Why Does This Exist?: "The Man Who Couldn't Afford to Orgy" by John Cale

Oil painting titled "Composition Four - Melancholia" by Raymond Jonson, 1925

I'd heard for a long time that the solo work of Velvet Underground co-founder John Cale was pretty weird, so I got a real surprise when I started buying his '70s-era albums. They were surprisingly pop-oriented and accessible - 1970's Vintage Violence and 1974's Fear were immediate favorites, and songs like "Buffalo Ballet", "Ski Patrol", I Keep a Close Watch", and "Big White Cloud" could easily have been AM-radio hits. That's not to say, though, that there wasn't a bit of weirdness going on with these albums - there's some edgy paranoia in songs like "Fear Is a Man's Best Friend", "Leaving It Up to You", and the crazy spoken-word piece "The Jeweler". And then there's "The Man Who Couldn't Afford To Orgy", a bouncy piano tune about the quiddities of group sex.

I have many questions about "The Many Who Couldn't Afford to Orgy" (which comes from the Fear album), beyond the question in the title of this post. First, why does Cale pronounce the word "orgy" with a hard G, so that it rhymes with "Corgi"? It would make sense if there were a reference to Welsh Corgi dogs in the song, although I don't want to think what kind of orgy that would be. Second, why does he focus on the economics of orgy participation? Is this a '70s cultural thing that I would understand if I'd been there? Was there an entrance fee or an X-drink minimum? Maybe it's not about money - maybe Cale is saying something about not being able to "afford" to orgy from a risk or ethics perspective. Third, are the kinds of "men" listed in the verses supposed to be likely orgy participants? I'd rather not imagine an orgy that consisted of a postman, con man, milkman, butcher, astronaut and curate.

The interjections of the female voice in the song may be the most puzzling part - the woman appears to be a prostitute soliciting on the street, but what does this have to do with orgying? The song almost seems like a song about orgies written from the perspective of a child who is conflating multiple sexual taboos into a single scenario. It's hard to say - I guess the important thing is core lesson here: Orgies can be expensive and aren't for everyone. Words to live by.

"The Man Who Couldn't Afford to Orgy" by John Cale

It's New to Me: Mel by East River Pipe (1996)

Illustration from The Bomb, annual of the Virginia Military Institute, 1920

I like to have variety in the older albums I write about in "It's New to Me" entries, but there are a few distinct threads I've pursued in my back-catalog acquisitions this year - you may have noticed more than a couple write-ups of the Cocteau Twins, for instance. I've also been delving into the Merge Records catalog, and it's been very rewarding. Recently, I picked up a few of the records I was meeting by East River Pipe. I'm self-aware enough to know that my love of East River Pipe stems largely from two things: (1) the "band", composed solely of F.M. Cornog, has a great back-story (which I wrote about last year here) - I'm a sucker for a great back-story; and (2) early East River Pipe single "Make a Deal with the City" has long been and always will be one of my very favorite songs.

Mel has all the things that you'd want from an East River Pipe album: trebly guitar leads, soft-focus synths, tasteful drum-machine sounds, sorrowful melodies, and Cornog's despondent lyrics about down-and-out drunks, druggies, and depressives. It is a little less immediate than the two releases that preceded it, Shining Hours in a Can and Poor Fricky, as the synths take a bigger role here and the memorable guitar hooks are less plentiful, but this same shift creates a better unity between the music and the downbeat lyrics. I was surprised at how the album's two should-be-overlong songs were easily my favorites - "We're Going Nowhere" glides along on dreamy keyboard washes with a soporific feel that's pitch-perfect for the song's title, and "Take Back the Days" has an epic-ness that Cornog pulls off surprisingly well. Of the album's shorter, poppy numbers, my favorite is "Guilty as Charged", which has the album's best guitar hook and a beautiful defeatism in its words, backed by some sighing backing vocals.

