Bruce Cockburn - Further Adventures Of (1978)

Always love a bit of late 70s Bruce Cockburn around the turn of the year, so after posting the masterpiece a few years back (link below), here's the one just before it.  More jazz-inflected arrangements, lyrics taking in the expected singer-songwriterly personal reflections with a heavy dose of Christian mysticism, and that incredible guitar playing.  A couple of more muscular tracks, Standing Outside A Broken Phone Booth.... and Feast Of Fools, provide a good contrast to the lighter-hued material, and Red Ships Take Off In The Distance is one of his most dazzling instrumentals.

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Previously posted at SGTG:

Dancing In The Dragon's Jaws

Joni Mitchell - Mingus (1979)

Writing collaboration between an ailing Mingus, who died shortly before its completion, and Joni Mitchell at the height of her jazz era.  The stellar cast of musicians, based around Weather Report plus Herbie Hancock, is the perfect lineup to back Joni's vocals and minimalist, percussive acoustic guitar.

Out of six tunes Mingus sang into a tape recorder for Joni, three made the album, and a fourth is her sterling setting of Goodbye Pork Pie Hat.  The remaining two are credited solely to Mitchell, but carry the spark of inspiration from the collaboration, especially God Must Be A Boogie Man.  Interspersed between the songs are audio verité recordings provided by Mingus' wife Sue, providing an intimate window into the final years of his life.  One of the most underrated albums in the Joni Mitchell canon, and a fine tribute to a jazz legend.

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Joni Mitchell at SGTG:

Miles Of Aisles

Shadows And Light

John Martyn - One World (1977)

A little bit more John Martyn, from some exploring of his music I did earlier this year, and also as a bit of a tribute to the late Lee Perry.  Martyn was introduced to Scratch at the Black Ark whilst holidaying in Jamaica, and the sonic kinship between their styles went on to inform this album when Perry dropped in on the recording sessions. 

Recording at Island boss Chris Blackwell's Berkshire farm, a rejuvenated Martyn refined his echoplex-guitar genius and jazzy vocals into a first-rate batch of songs, supported by dozens of musicians from the British jazz fusion and Canterbury scences.  The resulting album has been described in retrospect as 'proto-trip-hop', a genre that to be honest passed me by in its 90s heyday, so can't comment, but I do absolutely love the sound and production of One World.  The uptempo songs are dark and dublike, with Lee Perry's surreal wit inspiring the lyrics of Big Muff.

The album's second half is for the most part much more meditative, with the sweet plaintiveness of Couldn't Love You More giving way to the Latin lilt of Certain Surprise.  The upbeat Dancing was released as a single; don't suppose it had much success as such, but with an intro that wouldn't sound out of place on a Harmonia album, it's a definite favourite of mine.  The rest of the album is taken up by one of those absolute capturing-lightning-in-a-bottle production moments: with monitor speakers being recorded in the middle of a lake for ambience, and Martyn's guitar mastery at its height, Small Hours is just incredible to listen to on headphones.

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Previously posted at SGTG: Inside Out

John Martyn - Inside Out (1973)

Jazzy folkiness turned, yep, inside out, by the artist's quest for sonic experimentation.  The artist being John Martyn (1948-2009), who was first described to me as "Nick Drake discovering krautrock", and yes, that works here and there.  The almost-title track is one of Martyn's most striking examples of his mastery of the Echoplex unit, working up a Göttsching-like rhythmic storm.  It then dissolves into near-formless ambience during Bobby Keys' sax solo, but is always underpinned (as throughout the album) by Danny Thompson's rock solid bass.

Two completely instrumental tracks further cement this as Martyn's most out-there studio album: a nifty arrangement of the Irish folk tune Eibhli Ghail Chiuin ni Chearbhail and a superb piece named for his then-wife Beverley.  Beyond that are some superb songs, personal favourites being the lengthy Make No Mistake and the album opener Fine Lines, which sounds the closest to Nick Drake and also to this album's better-known predecessor Solid Air.  Inside Out always edges it for me though, with its much looser, live-in-the-studio feel.

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Richard & Linda Thompson - Pour Down Like Silver (1975)

A new box set was recently released taking in all of the albums (and more) by this legendary pairing in British folk, so here's my favourite album of theirs.  Just about to take a break from music, as they'd converted to Sufi Islam, Richard & Linda Thompson's new spritual embrace was encapsulated in the gorgeous centrepice of this album, Night Comes In.

