Customer Reviews

Words for the Dying [VHS]

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Even though the self-absorbed filmakers think we want to see as much of them as we do of Eno or Cale, there are still some interesting scenes of the two working on recording tracks from the album. We even get to see Cale lose his temper and shout a four-letter expletive at the boys' choir. What makes the video worth the purchase are the moments where the camera sits still long enough to let you see Cale and Eno interact while in the studio. Unfortnately there are far less of these moments then there are of pretentious camera-jiggling around Moscow at night, but if you are a fan and it is worth it to you to see this rather rare footage of these guys at work, I'm afraid it's a necessary purchase.

This is devotional music, pure but not so simple. Cale's,'Words For The Dying' has a sustained mood of sombre atonement. The lyrics are Dylan Thomas's and Cale flights them with the sublime sadness of a lover's rent heart. The international news of the day relayed the larger wound of the Falkland's War. It hovers over the project, and Cale responded to it, writing a suite of music performed here by the Orchestra of Symphonic & Popular Music of Gosteleradio from the former U.S.S.R. The voices of Llandaff Cathedral Choir School in Wales were enlisted as a counter to Cale's cool, haunting tones, and I suspect, congealed that crucial Welsh touchstone. Their edifice of plaintive, innocent voices is just one of the brilliant moves on this Brian Eno produced triumph. I suspect that those raised on the Spoonriver Anthology find Richard Buckner's repossession of its text leaves an indelible imprint. Cale has done this for these poems. Both Bob Dylan and Dylan Thomas crossed my path during my 16th summer, the former at its inception, the latter at its close as part of my high school's curriculum. Both bards literally made the written word sing with emotion in fresh, intoxicating ways. My mother tongue had been reborn. Cale's take on his countryman's verse has re-seeded these emotions.

this is arguably the greatest music documentary ever filmed. it certainly blows spinal tab right out of the tub. the filmmakers and musicians seem to have acted as one mind to bring us this condensed golden nugget of pure hillarity, this sublime comic fugue, this subtle, silvery spiderweb of laughs that will surely ensnare even the most stony-faced fly. so many great moments: the stiff interviews with perfectly timed awkward pauses, the endless takes of bellowing, bathetic singing, the crazy violinist...
it's too bad that dylan thomas had to say good night before this came out, but i'm sure he's whirring happily in his grave. i hope one day this same team tackles some of the other luminaries of poetry.

I've bought a couple other John Cale albums, and I like this one the best. It might help if you like Gavin Bryars or Philip Glass or other contemporary composers: this isn't the simple songs of 'Paris 1919' - it's Dylan Thomas poetry set to orchestral music and a choir. I love the way Cale's voice contrasts with the orchestra and choir - very moving. The two "Songs Without Words" are excellent pieces in their own right, as is "The Soul of Carmen Miranda".

This documentary on the making of Words for the Dying is fascinating, not least because it is a bit unconventional. I saw this on the big screen immediately after one of JC's performances at the London ICA a couple of years back - during the performance he and a DJ radically reworked his 'classic' songbook, forcing you to reapproach the songs afresh. Similarly, watch this and you'll find new things to appreciate in the album whose making it documents.

There's a remarkable humour to this film. Eno refuses to be filmed, so the crew smuggle in hidden cameras to the sound booth - you really feel as if you're eavesdropping. Sometimes, the scenes are not directly relevant - JC checking out a local band, a virtuosic double bass warming up - but all blend to create an atmosphere of the process of making the album. Amid it all, you sense the drive to create something meaningful and special. In my opinion, the film is better than the recording it documents.

Perhaps not to everybody's taste (out of maybe 300 at the concert, only five stayed for the screening!), but an engaging curiosity.

I agree with the current reviews. So why bother? I need to say that The Soul Of Carmen Miranda is one of Cale's most magnificent, moving songs. If not here, get it on Seducing Down The Door.

Hard to believe no one else has reviewed this one yet. The Amazon review is pretty accurate I'd say--brave, but flawed. I'm on the fence between two and three stars for this one.

The orchestral "score" to the Falklands Suite is surprisingly good neo-classical, but the accompanying poetry reading (aided in places by the Llandaff Cathedral Choir) is quite awkward for the most part. The suite could have functioned nicely as a mood piece, but there are portions of the reading that are positively jarring, so I'm not sure when you'd really want to play it.

The piano pieces are both pleasant enough (but very brief). Then comes "The Soul of Carmen Miranda", the only "conventional" rock song here. It's a moody techno-pop collaboration with Brian Eno that points the way directly to "Wrong Way Up", a great album that you should buy immediately. As for "Words For The Dying", it's interesting, but hardly essential. "Carmen Miranda" appears on "Seducing Down The Door" and a portion of "Falklands" is on "Fragments of a Rainy Season", so you can probably live without this one.

Length:: 1:09 Mins