Mel isn't my favorite thing East River Pipe has done, but it's pretty darn good. And I'd totally understand if it's Cornog's favorite album, as it's the one that got his big score. After Merge Records released Mel in 1996, EMI signed East River Pipe to a five-album deal. Sounds weird now, I guess, but this was the post-Nirvana '90s. Anyway, they tried to buy the rights to Mel from Merge, and, during the prolonged dispute process, EMI decided to close down its US operations, paying their way out of their five-album deal. Cornog bought himself a house with the money. Couldn't have happened to a more deserving guy, and I think it's admirable that he then went back to Merge and released three more albums with them. I read today that he has another album in the works (the first since 2006), so I'll be keeping my eye out for that one.

"Guilty as Charged" by East River Pipe

Title Fight: "Show Me the Way"

Detail of a Pepsi-Cola advertisement from the Saturday Evening Post, December 12, 1959

Obviously, there is one "Show Me the Way" that towers over the others (and I don't mean the awesome Styx single from 1990). Peter Frampton is, I think, overrated as a guitarist and underrated as a songwriter - "Show Me the Way" is a perfect piece of pop songwriting. Unfortunately, I don't really like either of Frampton's well-known versions of the song - I prefer the cover that Dinosaur Jr. did in 1987 for You're Living All Over Me. I guess J Mascis's guitar heroics suit my tastes better than Frampton's, when it comes down to it. The only thing that bugs me about the Dino version of the song, though, is that tacky drum sound - when the clack-clack snare comes in on the intro, I cringe inwardly. Maybe the perfect version of Frampton's "Show Me the Way" will never materialize for me - let's look at a couple lesser-known songs from 1967 that had the title before Frampton appropriated it.

The Small Faces' self-titled album from 1967 (a.k.a. There Are But Four Small Faces) has a pretty good "Show Me the Way" on it. It's a mid-tempo harpsichord number with a psych-pop sound and a nice pleading melody line. But it's kind of nondescript except for the soaring "Please please!" in the chorus. It's one of my favorite Steve Marriott vocal performances - he could really belt it out on the band's heavier rockers, but I like his sweeter-sounding ballad singing best.

1967 was also the year when Martha & the Vandellas became Martha Reeves & the Vandellas, and the group's first single under their slightly-longer-for-some-reason name was the Top 20 hit "Honey Chile". The b-side to the single was - *surprise* - a song called "Show Me the Way", and, in my opinion, it's as good as its better-known flipside. It starts with a great, insistent drumbeat that could be an instant dancefloor-filler, and Martha Reeves matches this insistence with her desperate-sounding lead vocal. The chorus hook sung by the Vandellas seems unremarkable at first, but I find that it sticks with me after the song ends, and I really like the "You just got dumped - give me a chance" lyric. When you add it all up, I think this one beats the other two by a nose.

Winner: MARTHA REEVES & THE VANDELLAS

"Show Me the Way" by Dinosaur Jr.

"Show Me the Way" by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas

"Show Me the Way" by the Small Faces

It's New to Me: Lullabies to Violaine Volume 2 by the Cocteau Twins (2006)

Illustration from Detective Fiction Weekly magazine, March 1938

I've gradually been accumulating the Cocteau Twins' records and writing about them this year, but few of the albums I've purchased have hit me as hard as my first Cocteau Twins acquisition, the amazing singles-and-EPs collection Lullabies to Violaine Volume 1. It was only a matter of time before I broke down and got the second half of the collection, covering the band's non-album tracks from '93 to '96. The problem is that this second half of the Cocteaus' career was quite different from the first, and the difference is starkly apparent in the two halves of Lullabies to Violaine. And I'm not talking about how the band became more accessible and pop-focused over time, moving away from the otherworldly beauty of their early releases - if anything, I think that Cocteau Twins fans complain about this too much.

I'm referring to how, early in their career, the Cocteau Twins' EPs were top-notch, often surpassing their full-length releases in quality. In the band's later years, the best songs ended up on the albums - as a result, the second volume of Lullabies to Violaine plays much more like and odds-and-ends collection than the first. It's composed of five singles and two EPs - the non-album single in the bunch is a Christmas single that is a fun novelty, and both of the EPs are novelty-ish as well (one is a collection of acoustic tracks and the other is a remix EP). This means that each disc of Volume 2 contains a couple songs that are redundant album tracks, some excellent b-sides, and some filler. The remix EP, in particular, is skippable, and, as good as the Christmas single is, it's a little jarring to hear "Frosty the Snowman" in the middle of a collection of non-Christmas songs.