Beat The Retreat and Dimming Of The Day were further sublime expressions of spiritual longing, but the sardonic wit of Thompson's songwriting up until then wasn't entirely absent.  The opening track Streets Of Paradise was particularly good on that score, and the album as a whole still features plenty of his brilliant guitar playing.  Always inspired by Scottish music, Thompson ends the album with a cover of James Scott Skinner's fiddle tune Dargai.  Pour Down Like Silver was the most stripped-down sounding of all of Richard & Linda's albums, and the bare-bones sound (filled out where necessary, most distinctively by John Kirkpatrick's accordion playing) suits these starkly beautiful songs well.

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Joni Mitchell - Miles Of Aisles (1974)

For all the creative strides that she made in succesive studio albums throughout the 70s, it's perhaps odd that my most enduring favourite Joni Mitchell albums have ended up being her two live releases (see also Shadows And Light, link below).  In both cases though, some of her very best songs really sparkle in a new light in their jazz-inflected arrangements; much more so on Shadows And Light, but on the 1974 Court And Spark tour Joni was on the cusp of her jazz era, backed by The LA Express.

The bulk of Miles Of Aisles comes from the LA Universal Ampitheatre in August 1974 - none of the recordings are from the Michigan Pine Knob Theater, although that venue did make for a striking album cover.  All of Joni's albums up to this point are touched on here in superb versions, personal highlights being the languid For The Roses tracks.  There's new material too - the second last song wouldn't appear on a studio album for another three years, and the final one is exclusive to this release.

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Previously posted at SGTG: Shadows And Light

Shuggie Otis - Inspiration Information (1974)

Between the release of his second album Freedom Flight and this, his third, Shuggie Otis transitioned from precociously talented and well-connected teenager to a young adult and true auteur.  Working from a home studio, he wrote and produced this album alone, played all the instruments bar the horn and string arrangements, and virtually abandoned his blues roots for something (even) funkier and altogether weirder.

It was a sound that didn't have much impact at the time, and ended up with Otis being dropped by Epic, but Inspiration Information's time would come a quarter of a century later when David Byrne's Luaka Bop label first revived it.  At that time, Shuggie was posited as a proto-Prince, which does hold up in the loose, funky songs and singular artistry and musicianship.  It's also historically congruent with the advances in the studio that Stevie Wonder and Sly Stone had been making in the early 70s, not least in the use of a primitive Rhythm King drum machine.

The first side of the album is a flawless run of four great songs, bursting into life on the smoking funk groove of the title track, followed by the languid Island Letter.  Next are the taut, spare groove of Sparkle City and the drum-machine based comedown experience Aht Uh Mi Hed.  Other than the first 58 seconds, the album's second half is entirely instumental, in common with its predecessor.  Unlike Freedom Flight, there aren't two lengthy jams here but a clutch of short impressionistic sketches, which reach their experimental apex in XL-20 and Pling.  Shuggie might have been too ahead of his time in 1974 for this record to be huge, but now it just sounds timeless.

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Previously posted at SGTG:
Here Comes Shuggie Otis
Freedom Flight

Shuggie Otis - Freedom Flight (1971)

Shuggie Otis' second album was such a huge step up from his debut that it's easy to forget this was still the work of a 17 year old.  With two execptions, he's the sole songwriter, and his already prodigious guitar talent continued to shine as well as showing off his skill at several other instruments.  Shuggie's rising profile also brought guest stars on board for this one: George Duke and Aynsley Dunbar are featured here.

Freedom Flight is perhaps best known for Strawberry Letter 23, the gorgeous piece of baroque psychedelic pop that would later be a funked-up hit for The Brothers Johnson.  That's only one of four superb songs on the first side of the album though, which is filled out by one of the funkiest blues covers ever recorded.  The album's second side was taken up by two lengthy instrumentals: the bluesy Purple, which expands on the template of Gospel Groove from Shuggie's debut, and the beautifully mellow title track.  It's difficult to pick Shuggie Otis' masterpiece between this one and the one coming up next week.

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Shuggie Otis - Here Comes Shuggie Otis (1970)

First in a three-Friday exploration of the slim but awesome discography of Johnny Alexander Veliotes Jr, best known by the pet name his mother gave him, and the shortened surname that his famous father already went by.  Shuggie Otis started performing live with his father's band in the mid 60s when he was eleven years old, where he'd "wear dark glasses and a paint a moustache on" to disguise his age, as he relates on this album.

