Eno or Cale ??
- Thread starter Buick6
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k-punk
Spectres of Mark
rewch said:
good question... who is he?
But as for Brian Eno ... yes have to go with consensus here, the massive black mark of his U2-involvement notwithstanding, Eno's role in Roxy Music and For Your Pleasure, his own solo albums, Low, No New York, the first Ultravox LP, AND, as Simon says, as a theorist make him untouchable....
Leaving aside Cale's own role with the Status Quo of the avant-garde for a moment, his productions of the first Stooges LP, Nico's peerless Marble Index and the Happy Mondays' first LP are all groundbreaking.
I guess the interesting thing is what they have in common: potientators rather than artists as such,
conspicuously intelligent if not intellectual, but perhaps above all, a certain coldness....
Can't believe Eno is getting such a soft rap here. Beyond U2, there's other crimes - The Passengers, producing James, just about everything he did after "Thursday Afternoon"... That's, of course, not to say that the work up to the early 80s wasn't completely transcendent, but nonetheless...
Cale:
working w/LaMonte Young, Tony Conrad et al in Theatre of Eternal Music
performing Satie's "Vexations"
New York in the 1960s discs on TOTE
The VU
Church of Anthrax w/T. Riley
The Academy in Peril (almost for the Warhol cover alone)
"Big White Cloud" and "Amsterdam" on Vintage Violence
Paris 1919 (contender for my favourite rec. of all time)
Fear, Slow Dazzle, Helen of Troy
Music for A New Society - "Chinese Envoy"!
Words For The Dying
Fragments of A Rainy Season (one of the best live recordings ever?)
how about that cover of "Hallelujah", people!
Let's not even get started on the fantastic soundtrack work over time
And production work: Happy Mondays first LP, the Modern Lovers, the Stooges, Nico, "Horses", "Caged/Uncaged"...
Reading about the Eno/Cale fall-out over "Wrong Way Up" in What's Welsh For Zen confirmed a lot of suspicions I had about both characters...
(Eno does deserve major props for almost erasing an entire U2 album once...)
Cale:
working w/LaMonte Young, Tony Conrad et al in Theatre of Eternal Music
performing Satie's "Vexations"
New York in the 1960s discs on TOTE
The VU
Church of Anthrax w/T. Riley
The Academy in Peril (almost for the Warhol cover alone)
"Big White Cloud" and "Amsterdam" on Vintage Violence
Paris 1919 (contender for my favourite rec. of all time)
Fear, Slow Dazzle, Helen of Troy
Music for A New Society - "Chinese Envoy"!
Words For The Dying
Fragments of A Rainy Season (one of the best live recordings ever?)
how about that cover of "Hallelujah", people!
Let's not even get started on the fantastic soundtrack work over time
And production work: Happy Mondays first LP, the Modern Lovers, the Stooges, Nico, "Horses", "Caged/Uncaged"...
Reading about the Eno/Cale fall-out over "Wrong Way Up" in What's Welsh For Zen confirmed a lot of suspicions I had about both characters...
(Eno does deserve major props for almost erasing an entire U2 album once...)
blissblogger
Well-known member
forgot about the Ist stooges, he gets a big boost just for "we will fall"
Cale also produced Horses by Patti Smith, although she resisted him all the way apparently so it's moot what his contribution was
did you know that Cale was lined up to produce the Pop Group? but the band, being postpunk puritans, didn't get on with him cos he was too dissolute
Cale also produced Horses by Patti Smith, although she resisted him all the way apparently so it's moot what his contribution was
did you know that Cale was lined up to produce the Pop Group? but the band, being postpunk puritans, didn't get on with him cos he was too dissolute
Sorry, Eno's been a dry wank twenty years, whereas Hobosapiens I liked a lot; Eno's vocal albums are great but overrated. He's got a talent for being in the right place at the right time but that's (mostly) it, though I love some of the records lots: "Spider and I" and Music For Films especially
Cale's more versatile, more vulnerable, less premeditated, more humane. I tend to like his dadaesque hysteric-classicist (very Hugo Ball, actually) better than Eno's contractor/egghead ideas-man; Cale's a throwback, a sometimes-sentimental modernist, Eno's the new-economy...
Cale's more versatile, more vulnerable, less premeditated, more humane. I tend to like his dadaesque hysteric-classicist (very Hugo Ball, actually) better than Eno's contractor/egghead ideas-man; Cale's a throwback, a sometimes-sentimental modernist, Eno's the new-economy...
I basically hate the entire genre of ambient, plus David Bowie, plus U2 plus 90% of Roxy Music so don't really get what Eno has to be so proud about.
OTOH Cale did "Church of Anthrax" which was the only one of my mate Martin's collection of dodgy hippie albums that he inherited from his uncle that I actually liked, therefore we listened to it a lot when I was 16 ergo Cale wins.
OTOH Cale did "Church of Anthrax" which was the only one of my mate Martin's collection of dodgy hippie albums that he inherited from his uncle that I actually liked, therefore we listened to it a lot when I was 16 ergo Cale wins.
Is this a bit of a rockist v. (off-kilter) popist choice, at least in terms of the 70s solo albums. For all the artiness eno has that singalonga-brian lightness of touch which is always listenable but never jaw-dropping. Cale's stuff has more sense of weight/challenge/Importance which is exhilarating or clumsy/verging on unlistenable. Depending.
Alternatively: eno is the classicist (grace, proportion, Beauty), cale is the romantic (expression, angst, Truth)
Me, I need & love both. (all 4?)
Alternatively: eno is the classicist (grace, proportion, Beauty), cale is the romantic (expression, angst, Truth)
Me, I need & love both. (all 4?)