I don't regret getting the other half of Lullabies to Violaine, though, because it contains some great lesser-known tracks that you won't easily find anywhere else. I've especially enjoyed the b-sides to the "Evangeline" single from 1993. The a-side is one of my favorite tracks from Four-Calendar Cafe, but the b-side "Mud and Dark" may be my new favorite Cocteaus song of all. It balances the band's early dreaminess and later poppy-ness well, with semi-comprehensible lyrics from Liz Fraser. If you find and read the full lyric for the song, though, it becomes clear that the song is much more narrative-driven than most Cocteau Twins songs, retelling the mythical story of Echo and Narcissus - I'll admit that, listening to the song, I never caught that the song opens with the line, "Echo fell in love with the handsome Narcissus". This is one case, though, where understanding the lyrics actually make a Cocteaus song better - the chorus's "echoing" repetition of the lines, "All that remains of Echo is a voice in caves / Still repeating only what others have said," is quite heartbreaking.

"Mud and Dark" by the Cocteau Twins

In Stores Now: Lisbon by the Walkmen

Illustration from 3 Youthful Mariners, published by Peter G. Thomson, 1882

So I'm back in town, and I'm playing catch-up on work and a lot of other things. I also have to play catch-up on some newish releases that I didn't get to write about before my little hiatus, the first being Lisbon, from New-York's Walkmen.

Lisbon didn't do much for me when I first heard it. I think my expectations were skewed a little by the album's title and its teaser track, the excellently woozy horn-laden "Stranded" - I was hoping for an album of world-weary grandeur, and what I got was a dark and largely monochromatic series of after-hours drones. I actually forgot to take this album with me when I went out of town, so I got to spend some time away from it and come back to it with "fresh ears", but my initial assessment remains largely the same.

Lisbon's biggest problem is that it gets off to a really slow start. The album opens with "Juveniles", which would be a nice, bouncy number if played a little faster and with more energy, but it just sounds listless. It's followed by "Angela Surf City", which has a great moment where the full band kicks in to a revved-up chorus, but then it plateaus and coasts from there - this is a problem that Lisbon's first four tracks have. I was especially let down by "Blue As Your Blood", which just needs a solid hook to go with its relentless driving rhythm and looping guitar figure.

"Standed" is where things start to look up for Lisbon, and its followed by a string of songs that is as good as anything I've heard from the Walkmen. "Victory" shows that the band can still get fierce, while "Torch Song" and "All My Great Designs" prove that they can still write a down-tempo song with a memorable hook. And "Woe Is Me" is the album's most "pop" moment, with a more creative arrangement than anything else on the record, with a nice bridge that throws in some unexpected REM jangle.

Like a couple other records that have left me a little cold this year (e.g. Suburbs by the Arcade Fire), Lisbon could have reeled me in from the start with better sequencing, but now I've got it filed in my head as an album that just takes too long to get going. As a result, I don't feel like putting it on as often as other things I've picked up recently. It's got some great tracks on it, though, so I'd recommend checking it out if you like the band - you'll find a couple things ("Stranded", "Woe Is Me") to throw into your "regular listening" playlist.

"Stranded" by the Walkmen

"Disembark, leaving behind what you think you know..."

Silkscreen titled Man Ray by Andy Warhol, 1974

I'm going to be on the road for a little while. That trip to Vegas was so exhausting that I need a couple weeks off, and there won't be any new posts here until I get back, unfortunately. This is the first time I will have missed a single weekday post since I started this blog almost exactly two years ago, so I think I might deserve a short break. Until then, here's a fun song by Aussie indie supergroup the Guild League - there's an odd chord change in this song that bothers me a little every time I hear it. Take a listen and see if you can tell which one I'm talking about.