Here Comes Shuggie Otis was his solo debut as a prodigious teenager, and consists mostly of material co-written by father and son, its standout feature being Shuggie's rapidly developing guitar versatility.  The ten tracks touch on the psych-soul and baroque AM pop sounds of the day, with a bedrock of blues and R&B.

The highlights include Oxford Gray, the longest and most ambitious piece that opens the album, and the slow-cooking Gospel Groove, pointing the way to what was to come.  As mentioned above, Shuggie's Boogie starts out with a potted autobiography of his formative influences, saved from being a bit precious and corny by exploding into another great twelve-bar tearup.  From here, Shuggie's playing, singing and writing would just get better and better.

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Laura Nyro - Spread Your Wings And Fly: Live At The Filmore East, May 30, 1971 (rel. 2004)

A gorgeous, spellbinding concert recording of just voice and piano, from the final weeks of the Fillmore East.  And what a voice, and a clutch of great songs and cover versions - the genius of Laura Nyro really shines through the sometimes ropey recording quality.

The setlist touches on all three of her classic CBS albums, including the epic The Treasure from her then-newest LP Christmas And The Beads Of Sweat, and a lovely Emmie from Eli And The Thirteenth Confession.  It also looks forward to the forthcoming covers album Gonna Take A Miracle (link below) with some classic cover tunes (and more contemporary covers like The Five Stairsteps' O-o-h Child, which I've been listening to a lot in the last few weeks), and even to 1976's Smile with a soaring I Am The Blues.

The set even includes, as its bookends, two songs that don't appear on any other Laura Nyro release, with the opening Vietnam War lament American Dove giving the album its title.  Full kudos to the archival team who cleaned up this disintegrating tape - far from being just an interesting document of the era, it's pure nourishment for the soul.

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Previously posted at SGTG: Gonna Take A Miracle, with Labelle

The Walker Brothers - Nite Flights (1978)

I'm not sure what exactly was the catalyst that finally ended Scott Walker's "wilderness years", in which he'd produced no new songs in seven years, and in such spectacular fashion.  It's generally written that he'd been coasting through an unhappy state of contractual affairs, then reunited with the Walker Brothers at his lowest creative ebb.  By the time the trio put together their third album post-reunion, they apparently saw which way the wind was blowing for the GTO label and went for broke.  But if Gary Leeds and John Maus turned in a fairly decent two/four songs each, Scott Engel's were suddenly on another planet altogether.

The first 16 minutes of Nite Flights, which were also released as an EP, are in hindsight the obvious curtain-raiser to Scott Walker's late solo career, in which each album reached further into the abyss.  Wonder what on earth anyone who was listening in 1978 thought.  Kicking off with discordant guitar blasts and blistering solos between the verses, Shutout is just the beginning of the much more abstract approach to lyrics that Walker had adopted - there's even a sly wink to Brion Gysin at the start of the second verse.  Fat Mama Kick takes inspiration from French intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy against a similarly harsh background.  Both fade out just as they seem to be getting going, but the album's title track is longer and more electronically tinged, with clear inspiration from Bowie (which wouldn't just go one way).  Then there's The Electrician.

How do you follow a six-minute dark ambient (with an orchestral middle section) horror-story about CIA torture?  Gary Leeds has the unfortunate task, and finishes the first side of the album with the respectable Death Of Romance.  Den Haague is even better, with neat production touches.  By the time you get to John Maus' songs that close the album, though, it's impossible to escape the fact that nothing could touch the sheer otherwordly genius of the first four tracks.

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Scott Walker at SGTG:
Climate Of Hunter
Tilt
Soused

Scott Walker - Climate Of Hunter (1984)

Still can't believe that this is the year we lost Scott Walker.  Been giving this album, his sole release of the 80s, a fresh appraisal recently, so here it in its short & sweet icy glory.  Written and recorded quickly in 1983 after a sluggish start at reactivating his solo career, Walker assembled a team of high-profile session musicians for Climate Of Hunter.  On tracks two and three, Mark Isham drops by for some subtle shading.

