Audio CD review:
John Cale - Words for the Dying

John Cale - Words for the Dying

Band: John Cale Title: Words for the Dying Rating: Release Date: 19 September, 1989 Media: Audio CD Tracks: 1: Falkland Suite: Introduction - John Cale, Brian Eno, 2: Falkland Suite: There Was a Saviour/Interlude I - Brian Eno, 3: Falkland Suite: On a Wedding Anniversary - John Cale, Brian Eno, 4: Falkland Suite: Interlude II - Brian Eno, 5: Falkland Suite: Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed - John Cale, Brian Eno, 6: Falkland Suite: Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night - John Cale, Brian Eno, 7: Songs Without Words, Pt. 1 - John Cale 8: Songs Without Words, Pt. 2 - John Cale 9: Soul of Carmen Miranda - John Cale, Brian Eno

Customer Reviews a profoundly moving masterpiece it certainly blows spinal tab right out of the tub. this is arguably the greatest music documentary ever filmed. the filmmakers and musicians seem to have acted as one mind to bring us this condensed golden nugget of pure hillarity, this sublime comic fugue, this subtle, silvery spiderweb of laughs that will surely ensnare even the most stony-faced fly. so many great moments: the stiff interviews with perfectly timed awkward pauses, the endless takes of bellowing, bathetic singing, the crazy violinist. . . it's too bad that dylan thomas had to say good night before this came out, but i'm sure he's whirring happily in his grave. i hope one day this same team tackles some of the other luminaries of poetry. . Songs For the Living Cale's,'Words For The Dying' has a sustained mood of sombre atonement. This is devotional music, pure but not so simple. The lyrics are Dylan Thomas's and Cale flights them with the sublime sadness of a lover's rent heart. The international news of the day relayed the larger wound of the Falkland's War. It hovers over the project, and Cale responded to it, writing a suite of music performed here by the Orchestra of Symphonic & Popular Music of Gosteleradio from the former U. S. S. R. The voices of Llandaff Cathedral Choir School in Wales were enlisted as a counter to Cale's cool, haunting tones, and I suspect, congealed that crucial Welsh touchstone. Their edifice of plaintive, innocent voices is just one of the brilliant moves on this Brian Eno produced triumph. I suspect that those raised on the Spoonriver Anthology find Richard Buckner's repossession of its text leaves an indelible imprint. Cale has done this for these poems. Both Bob Dylan and Dylan Thomas crossed my path during my 16th summer, the former at its inception, the latter at its close as part of my high school's curriculum. Both bards literally made the written word sing with emotion in fresh, intoxicating ways. My mother tongue had been reborn. Cale's take on his countryman's verse has re-seeded these emotions. Lets go to Moscow I saw this on the big screen immediately after one of JC's performances at the London ICA a couple of years back - during the performance he and a DJ radically reworked his 'classic' songbook, forcing you to reapproach the songs afresh. This documentary on the making of Words for the Dying is fascinating, not least because it is a bit unconventional. Similarly, watch this and you'll find new things to appreciate in the album whose making it documents. There's a remarkable humour to this film. Eno refuses to be filmed, so the crew smuggle in hidden cameras to the sound booth - you really feel as if you're eavesdropping. Sometimes, the scenes are not directly relevant - JC checking out a local band, a virtuosic double bass warming up - but all blend to create an atmosphere of the process of making the album. Amid it all, you sense the drive to create something meaningful and special. In my opinion, the film is better than the recording it documents. Perhaps not to everybody's taste (out of maybe 300 at the concert, only five stayed for the screening!), but an engaging curiosity. . You can see a complete list of all John Cale discography, or go back to the John Cale tabs