"Jet-Set Go!" by the Guild League

I Saw a Show! Matador 21: the Lost Weekend (Day 3), 3 October 2010

Photo illustration from Boys' Life magazine, March 1965

Day 3 of the Matador 21 festival was my favorite, I think. My lady friend and I slept in, attended part of the matinee show at the upstairs ballroom at the Palms, and went to my favorite Thai restaurant for dinner. I should have been in an anticipatory haze the entire day, but I think my mind hadn't yet wrapped itself around the concept of seeing GUIDED BY VOICES, my favorite band ever, at the end of the night.

We got to the matinee show in time to see Times New Viking, the super-lo-fi pop combo that I've been digging recently. It sounds weird to say this, but I think that their cruddy production values are really part of what I like about their music, because they don't really do much for me as a live power trio. The songs were very samey-sounding, and I only really recognized a couple tunes, even though I own three of their albums. After their set, though, everyone in the packed ballroom was psyched to see the matinee headliners, New Zealand pop legends the Clean. Members of at least four of the big-name bands were standing antsily around the stage like little fanboys, including GBV's Bob Pollard. It was kind of cool to see, and the Clean really delivered, with a set that included most of the favorites I'd have wanted to hear: "Getting Older", "Odditty", "Draw(in)g to a (W)hole", and others. And they were lovingly curmudgeonly old rockers with great New Zealand accents, so their set was very charming.

After dinner, we got back to the venue in time for Ted Leo, who surprised me with a great set that peaked with a duet of Nick Lowe's "I Love My Label" with the New Pornographers' Carl Newman. Newman's band played next, and were their usual genial selves (except for drummer Kurt Dahle, who appeared to be another of the victims of the venue's spotty sound system). They played a decent set, but it didn't match the energy and the excellent sound mix of the outdoor show I saw them play earlier this summer.

The notoriously stage-shy Liz Phair played a short five-song set after that, reminding the audience of the great songs she wrote a decade ago (before she made a shameless major-label bid to become the next Sheryl Crow). She sounded great and seemed to still have a great deal of affection for those old songs - I'd be tempted to say that she is poised for a comeback, but I can't do that because I've heard Funstyle, her new album. The weekend's second big disappointment for me was the set that followed by Yo La Tengo. Two overlong jams dominated their set - I've never really liked "The Story of Yo La Tengo", and they massacred "Blue Line Swinger" to the point that my favorite part of it was when Guided By Voices guitarist Mitch Mitchell (already well lubricated for his upcoming set) pranced across the stage to break the monotony. The meaty middle of their set had some great moments ("You Can Have It All" and "Mr. Tough" were great), but overall their set was wanky wanky WANKY.

I'm not sure I can capture my feelings for the final headlining set of the weekend by Guided By Voices - some other writer had the right idea when he said that they quickly made clear that they were the band that everyone was there to see. The energy level spiked in that packed-to-the gills venue like it hadn't during ANY of the previous performances as the classic Guided By Voices lineup careened through a nonstop barrage of shoulda-been-hits. I saw this lineup play a free show in Eugene, Oregon on the "Insects of Rock" tour in 1994, and they were amazing then, but they've managed to keep that crazy enthusiasm and momentum since the band fell apart and brought it all back with a renewed intensity. Their standard fifty-song set was trimmed to "just" thirty amazing songs, but it was plenty to satiate a guy who has waited a long time to see THOSE guys play THOSE songs. "I Am a Scientist", "14 Cheerleader Coldfront", "My Valuable Hunting Knife", "Weed King" - every song was extacy and bliss. A great ending to a great weekend.

"My Impression Now" by Guided By Voices

I Saw a Show! Matador 21: the Lost Weekend (Day 2), 2 October 2010

Cover illustration of Liberty magazine, August 18, 1945

Life is a series of small compromises if you do it right. For example, I was only able to go to the Matador 21 festival in Vegas because it was a chance to celebrate the birthday of my special lady friend. As a result, she wanted to do one or two things that weren't watching indie rock bands play - on Saturday, we skipped the matinee show to do some shopping, and we arrived late to the evening show because we had a romantical-type dinner at a French restaurant. Was the langoustine dans une papillote croustillante au basilic better than the sets we missed by Girls, Come, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, and Perfume Genius? Probably - it was a hell of a langoustine!

