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.

John Cale Song Of The Week - Buffalo Ballet

I was talking recently with a friend (hi, Stephanie!) about how John Cale is the most awesome, terrific, fabulous genius in the entire musical universe, and that's discounting the faraway galaxies we know nothing about. And maybe even there, they wonder why, why he never really met with the planetary success that is his due? Listen to the song above, isn't that freaking beautiful?
After talking to Stephanie, I got curious, thinking I hadn't seen him on stage since the mid-1990s in Paris, and what was he up to these days?

That's where I'm marveling at the power of the interwebs, compared to the times that under-20 youngsters can't have known, when this type of search would have taken digging into the archives of several music magazines and fanzines. Today, in 5 seconds, shazam! I learned that:

1) he was now walking among us, lonesome God in a land of dwarfs, since he apparently lives here in Los Angeles! He left New York to live in the land of surgically-enhanced, vapid Industry types! Which is also the land where Arnold Schoenberg immigrated to during World War II and where the Beach Boys are originated from, so maybe Cale can be happy here, too. That's all the evil we at FBC! are wishing him, to be happy in La La Land.

2) not only that, but he's playing at Royce Hall on September 30! WHOO HOO!!!! Individual tickets available for us, the vulgare pecus who can't afford to become members/buy series, on August 9. You know, everybody in the art world. Seriously, I've told 6 or 7 artists friends since last week and everybody is super excited and wondering how the heck they'll find the money to buy a ticket.*

I only regret it is at Royce Hall, because seats tend to be a bit of a hindrance if you want to move around a bit, and more personally because after being hit in 3 car accidents, seating down in Royce Hall's uncomfortable seats for a while is painful. Quite a bit painful.

Nevertheless, I'm overjoyed to get to see John Cale in LA, that is after I sell my putative first-born in order to afford the ticket. To celebrate (the concert, not the sale of my hypothetical offspring), I propose to upload once a week the John Cale Song Of The Week, to let us patient a bit until September 30.
And, for my Frenchy brethren back home, rejoice! Cale plays at the Salle Pleyel on September 5.

So to kick off the series, let's start with Buffalo Ballet, from the album Fear. If you like what you hear, please go buy the song on iTunes or an old-fashioned CD, so John Cale gets at least 1 or 2 pennies in his pocket. He probably needs them more than, say, Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber.

* I guess that's a reason why Cale doesn't enjoy an interplanetary fame and success: his natural constituency is also chronically un-moneyed.