Fear's a Man's Best Friend

Dear James,

As I just mentioned to you elsewhere (I just make these allusions about enigmatic private conversations here so we can sell our private correspondence in a couple of years to the highest bidder), after posting the comment in the Guardian website for the post below, we got 160 readers in a day. As opposed to the usual 6. However, my post there has now been removed by the moderator. Does this make me a spammer? Even though it was an ironic post about spamming? Oh well.

That was the second bit of good news today. The first was that in my scriptwriting course, the teacher and script writer Jorge Maestro (think Carla Lane, only without Bread. And an Argentinian man instead of a Liverpudlian woman, clearly) read out my script idea, which was an adaptation for TV of that there novel I was meant to be writing. I was very excited and very embarrassed all at once. It was like that moment with my mum when I was ten I told you about, only far less scarring. And more exciting.

So, I didn't have a title for this future award-winning sitcom, but I came out of the class, turned on my i-pod and Duels' "What We Did Wrong" was the first song that came on, and I thought "Hello, there's a name for a sitcom, and it's also the song I most associate with my divorce, and it would make a great theme tune". Sadly, there's no video of the song available on the web. The second song on the i-pod was John Cale's "Fear's a Man's Best Friend", so I'm going to call the sitcom that instead.

Here's Mr. Cale doing his best at butchering a fine tune, in that timeless former-Velvet-Undergournd-member style. There's a better version, but it cuts out half way.

4'33

Dear James,

Here's some stuff I watched on youtube when I was supposed to be working. John Cage is a man I've always confused with John Cale. Even when writing his name just now, I accidentally wrote John Cale. I long for them to be one and the same man, as this would mean John Cale was a musical god whose genius stretched over five decades taking in everything from avant-garde nonsense to great, viola-driven pop. A bit like Cliff Richard, only without the avant-garde nonsense and the viola-driven pop.

Up above is some fella doing his 4'33. Click here and you can see some other fella playing his Suite for Toy Piano, a suite so complex it has parts that can't actually be played on a toy piano. Alternatively, or concurrently, click here for a man playing Cage's Dream on an unfeasibly large set of xylophones. Read more about John Cage here. And for a further appreciation of my Cale/Cage confusion, click here for Cocaine by JJ Cale. I don't know what Stanley Unwin's doing at the start of the video, but then Stanley Unwin is a bit of a law unto himself. I often get him mixed up with LS Lowry.

Vexations

Dear James,

Yesterday I prepared for Buenos Aires 2009 by listening to Paris 1919 on a loop. This led me to read about Erik Satie and then I found this video. It's all fairly self-explanatory, except for the presenter's comment at the end where he appears to say "Mr Cale, you have a whim of iron." Have I misheard that? I hope I haven't.

Paris 1919

Dear Daniel,

You've mentioned Hallelujah on a couple of occasions now and I've been firming up my knowledge on it for work since it will be Christmas #1 and people are asking about it. So, there's the Leonard Cohen version you posted and the Jeff Buckley one which many people think exists in the very small category of songs which were done better as a cover than they were by the artist who wrote them (which we could take on as a irregular theme here). But there is the version which some think influenced the Jeff Buckley arrangement and it's the version which was performed by John Cale.

Doing the research, I'm in danger of having heard the song itself too much. Coupled with the fact that simply to be in the UK over the next month and hear various versions on repeat could destroy much of the love for the track that existed in the first place, here's John Cale's Paris 1919. It's better performed on that album than it is here live, but judging by any Lou Reed concert ever, there must be an unwritten rule that all former members of the Velvet Underground change vocal phrasing and mumble while on stage.

Dear James,

It's at times like this that it feels good to be away from England. The concept of a Christmas Number One doesn't exist here, in fact not even the concept of Number One exists, and life is much the simpler for it. There's a Number Ten and he's called Diego, but that's about it. No X Factor, per se, no novelty records and no incessant in-your-face Christmas stuff on the telly. There's Dancing for a Dream, the pornographic version of "Strictly Come Dancing", but I just ignore it exists.

I didn't mean to keep mentioning Hallelujah, it's like haemorrhoids, it irritates me and so I can't stop myself bringing it up in conversation. Do you have any album to recommend from John Cale? Paris 1919, I s'pose. I thought I'd bought one of his a few years ago, but it turned out to be JJ Cale and I never got over the disappointment.