We got to the Pearl Theatre in time for the beginning of Cat Power's set, and I was psyched to see Chan Marshall come out on stage alone with her guitar to start the show with her hypnotic cover of the Stones' "Satisfaction". We were off to a good start. However, Marshall then set the guitar aside and invited her and of vets to join her for a set of Memphis-flavored covers (with a few Cat Power originals thrown in). As good as her musicians were (I think the drummer was Jim White of the Dirty Three), the set was slick and listless, with Marshall withdrawing into herself and smoothing all the hooks out of seemingly boring-proof songs like Nico's "These Days" and Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams". By the time her set was done, all the energy seemed like it had been sucked out of the venue. I was momentarily concerned that the show was heading into an early tailspin, but then Superchunk took the stage.

Mac McCaughan and company delivered a blistering set that, in the words of the immortal Ian Ziering, "really rocked the house". They played more songs from No Pocky for Kitty than I would have preferred, but I get that they were paying tribute to their biggest Matador release (before moving to their own Merge Records for 1993's On the Mouth). They mixed some mid-era hits into the set, including "Mower", a song I've wanted to hear them play for years, and also did excellent versions of songs from their poppy new LP. Superchunk were in good spirits, their sound mix was great, and they brought ENERGY to a show badly in need of it. Best set of the night by my score sheet.

Spoon played next, and they are workmanlike and dependable, if not exciting as a live band. They also got a really good sound with Jim Eno's drums right up front and Britt Daniel's vocals rattling and echoing at the appropriate moments. Their set didn't include anything from their Matador-released debut LP, but they opened with two tracks from the early Matador Soft Effects EP ("Mountain to Sound" and "I Could See the Dude"), and they sounded great. They did some ambitious numbers like the downbeat "Ghost of You Lingers" and "Everything Hits at Once", and even threw a Jay Reatard cover into the set to recognize one of Matador's recent fallen. People seem harshly divided on whether Spoon is a good live band, but I have trouble having a strong opinion about their competent but low-key live style.

Belle & Sebastian took the stage around midnight, and I started to get excited again. One of the reasons to go to Matador 21 was that there are at least a dozen bands on the bill that will NEVER play a live show in my current state of residence, and Belle & Sebastian is one of those bands. It was a rare treat to catch the Scottish wimp-pop band playing in the US, and they were in fine form in Vegas. Stuart Murdoch was chatty and in the mood for dancing, so they did an uptempo set that covered stuff from the early EPs up through their upcoming album. The three songs from the soon-to-be-released Write About Love were a little limp, but pretty much everything else was note-perfect, from the bouncy rendition of "I'm a Cuckoo" to the bouncy rendition of "Boy with the Arab Strap" to the bouncy rendition of "Get Me Away From Here I'm Dying". They even played an underrated favorite of mine, "There's Too Much Love" from 2000's Fold Your Arms Child... LP.

Best of all, the Belle & Sebastian set was like catnip for my special lady friend and capped off a lovely day for her - she said she wanted to "put Stuart Murdoch in [her] pocket and take him home!" I'm glad she had a good time on Saturday because Sunday night was Guided by Voices night, and I was going to be way too distracted by the PURE ROCK POWER of my favorite band ever to be any kind of romantic.

"There's Too Much Love" by Belle & Sebastian

I Saw a Show! Matador 21: the Lost Weekend (Day 1), 1 October 2010

Cover illustration by David Pelham from Zenna Henderson's Anything Box, 1969

Matador Records has been in business since 1989, apparently, because they are celebrating their 21st year of putting out records. I think the first Matador release I bought was Yo La Tengo's Painful in 1993, a record that it took a year for me to get my teenage head around. Before long, I was buying records by Guided By Voices, Pavement, Liz Phair, and others. So I was psyched when my special lady friend said we could attend Matador's 21st birthday bash in Vegas - three nights of shows with a total of about twenty former and current Matador bands playing at the Pearl theater at the Palms.

