12/4/08: Closed, but…

We’re too busy writing about music and film to be writing about music and film, but let’s note that tomorrow is John Cale’s 68th birthday. He’s pretty much a Leftist, but also a rock legend of unusual modesty. Cale’s solo career after the Velvet Underground was every bit as creepy and literate as Lou Reed’s. Unlike Reed, Cale is still capable of making great new music. It’s probably not fair to say that his Sabotage live album is right-wing, but the war-themed collection of new songs was a lot of fun for certain Young Republicans in 1979. The opener of “Mercenaries (Ready For War)” includes this jaunty verse:

    Let's go to Moscow, let's go to Moscow
    Let's go, let's go, let's go to Moscow
    Fight a back door to the Kremlin
    Push it down and walk on in…

Later, “Dr. Mudd” asks what the politicians in D.C. are going to do when China drops a bomb on you. The song doesn’t sound particularly repentant about Nagasaki, either. The CD reissue also includes “Chickenshit,” which was Cale’s giddy attack on band members who’d walked out in disgust when he cut off a chicken’s head onstage. (“I didn’t hurt it—I killed it,” explains Cale.) He thought the punks in his audience needed a shot of voodoo. Punk really needed a shot of Cale, and Sabotage is still the best live album ever recorded at CBGB’s.

 

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