A largely muted and mid-tempo affair, only really catching fire on Tracks Three, Five and Seven (yup, that's their titles - Walker didn't want song titles to 'get in the way' for half of the album), Climate Of Hunter is an intriguing cross between an 80s update of his late 60s albums and a pointer towards Tilt a decade later, with song structures gradually dissolving here.  The seven Walker compositions show his wordplay becoming ever more abstract, and the closing cover of Tenessee Williams' Blanket Roll Blues, backed only by Mark Knopfler on bluesy guitar, suits Walker down to the ground.  More next week.

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Previously posted at SGTG: Tilt | Soused

Van Morrison - Poetic Champions Compose (1987)

Completing my posts of 80s Van Morrison (there's three from the decade missing that I'm not as big a fan of) is this 1987 effort.  First conceived of as a wholly instrumental record, Van got as far as three instrumental tracks before retreating from the idea.  Those three, which appear as bookends and a midpoint to the album are all great contemplative pieces, with Van's sax playing suitably mellow and atmospheric.

Poetic Champions Compose came out to mixed reviews; by this point, you were either on board with Van Morrison's introspective, new-age period or not.  In hindsight, it comes across either as a warmer version of Inarticulate Speech or an advance on No Guru with the edges slightly smoother again (all links below).  For me, Poetic Champions is just a beautifully meditative rumination on Morrison's usual spiritual concerns (the declaration of 'No Guru, No Method, No Teacher' seemingly reneged on, with among other things a catchy tribute to Zen writer Alan Watts), and makes particularly good Sunday afternoon listening.  Or indeed any other day of the week, for the Watts tribute and other highlights like Queen Of The Slipstream, the live favourite Did Ye Get Healed and a decent, heartfelt workout for the traditional Motherless Child.

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Previously posted at SGTG:
Saint Dominic's Preview
Common One
Beautiful Vision
Inarticulate Speech Of The Heart
No Guru, No Method, No Teacher

Van Morrison - Beautiful Vision (1982)

A late December-early January favourite of mine, and Van Morrison's most accessible album of his 1980-87 period that we've dug into in recent months.  Musically and structurally, Beautiful Vision was an obvious step back from the epic meanderings of Common One, and gifted Morrison's live repertoire with some of its most enduring classics.  While live versions would lift up the tempo on some of these (go seek out Glastonbury 1987 for a turbocharged Northern Muse and many other wonders), they're equally good here as sedate/midtempo Caledonia Soul healers.

In the lyrics, Morrison celebrates life with his Danish girlfriend of the time (Vanlose Stairway), delves into the occult writings of Alice Bailey (Dweller On The Threshold), and not for the first or last time looks back to his formative salad days (Cleaning Windows).  Several instrumentals were recorded for Beautiful Vision, but all bar one were held over for future albums.  The one that deservingly made the cut was the sublime Scandinavia, which closes the record with Van on piano and Mark Isham on synths.


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Previously posted at SGTG:
Saint Dominic's Preview
Common One
Inarticulate Speech Of The Heart
No Guru, No Method, No Teacher

Van Morrison - No Guru, No Method, No Teacher (1986)

If Inarticulate Speech Of The Heart was a bit synth-heavy for some Van Morrison fans in the 80s, they needn't have feared - by 1986 he had fully returned to a more natural sound, and released one of the greatest albums of his career.

Morrison's lyrical preoccupations were more grounded too - after spending the early part of the decade looking into theosophy and the burgeoning New Age (especially Anglo-American writer Alice Bailey), the title of this album could be read as a statement of intent.  With Ray Charles named as one of his earliest sources of rapture within the opening lines, No Guru is an album that primarily looks back, but still finds spiritual wonder everywhere.

Musically, it's a largely relaxed and meditative listen, only breaking a sweat a couple of times, and the closing Ivory Tower is the only decisively upbeat track.  Elsewhere, six out of ten tracks break the five-minute barrier (nothing approaches Common One status, though!) as the extended meditations on love, nature and art take jazzy and folky forms.  Some reviewers have even posited No Guru as an 80s sequel to Astral Weeks, and if you listen to Tir Na Nog, or the "gardens wet with rain" callbacks on In The Garden, you can see their point.  A massively underrated career highlight from a singular artist.

