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9 Comments

• mw says:

  January 23, 2013 at 9:32 pm

  Nice review. I was at the same show and enjoyed it very much. 1919 is far from my favorite record, but it was nice hearing it live. And I really enjoyed the second half and “Captain Hook” was nearly transcendent. I’d seen Cale when he was touring “Sabotage Live” and count that among my favorite shows. I usually hate it when rock people use orchestras but I thought it worked really well at that show. The arrangements were integral, not just a pretension as is usually the case. Took my 13 year-year-old son since he’s a big fan of Cale’s work in “Songs for Drella”. It was his first concert, which reminded me of my first concert, which was when I was thirteen, which was Jethro Tull, where drug dealers openly hawked weed and pills and the stadium was a filled with a giant marijuana cloud. How things have changed, eh. BAM was a bunch of fifty and sixty year olds politely listening to a seventy year old. Still, he enjoyed the show. Turned out his Cello teacher was in the band. Small world, Brooklyn.
  If you’re interested, here’s a great Cale performance from a strange location.

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• mw says:

  January 23, 2013 at 9:33 pm

  Looks like the link didn’t work. Guess I have to do it the ugly way: http://mwebphoto.com/videos/JohnCaleAtJR.mov

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• Henry Holland says:

  January 23, 2013 at 10:07 pm

  “my first concert, which was when I was thirteen, which was Jethro Tull”
  Hopefully it was the “A Passion Play” tour.

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• mw says:

  January 23, 2013 at 10:29 pm

  Ha, Google tells me that yes, it was the “Passion Play” tour. YouTube confirms my vague memory: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y04QEfSvN4o&feature=player_embedded
  Lester Bangs even wrote some positive things about it, though his sentence constructions tended to preclude the positive with phrases modifiers such as “even something so vacuous.”

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• AeC says:

  January 25, 2013 at 12:59 am

  I was at the Friday show (as well as Wednesday’s Nico tribute) too, and thought it was a blast. “Venus in Furs,” which I’ve long thought was a much better fit with Cale’s ominious baritone than Reed’s nasal drone, was a phenomenal way to wrap things up, although I couldn’t help thinking back to seeing Cale at St. Anne’s Warehouse about seven years ago when he *opened* with “Venus,” then declined to play another Velvets tune for the entire night, which I thought was an enjoyably brazen move. I only wish he’d played “(I Keep a) Close Watch.”

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• Henry Holland says:

  January 25, 2013 at 1:36 am

  Lucky you! I was born about 3 years too late, my first concerts were in 1975 and I didn’t start going to shows regularly until 1978 so I missed Tull on the APP and TAAB tours; ELP on the “Brain Salad Surgery” tour; Yes doing “Tales from Topographic Oceans”; Genesis doing “The Lamb”, Pink Floyd doing “Dark Side” with the old stuff. The one consolation: seeing Yes on the “Relayer” tour at the Hollywood Bowl.
  Lester Bangs, yikes. I can’t decide who’s a worse critic from that era, him or Dave Marsh.
  Thanks for the Tull link, a pity that a full APP show wasn’t professionally filmed (see also: a “Brain Salad Surgery” show and “The Lamb”).

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• check this says:

  January 25, 2013 at 9:44 am

  It was his first concert, which reminded me of my first concert, which was when I was thirteen, which was Jethro Tull, where drug dealers openly hawked weed and pills and the stadium was a filled with a giant marijuana cloud. How things have changed, eh.

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• preston says:

  January 25, 2013 at 5:40 pm

  “my first concert, which was when I was thirteen, which was Jethro Tull”
  “Hopefully it was the “A Passion Play” tour.”
  (sniff) wow…
  My most treasured hunk of vinyl is a “Passion Play” live bootleg, I have yet to find it on cd. My first Tull show was at ‘King’s Dominion’ near Richmond for the ‘Crest of the Knave’ tour. Yet another different era…
  Thanks!

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• Krishna H. says:

  March 17, 2013 at 1:46 am

  Paris 1919 was really awesome! What a splendid performance of John Cale.

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