max abelson's super groovy music video spectacular

#512: chrissie hynde (with nick cave) - i’ll stand by you (bbc, 1999)

it’s wrong that the 80s gets all the power ballad attention. with no disrespect to every rose has its thorn, it was in the 90s that stephanie seymour walked down axl rose’s aisle for ten and a half minutes while aerosmith outdid all the gems on get a grip with an interstellar slow jam. and then there’s the pretenders’ monumentally under-appreciated i’ll stand by you: this performance includes the velvet underground’s john cale looking on and nick cave slightly messing up key changes, plus there’s a joke about oasis. and god bless chrissie hynde, who came close to starting a band with the clash’s mick jones and marrying the kinks’ ray davies, but could beat both in arm wrestling.

#487: frank zappa & the mothers of invention - sleeping in a jar (1969)

today i enjoyed a frank zappa album for the first time ever. before he’d seemed annoying and jazz major-ish, like you could tell he’d suffered asthmatic sinus problems as a child. but i bought a 99-cent lp of we’re only in it for the money (from bleecker street records, which, as of this week, no longer carries 99-cent lps, an unbelievably bad decision that i sincerely hope they reverse). the music lives up to its excellent yellow cover, sgt. pepper-aping inner sleeve, and free cut-out insert. it would make for a great musical adapted by john cale, randy newman, and van dyke parks. this video happens to be from a year later, but it’s excellently reminds me of madvillain’s meat grinder. on the other hand, i may not listen to all of we’re only it for the money for another four months, so maybe all this is just the long thanksgiving weekend talking.

#402: lou reed & john cale - style it takes (from songs for drella, 1990)

if this sounds like hallelujah, only with no allusions to the old testament and a lot to pop art, it’s because john cale was a year or so away from making leonard cohen’s song famous when he and lou reed recorded songs for drella, their warhol eulogy. style it takes isn’t just soft and sweet, it gets nostalgic and furious—it’s downy but a downer, the combination that makes hallelujah so good. but leonard cohen’s song is probably better, what with its references to biblical coitus and all.

#277: john cale - hallellujah (1992)

9 albums from 1969 i’ll listen to 40 times in 2009 to mark their 40th anniversaries:

1. the velvet underground’s the velvet underground: even though john cale (above) had just left the band, this not only has super-delicate candy says and pale blue eyes, but tuba-thumping after hours.

2. leonard cohen’s songs from a room: a very long-faced jew plays a jew’s harp and some tunes about jews, birds, and butchers. if only leonard cohen had written hallelujah back in the 60s, then john cale could’ve covered it with the velvet underground, and then everyone’s heads would’ve exploded.

3. fairport convention’s unhalfbricking: get yourself a father like mine who saved his fairport convention LPs and kept them spic and span, and then go and listen to percy’s song until your heart bleeds.

4. bob dylan’s nashville skyline: tonight i’ll be staying here with you, lay lady lay, and country pie are three exceptionally satisfying and only moderately dirty country ditties about sex. when you’re older i’ll tell you who old saxophone joe is.

5. caetano veloso’s caetano veloso: once i strangled a fascist spy in brazil with a purple shoelace while listening to veloso’s closing track alfômega.

6. harry nilsson’s harry: i’ve been listeninig to pandemonium shadow show, aerial ballet, nilsson sings newman, and especially a little touch of schmilsson in the night too much, so 2009 will be the year of harry.

7. townes van zandt’s townes van zandt: mostly i’ll just listen to fare thee well, miss carousel because it’s better than anything on nashville skyline, and i’d stand on bob dylan’s big brass bed in my desert boots and say that.

8. david bowie’s space oddity: not as perfect as hunky dory or as martian as ziggy stardust or as fashionable as scary monsters, but space oddity has janine, the love song of the year.

9. skip spence’s oar: did you know that when lou reed heard all come to meet her he opened up his chest with john lennon’s pen knife and fedexed his left and right ventricles to neil young, but the package was intercepted on the canadian border by leonard cohen, who gave it to bob dylan for his birthday?

#232: the velvet underground & nico - femme fatale (1972)

the music john cale made after he left the velvet underground make john lennon’s post-beatles imagine and plastic ono band look like sad little side projects. (see oct. 16th for gideon’s bible and paris 1919, but then there’s also the better-than-bowie man who couldn’t afford to orgy, barracuda, and amsterdam).

i just discovered beautiful, beautiful, beautiful videos from a show in 1972, the year cale’s second post-velvets album came out. it’s just him and his old bandmates lou reed and nico breaking everyone’s hearts and pouring mercury into their arteries and replacing rib cages with pillows.

#229: john cale - paris 1919 (amsterdam 1998)

witness john cale (who became famous for his 1967 and 1968 albums with the velvet underground) playing a 1973 song about 1919 in a 1998 concert. the chronological silliness boggles one’s mind, but what will really make steam burst horizontally from your cartoon ears is the glorious string section.

(see more cale here.)

#131: lou reed and john cale - small town (1990)

i just listened to that monument of 70s-era oversexed sleaze, transformer, for the first time since high school, and remembered that lou reed kept on making pounds of hazy, heavenly, overdosed music well after breaking up the velvet underground. (meanwhile, what’s paul been up to since the beatles? starbucks.)

but even more than transformer’s vicious or take a walk on the wildside, i like small town, one of the 15 (get it?) songs about andy warhol that he and old velvet john cale recorded in brooklyn after the artist died. cale’s sticky ragtime piano part should be sampled into a rap song (hello, lil’ wayne?), but lou reed’s grumpy half-sung monologue couldn’t be done by anyone else, even weezy f. baby.

and “i hate being odd in a small town/ if they stare, let them stare in new york city” belongs on a tee-shirt (which could be designed by john cale’s ex-wife, betsey johnson, who’s in my observer column this week.)