pretty much every weekend in September.

The John Cale Song Of The Week series will continue until September 30th, when God Cale will give his concert at Royce Hall, and after that, hopefully you will be more familiar with his back catalog and his newer songs and will from now on devotedly buy his music and try to follow his career.
Speaking of Royce Hall, there are still tickets available, but only the expensive ones, which means you will get the best seats!

I just got some echoes from his Paris 1919 concert tonight in Paris at the legendary Salle Pleyel  - it's a concert hall devoted to classical music and the acoustics are great - and it seems people had the time of their life, with comments ranging from "OMG the world can end outside, I don't fucking care as long as John Cale continues playing" to "I don't want this concert to end, ever" and the assorted "John Cale rules" (and a few others based on French puns I cannot really translate, based on Cale's playing keyboards standing up). So, hopefully, it will be as good, or even better, at Royce Hall at the end of the month. Let's give him a warm welcome and with luck he will give us more than one encore.

While in Paris, Cale was interviewed for a very irritating radio show (irritating because of the woman interviewed before him, and because he is obscured by a translator with a grating voice, so you don't hear what he says).
It's all in French, sorry about that, but he does deliver the information that after this tour is over, he wants to go back to the studio and record a new album.
Now the *slightly alarming* part is that this future album will be "a hip-hop record focusing on Japanese anime characters", if the translator didn't transform whatever it is that Cale said.
If it is indeed the case, I sure hope that Cale will be able to, in Jennifer Moon's words "completely renew and transfigure/transcend the genre". Whatever it will be, we're curious here at the FBC! headquarters.

Meanwhile, the difficult choice for today's installment of the John Cale Song of The Week is Adelaide, from his 1970 first solo album Vintage Violence (which also contains Big White Cloud and Amsterdam, two other songs that didn't get the success they deserve).
It's one of his lesser-known songs, one that should also have been a major hit, it's so catchy. I wanted you to experience the lighter side of John Cale, and also give you something that would irresistibly make you smile, hop, jump,  and dance to enjoy this long weekend and forget  that today, you missed Paris 1919 in Paris.

The John Cale Song Of The Week - 5 Times Heartbreak Hotel

That's right, beloved readership (or whatever's left of you after the onslaught of John Cale posts here), this week's installment of our Summer series isn't a John Cale song at all, but his cover of The King's hit.
Or, more accurately, John Cale's covers as the man has the good grace and genius to significantly alter, modify or experiment each time he performs. So today, instead of posting only one instance of "John Cale doing Hearbreak Hotel", I'm posting 5 of them, that's right, 5 for the price of one. Merci qui? Merci Frenchy!


The first one comes from a 1981 Spanish TV show, and in addition to Cale, in all his sartorial splendor (check the bow tie and the cap!) there's also Andy Summers and the dearly departed Olly Halsall (in pink) on guitar . The girl on keyboard isn't Deerfrance, but Zanna Gregmar.





Now the second one is a video collage of two interpretations, back-to-back, one in 1983 and the other in 1984. Don't miss the 1984 one where Cale, completely demented, tears up the carpet. I think it is the Rockpalast concert in Germany, a somewhat recent DVD of which had been released for the enjoyment of the masses (the one Santa Claus would be well inspired to bring me for Christmas).




The third version features Richard Thompson, that's the main reason I put it here, but also for Ivan Gaskell who, in addition to being a very fine art historian and curator, is also a Cale and Thompson fan and occasional reader of this blog.
There's also Shawn Colvin on this version.




The fourth interpretation is in fact the first one, chronologically, where Cale made it the ghoulish, slasher-movie version that beget all the subsequent ones, from the album Slow Dazzle.



Now the fifth (and last, at least for this post) version is part of the series of solo concerts he gave all over Europe in the 1990s, and compiled on the CD and later on the DVD (that Santa could also bring me, please Santa, I've been good) "Fragments of a rainy season". It's Cale at his most intimate, and also during his "officer-priest of the Empire" phase, sartorially speaking.  Not to mention that Cale, now in his sober phase, is much more restrained theatrically speaking, but not so much musically. The piano improvisation is really interesting in that regard.

Now, will Cale play Heartbreak Hotel at his next concert at Royce Hall on September 30? The only way for you to know, dear beloved readers, is to buy your ticket and go!