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Previously posted at SGTG:
Saint Dominic's Preview
Common One
Inarticulate Speech Of The Heart

Joni Mitchell - Shadows And Light (1980)

Metheny. Mays. Pastorius. Brecker.  Must be ECM Friday?  Not this time: it's a spotlight for, IMHO, the greatest live album ever made.  And it was released on Asylum in September 1980, a year after its recording at the Santa Barbara Bowl, where it was also filmed for a concert movie, hence the opening credits-style 'Introduction' left intact here.

At the end of the 70s, Joni Mitchell was wrapping up what has become my absolute favourite phase of her peerless career, spanning two magnificent albums, one admirably questionable double, and a lovely collaboration with a jazz legend nearing the end of his life.  All are represented here with some of their best tracks, given fresh propulsive energy by the crack team mentioned above: Hejira's great young bassist is particularly on fire throughout, to the point where I sometimes put this album on purely to listen to Jaco.  Pat Metheny's rising star confidence is a joy to listen to as well, even cheekily quoting his own 'Phase Dance' when Joni sings "...songs from the hit parade" in the first song.  Mays, Brecker and Don Alias round out an amazing band for this dream setlist, breezed through by a singer-songwriter who had utterly transcended that genre.  If you only have one Joni Mitchell album representing her 'jazz era', make it this one.

Disc 1 link
Disc 2 link

Van Morrison - Inarticulate Speech Of The Heart (1983)

Some more 80s Van, still with Mark Isham on board (the latter sticking overwhelmingly to synths here), and seeking enlightenment in an even more introspective and meditative realm than on Common One.  Foregoing even words at times - clearly encouraged by the reception of Beautiful Vision (1982)'s closer Scandinavia - four of the tracks here are instrumentals, and the rest of the album is more lyrically sparse than any other in his canon.  Inarticulate Speech is a Van Morrison record consisting entirely of deep cuts - even the 'live favourite' is a mostly spoken-word catalogue of the poetic strive for the transcendent throughout history.  But like Common One, if you give such a sleeper album a nudge, it'll repay with sublime listening experiences from then on.

The opener Higher Than The World opens on clouds of Isham synth, with Morrison sounding initially overawed by some meditative state/spiritual experience before rejoicing in it.  This is followed by the first instrumental, Connswater; if it sounds a bit too Riverdancey for some ears, fear not - each subsequent instrumental will just get more and more wonderful.  The first part of the title track is (paced like most of the album) a sedate piano-led piece with only some wordless backing voices, and the second part's lyrics are mostly the title plus "I'm a soul in wonder".

On the fully-sung tracks, Van balances his metaphysical interests (in the album's first half) with evocations of home and childhood, and the power of memory and belonging (on the trio that sit together on side two).  With the stunning album closer September Night, he hits on a moodpiece so evocative that his voice becomes a primal cry.  Grab this album for these September nights and beyond, and it'll paint them in colours as stunning as nature.

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Van Morrison - Common One (1980)

For the second Friday in a row, some magnificently mellifluous Mark Isham - this time in a supporting role to the living legend that is Van Morrison, on possibly his most ambitious album ever.  Common One kickstarted a seven-year run of albums that were deeply spiritual, meditative and sometimes esoteric, even difficult to get in to - but never less than hugely rewarding.  It's fast becoming my favourite Van era, so may well be posting more.

Common One starts off with the slow, gentle Haunts Of Ancient Peace, ushered in with a plaintive Isham performance.  Following this are the epic fifteen and a half minutes of Summertime In England - seriously, how to even describe one of Van Morrison's greatest epic tracks of his whole career?  Just listen to these joyous evocations of Wordsworth, Coleridge, T. S. Eliot, William Blake, Yeats et al, as Morrison pursues his red-robed muse through the jazzy uptempo sections and heart-rending waltz time sections, and you will realise it ain't why, why, why, why, why, why (etc), it just is.

As a comedown from this lengthy transcendent journey, the album continues with three shorter, much more conventional songs.  The self-explanatory Satisfied, the mellow loveliness of Wild Honey and Spirit with its quiet-verse, uplifting chorus structure are all great tracks, but there's still one more epic to come.  The second fifteen-minute track on the album, and its perfect, meditative closer, is When Heart Is Open, a beautiful experiment in ambient formlessness.  Even more so than the earlier Saint Dominic's Preview, Common One largely stands or falls on the strength of the two longest tracks that dominate its running time, and for me they make it an indispensable classic.  It's an album that might take one or two goes to get its hooks into you, but once it does it'll never let go.

