Vintage Violence

John Cale | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (December 29, 1990)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Sony
• ASIN: B0000024ON
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #334,802 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Autumn Came Early in the 1970s, December 13, 2001

By 

"dregsmag" (Evansville, Indiana United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Vintage Violence (Exp) (Audio CD)

I have gotten to the point where I only trust albums that take a lot of listening to enjoy. Take note: if you ever encounter a disc that you find yourself liking parts of, while other parts you don't understand or even leave you just plain cold, don't send it off to Goodwill but hold on it -listen to it several more times, in different places, different moods. The chances are you've got a masterpiece & you just don't "have ears" yet. I mean, who enjoyed Cubism when it first was invented?

Yes, I have just described my own process in coming to immensely enjoying this disc. I came to it expecting some black, riotous Velvet-Underground something-or-another... Instead, I found myself in something dusky -not black; skewed and dreamy and sad and oddly spiced -and if riotous, only in the way the local bum might be riotous, scribbling paragraph after paragraph of sad and spooky gibberish on an alley wall somewhere... maybe Amsterdam, with the North Sea crashing in the background.

What's funny is that this music (with the exception of "Gideon"- I know now where Brian Eno got a lot of his inspiration for songs like "On Some Faraway Beach")-I reitterate, this music has its roots in all the most popular music of its time: The Band, James Taylor, Elton John, Creedence Clearwater Revival -and yet with a combination of unlikely elements: John's surreal lyrics; the purpousefully slippery production -that yet is simply packed with details and layers of sound; the odd song choices (it takes one a while to simply get used to what's coming up next)...well, John Cale suceeds in going places few of his comtemporaries dared to go: the world of Art. Take it or leave it, this is Art; if it was a painting it would be something like what Whistler did, indispensible to the few, ignored by the mass.

Give it a try, I say. As said earlier, you'll immediately like parts of it. Then wait a few days. Play it while you're painting or driving. Let it rest when you feel you've had enough. In the long run, you'll know.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Promising Sign of Things To Come, August 17, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Vintage Violence (Audio CD)

This album must have come as quite a surprise to those familiar with John Cale's wall of buzz with Velvet Underground and his producing credits for the Stooges first album. This was downright melodic, sometimes lush, sometimes (dare I say) POP MUSIC! Of course Pop with an edge, but still Pop. And I say that as a compliment.

There are a number of wonderful moments on this album. The opener, "Hello There", presents Cale as a quite capable keyboardist (I assume it is him...the musicians are uncredited...I hate that!) and singer/songwriter. The next cut "Gideon's Bible", one of the strongest cuts, reveals his trenchant for Beach Boys derived melodies and ooohs which would show up prominently on later albums. "Big White Cloud" is a lush string laden ballad. In short all of the influences that would make his classic albums of the mid-seventies so engaging are here intact. The only reason I knock it down to 4 stars is that he still seems to be assembling the pieces so this is not quite a realized whole. (This is essentially a debut after all).

This is a fine album, and highly recommended. But Cale's real masterpieces were still to come (Paris 1919, Fear, Slow Dazzle, and Helen of Troy are all masterworks that I cannot recommend highly enough to one not familiar with John Cale...5 stars for those for sure!)

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Avant-Pop and the Viola Man, March 23, 2001

By 

Richard Behrens (Lambertville, NJ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Vintage Violence (Exp) (Audio CD)

I obtained a vinyl copy of VINTAGE VIOLENCE about twenty years ago for one dollar and I played it about five times in all of that time. I've always been a huge John Cale fan and went out of my way several times to see him live -- which wasn't too difficult, living in New York City where he often plays offbeat gigs unrelated to tours. I fanatically devoured SEDUCING DOWN THE DOOR and FRAGMENTS OF A RAINY SEASON and considered myself a bit of a Cale expert. But I never really warmed to VINTAGE VIOLENCE. I chalked it all up to early over-ambition, slapdash recording procedures, lack of a true pop voice that only emerged on his masterpiece PARIS 1919. However, listening to this remasted CD, I feel like I'm hearing it for the first time. True, there are no monumental epic songs like "Child's Christmas in Wales" or "Dying on the Vine" and the only truly strong song on the album is "Amsterdam", a slow acoustic ballad. True, this album only merely hints at the rampaging creativity that consumed his later work and turned him into a powerful voice and violent performer. True, if this was the only Cale album that existed, his legacy in the rock world would be a relatively weak album of pop tunes being performed by an avant-garde viola player trying to be like the Bee Gees. But when I heard this remaster, I thought: "That's John Cale. It's no one else." His voice is unmistakeable. His quirky avant-pop is mysterious (check out Big White Cloud) and his lyrics cryptic. And the repacking has some cool pictures of the young Cale hanging out on the street corner. I would not recommend this album to a new-comers (those unfamiliar with Cale's work should spring for the 2-CD retrospective SEDUCING DOWN THE DOOR -- it will not disappoint) but those who have a few albums, really like him and want to hear some odd pop songs with his distinct flavoring, should check this one out.