Rock, Etc. up with Some Light Spot Miking
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Spike Lee got his dad Bill to write the music for said Cale, 47, when asked why he'd just now last summer's controversial, provocative Do the baked asymphonic work after ahistory of turn- Right Thing, as Bill has done for all of his son's ing out everything from Velvet Underground films. The elder Lee has gotten pretty good at monoclonal horror stories to ballet scores and it. The entire score is based on asingle noble, MIDI studio bijoux. open-ended motif, repeated in jazz combos Cale is apower in avant-garde composition, and orchestra, and flexible enough to serve and I'd hate to say his best work is past him. most scenes. Lee's orchestral music is friendly, Exemplified by his newest moving and power- down-home Copland-cum -Gershwin -style ful work with former Velvet colleague Lou movie music, perfectly acceptable, but his jazz Reed in the Warhol tribute "Songs for Drella" settings are far superior. Then again, with Bran- (heard in concert; recording in the works), it's ford Marsalis, Harrison & Blanchard, Bob Hurst, clearly not. (His dream sequence summons up "Tain" Watts, and Kenny Barron, it'd be hard the same compelling and otherworldly quality to go wrong. as Japanese filmmaker Kurosawa's examination Marsalis cuts loose, mostly on soprano, in his of last things in films like Ran). But splendid usual grab-bag of styles, including neo -Col- one-off solo LPs like The Academy in Peril trane ("Father to Son"), Wayne Shorter ("Riot"), (1972; one of his few works reissued on CD— and his own (in the meltingly bluesy sax-and- Demon Import, 1989) aside, much of his great strings lament "How Long" and the straight- work is often ajoint effort. The benchmark, ahead "Wake Up Finale"). The seven-minute Church of Anthrax, is acollaboration with "Mookie" is recorded twice here, in almost jazzer Terry Riley, and brighter spots of live identical performances, one with orchestra, appearances at the now-tarted-up Lone Star in one without; we could have done with only New York featured Cale and British guitar ace one. Kenny Barron solos one and lonely on Chris Spedding. "Tawana," and Marsalis and Harrison trade But here's The Falklands Suite, an unhappy tenor/alto licks in "Malcolm and Martin." Def- mishmash of Dylan Thomas poetry and unin- initely worth your while. spiring orchestral music apparently goosed to The jazz tracks are recorded with CBS's full symphonic flight by Brian Eno from a usual ambient deadness, but I'm so used to it piano-and-voice outing Cale first wrote in by now that Ialmost don't mind. Almost. This 1982. The Soviet Gosteleradio Orchestra does extremely false-sounding RCA Studio A record- abang-up job, but the aesthetic concept of the ing sounds better on LP—more bite, more burr piece is so overblown it's awonder it didn't go on string basses, more depth. But the orches- up like the Hindenberg. Worse, the production tra. ..! A suffocatingly, almost anechoically itself is poor. Whether it was amistake or an arid recording—there's no hall resonance. It's attempt at an effect, there's aterrible mismatch so dry my ears got chapped. Oh well—buy the between Cale's heavily reverbed overdubs and LP while you can —Richard Lehnert the wonderful hall sound of the orchestra, which provides alovely sense of place touched Rock, Etc. up with some light spot miking. Cale's vocals also contain breathing sounds and other noise— JOHN CALE: Words for tbe Dying fine to signify alive recording, but unforgiv- Opal/Wamer Bros. 926024- I(LP), -2 (CD). Brian Eno, able in astudio work when you have all the Stephen Taylor, Paul Rice, Blaise Dupuy, engs.: Brian production time in the world. The same sort Eno, prod. AAA/AAD. TT: 39:14 of mismatch of hall sound is also evident on the What is classically-trained popular musician overdubbed boys chorus (recorded at Llandaff John Cale up to? On one hand, easily accessible Cathedral, Wales), although it's less jarring. A art is usually wallpaper. On the other, the artist more intimate sound on the vocals might have must make some effort at communication, and given the effect of someone reading poetry in ideally, something like Cale's first formal sym- front of an orchestra (d la agood production phony should be worth 40 minutes of your of Peter and the Wolj), but here the production turntable time. Maybe it's because this is Cale's makes Cale big, probably to try to bring him first release on his friend Brian Eno's record forward. The end result, alas, is that the whole label; maybe it's because Eno's wife has con- piece sounds disconnected, and Cale sounds nections in the USSR which is why the concoc- like he doesn't belong anywhere near it. tion was recorded there—with video, no less Furthermore, Cale can't sing formally and (outboarding expensive US and UK symphonic shouldn't try; the concept of treating poetry recording sessions is atime-honored wheeze, as though it were lyrics, aform which by defi- and glasnost is atimely draw). Maybe Cale just nition carries its own rhythm and interpreta- fears the reaper. "I figured I'd better get started tion, makes awormy apple out of amaster before Iended up like Brahms or something," poet's orange; and the composition hardly 204 Stereophile, March 1990 .