The first night of Matador 21 was talked up by many as the big night of the event, with a solid lineup anchored by long-broken-up thrash-pop underdogs Chavez, new melodic hardcore band Fucked Up, Sonic Youth, and the recently reunited Pavement. I have to admit, though, that it was the only underwhelming night of the event for me. The first issue, for which only I am to blame, is that the earliest I could get to Vegas was around 8 o'clock, so I missed most of Chavez's set. What I heard sounded great, though - I hope something bigger comes of this one-off reunion. Fucked Up didn't do much for me, though. For all the interesting musical things they're doing, I can't get past frontman Damian Abraham's growly-shouty vocals - it's just not my thing. I skipped the second half of their set.

My lady friend and I made sure we got back into the theater in time to get a good spot for Sonic Youth, though, which was the evening's big payoff. Their set was just awesome, and they played definitive and fresh-sounding versions of "The Sprawl", "Shadow of a Doubt", and "Death Valley '69." Everything was going really smoothly - the venue was nice, the crowd was polite and enthusiastic (if restrained), and the lights and sound were as good as you'd expect from the pros of the Vegas theater crews. But Pavement left me with mixed feelings, even though they played a great setlist of hits ("Grounded", "Elevate Me Later", "Gold Soundz") and less expected tracks like "Fin" and a kinda-improptu "Pefect Depth", one of my all-time favorites.

Pavement's set was plagued by technical and attitude problems, though. Scott Kannberg was in a sour mood all night, and it was hard to say if his complaints about the monitors and equipment were cause or effect. After playing a really nice version of his "Kennel District", he apologized to the audience repeatedly. Stephen Malkmus also acted oddly, facing away from the band for the entire set and flopping onto the floor like a baby when Kannberg took lead vocals. On the plus side, his improved guitar playing and ability to hit a note made some of the songs really shine (I think I enjoyed "Range Life" as much on this night as I ever have). Nonetheless, it was not the home-run performance I'd expected based on the buzz I'd heard about their current tour - they seemed like a band on the verge of reenacting their first disintegration as a band. They were the only headliner of the weekend that didn't play an encore - in the state they were in, though, I don't think I would've wanted to see one.

"Two States" by Pavement

It's New to Me: Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age by Broadcast and the Focus Group (2009)

Illustration titled "Bats in the Fifth Act of Chushingura" from Sketches by Yoshitoshi, c. 1882

I like UK electro-psych-pop combo Broadcast quite a bit (they're like an android Stereolab), but I don't follow them fanatically. Consequently, I didn't really pay attention when they put out Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age last year - for one thing, it was a collaboration with the Focus Group (aka Julian House), an artist and ambient music guy that I'd never heard of. Also, the release was advertised as an EP or mini-album, a format I'm not wild about. But then I saw Investigate Witch Cults... coming up again and again in online discussions of underrated releases from last year, and people were giving it some substantial praise. I did a little research and found that this "mini-album" is twenty-three tracks, with a run-time of almost fifty minutes. How can you call THAT an EP?

I can tell you how - by being honest and admitting that there's only about twenty minutes of actual song-oriented music on the CD. Based on what I'd read, I bought Investigate Witch Cults... expecting an off-beat, texture-heavy psychedelic pop album. As it turns out, it's definitely texture-heavy and psychedelic, but it's not really a pop album. You could tall it a very, very extended single, with twenty-two throwaway b-sides to the one real Broadcast song found here, the admittedly excellent "The Be Colony". The rest of the album is dominated by minute-long sound experiments - some of them are quite interesting, if not actual songs. The better tracks are those with some vocal element - Broadcast vocalist Trish Keenan has a great voice for this kind of spooky art-pop, and her moans and murmurs lurk in the corners of many of the song snippets. A couple are almost full-formed songs, like "I See, So I See So" and "What I Saw", where Keenan gets a chance to rise above the swirling noise and do some melodic purring.

So, in spite of getting some belated buzz,I think that Investigate Witch Cults... isn't going to hold much interest for someone hoping for a good balance of songs and sound experiments - there's too much of the latter and just a frustratingly tantalizing taste of the former on this release. If this is a jumping-off point for Broadcast to do something with this same vibe in a more "pop" vein, though, I'd be excited to hear that album.

"I See, So I See So" by Broadcast and the Focus Group