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Czesław Niemen - Niemen Vol. 1 & 2 (1973)

Staying in 70s Poland for the moment, here's a couple of fascinating albums by the legendary singer, organist and songwriter Czesław Niemen (1939-2004).  Released at the height of a jazz fusion phase, Niemen Vol. 1 and Niemen Vol. 2 are actually regarded as a double-album released as two separate LPs - most subsequent reissues have them as one CD under the title Marionetki, but the one I managed to get hold of was on two CDs under the original titles.  Which is nice, but anyway, on to the music.

Since the late 60s, Niemen had been gaining popularity as a classical-influenced, progressive rock organist, and a strong, soulful singer.  Both are very much in evidence here, and the lyrics are settings of verse by Polish poets.  The language barrier unfortunately precludes me from enjoying the latter, but that doesn't matter much on Vol. 1, which is dominated by two lengthy instrumentals.

At 17 minutes, Requiem dla Van Gogha is the longest and most abstract - lots of atmospheric organ and scraping violin.  After a short, upbeat piano and fuzz-guitar based song (the guitarist is SBB's Apostolis Anthimos, who worked with Tomasz Stańko in the 80s), the 13-minute Inicjały brings back the organ, violin, has intermittent wordless vocalisations, and introduces lengthy trails of smeared trumpet.  The result of that is strongly reminiscent of 70s Miles Davis at his most open-ended - think He Loved Him Madly - and is probably my favourite thing here.

Vol. 2 has five tracks, all with vocals - even if the only Polish I can remember from my brief time there is 'dwa bilety prosze' for the bus stations, it's hard not to be moved by how great Niemen's voice was.  I've read comparisons to Joe Cocker, but he's not quite as gritty/bluesy as that to my ears.  Anyhow, we start with Marionetki, with doomy organ and drums for a few minutes, before setting off on another epic journey with Piosenka dla zmarłej and some enojyably knotty jazz-prog in the intro.  There's much more guitar on Vol. 2, and Anthimos' solo midway through this track is a good taste of what's to come.

Nine minutes of Z pierwszych ważniejszych odkryć are announced with some driving guitar, before Anthimos switches to a mellower slide for the verses.  Lots of good gear-changes follow, more fuzz lead and even some funky drumming - I think this track is my highlight of Vol. 2.  The minute-long oddity Ptaszek made me look up the lyrics and pop them into a translator just to find out what the manic laughter was about - it's a great absurd verse describing a crazy bird.  The writer, inter-war poet Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska, certainly seems to have been a fascinating character.  Lastly, Niemen stretches those great pipes of his again for Com Uczynił, a powerful ballad with another fantastic jazz-funk middle section.

Disc 1
Disc 2

John Cale - Music For A New Society (1982)

Early 80s John Cale at a personal low point, but a stunning creative high.  Writing and recording to the same throw-it-all-together-and-see-what-happens MO that had produced Nico's Marble Index over a decade earlier, Music For A New Society abounds in memorable production quirks.  After a played-straightish opening ballad (about infanticide, in the best macabre-Cale tradition) on bright electric piano, the fun starts with the inappropriate rhythm that clatters its way around Thoughtless Kind before the track ends in manic laughter and bagpipes.

Next up is a track that's barely a song at all - Sanctus (or Sanities, on the original misspelled release)* delivers its slightly too on-the-nose insight into insanity in spoken word narration as doomy organ and kitchen-sink atmopsherics provide an apt backing.  By contrast, 1975's (I Keep A) Close Watch is given a magisterial overhaul with minimum fuss, but still ends in more bagpipes - don't know about anybody else, but I hear more than enough of those walking to work every morning - but that's central Edinburgh for you.

One of my favourite songs that Cale played when I saw him in early '99, Chinese Envoy is another highlight of Music For A New Society, and probably its most accessible moment.  Cale came up with the uptempo Changes Made as a standalone accessible single, and unsuccessfully tried to exclude it from the album - if anything, it's ill-fittedness with the rest of the record does go quite nicely with its general schizophrenic atmosphere.  It's an atmosphere that continues into the next song, in which lines like "Damn life, you're just not worth it, you're just not worth the pain" are set to a tune cribbed from Ode To Joy, at which point you just have to laugh.  Cale himself attributes this album's continued popularity to the thought that "people like watching suffering".  I think it's just insanely brilliant.

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