John Cale
Fragments of a Rainy Season

Fragments of a rainy season, a fabulous unplugged solo. Voice and piano, voice and guitar. Nothing else. "If it doesn't rain, it will rain," said the umbrella seller: Impossible to disagree, impossible to say it better.

"The sun doesn't interest us," so said those in New York to those in Los Angeles, perhaps it was the story of the fox and the grapes, perhaps the typical desire for reversal of new art. And yes, the rain is more interesting than the sun. Both the hyper-artistic one and the one that drenches every life. That's why Fragments of a rainy season is a perfect title. Wonderful then is the word fragments, what do you see when looking back if not some blurred smile lost among dust and ghosts?.

"This is a rock group called Velvet Underground," you say in "Style it takes," and it's a shot to the heart, perhaps because we're velvettiani to the core, perhaps because the first time of the banana record dates back to when I still had short pants.

"Style it takes," it takes style... and I agree. Yes, it takes style. Even in chaos. Actually, especially in chaos. Or maybe, who knows, perhaps chaos is style in itself. Listen to what I say, oh you who pass by, oh you who resemble me.

...

A science learned by dressing in the words of others: Lou, brat with a sharp tongue, Nico, German martian, also a child, also Cassandra. Those two were so special that the only thing to do was invent the equivalent of the wheel, imagine a sinister glow, imagine "the waltz in the belly of the beast." Stuff that required a kind of shining brilliance: hyper connection, lynx eye, bat ear. Not to mention the hot/cold that enters your bones when you perceive true art.

Then look at the work with Nick Drake in Bryter Layter, only two songs, of course, but what songs. There no excess, no decadence, only a lost and magical boy. With the Cale touch that offers an expository clarity almost in the clouds, a classicism out of time. How can a shattered psyche be so airy (Northern Sky)? How do you go so deep (Fly)? I'll tell you John, in these rainy fragments I find something of that world there, only instead of clouds there's your vampire-looking face of the second class. No matter what mask you wear, the raw ballad always works.

...

And anyway, even if almost no one knows it, you're a master of raw ballads. For everyone, you're the classicist enamored with chaos, the one who always approaches the piano with an axe or a hammer. However, and this must be said, between chaos and harmony the form is different, but the substance is the same, whether it's the sabbath or the debutant ball, the guests are the same ones, those and no others. Certainly, in these rainy fragments they wear elegant attire, but it's a merely formal thing, let's say, maybe it's because you're in a concert hall, maybe because you're all dolled up too. You've understood one thing: you'll never get rid of those guys, so you might as well get along, make them feel at home, offer them something, brain and heart on a silver platter will do, actually very well.

...

And all that theater of cruelty, like when you went on stage with a hockey mask and sang "ready for war," ready for war? Or when you beheaded dead chickens and the blood ended on the heads of all those punk youngsters who then ran away?

At that time, the backstage was all bustling with sinister people, there was the guy who wanted to show you the shiny Luger, the one who stuck his thing in a bear trap, the one who drank blood...it took a certain stomach and that you never lacked.

Today instead you present yourself with the aplomb of a Mephistopheles who knows a lot and has had enough of everything, and then I wonder; who do you find at your feet after playing your dark ballads? Critics, mythomaniacs, crazy women? You know, here it's full of sociologists who would like to know and they too, I guess, are pretty kooky.

...

Ok, we'll put it down easily, John is the sage, Cale the madman. And if sage/madman doesn't work, find me any other two opposites. Nobody's ever seen them smile, if not once and that time wasn't even the occasion. Nobody knows who of the two wears the other's mask, assuming it's a mask. Maybe they're the same "person," but then you should tell me what the hell "person" means. In the end, the most likely hypothesis sees them as overlapping silhouettes, coincident ghosts, opposite sides of the psycho front-retro. A perfect fit, unless you mind the crack looming over the abyss, it must be from there that the light enters now angelic, now sinister.

...

And anyway this individual, whose name is evidently John Cale, approaches the piano. It's gloomy, impassive, "distracted from men," something that makes me almost think of the Cavalcanti described by Boccaccio, maybe it's because I don't dislike daring comparisons, maybe it's because my son is studying him at the holy school.

"I go like one who is out of life," damn Guido, damn it...

And so ok, let's keep Cavalcanti, tonight it's all about ballads, so his stuff, let's keep him also because the part of Dante has been taken by that bastard Lou, one who when he wandered through Queens everyone said "damn, you can tell that guy has been to hell."

...

Where were we?

Ah yes, this individual, whose name is evidently John Cale, approaches the piano. It's gloomy, impassive, "distracted from men"...

...The voice sounds a bit like a cave, as if it was unaccustomed to contact with others. The piano is austere, at times hammering, but no one intends to smash it. There's an old European aestheticism never pretentious though, never self-serving. Elegance and refinement are damsels that usually don't descend into the underworld, here however it's their turn to do so.

And then that chiseled face, corners, edges and so on, the composure of a Benedetti Michelangeli wearing the mask of a criminal.

And those almost classical interludes, stuff I swear I only accept from him, the only one who can slip that damn plin plin into our maldidos affairs, luckily every now and then there's a scream and all this pretend being in the good living room is just a trick to make the blow arrive unexpectedly.

And anyway here are the European ghosts of Paris 1919, the personal ones of Music for a New Society, the paranoia of Fear...

Then, what do you want to say to someone who plays I'm waiting for the man on the piano? Who takes an Elvis classic and turns it into a piece of chamber music? Who makes the definitive arrangement of that Leonard Cohen song that now even gets played at weddings? And John Cale at weddings is quite funny, isn't it?...

...

The concert is over. The backstage as usual is a confluence of absurd types. Strange thing, I'm here too, which I don't think speaks in my favor.

Cale arrives, nobody talks about weapons, psychic terror and so on, too bad, oh yes John, too bad, because, what I hear is almost worse, all pompousness, all monologue.

Then in a space-time crash we all find ourselves in 1200. We're in Florence, sepulcher area, the cemetery of the illustrious. John Cale is no longer John Cale, but Guido Cavalcanti. At first, he smiles slyly, then apostrophizes us like this: "gentlemen, you can say what you like at home." Then with a puff, he vanishes in a sort of cloud.

Astonished we look at one another. "What did he mean?" someone asks. To which I, who have just reviewed Cavalcanti with my son, can only answer: "we are in a cemetery, and if the cemetery is our home, it means we are all dead"...

Yes I know, Cavalcanti is a bit of a stretch. But allow me that Guido and John are both number twos, with Dante and Lou who have always flaunted themselves in pink jerseys.

Then, if we really must speak of a poet, let's talk about Dylan Thomas. Three rainy fragments of this splendid record are his poems. And so: "Lie still, sleep becalmed, sufferer with the wound in the throat," sure John, why not...

Why not...