After 26 years, John Cale returns to Mexico in a psychedelic concert

John Cale performed in Mexico City this Saturday after 26 years, at the Teatro de la Ciudad. It was the only concert he will give this year.

20:10 hours, third call, we begin: the Esperanza Iris theater is not full but the audience is making itself heard, dressed in black like John Cale and his group, there is a lot of formal clothing among the audience, between the outfits and the imposing setting of the venue inaugurated in 1912, the general picture could be that of a mass wedding, except that another portion of the attendees have taken out their most precious rock t-shirts.

In a brief 1 hour and 15 minute set, Cale, backed by a solid guitar, bass and drum set, took center stage seated at his trademark red Nord keyboard. The set was centered around introducing his latest album, from this year, POPtical IllusionWhat does a good band backing a musician like Cale mean? Everything must be governed by an economy of resources, the guitarist must be able to string together dissonant chords, to unite seemingly dissimilar parts, the drums and bass can have groove but never go overboard into a solo and always keep the rhythm. They must also be able to show some personality on stage, something that distances them from the pettiness of the musician hired to repeat himself.

Listen live POPtical Illusion is to encounter a Cale who had an epiphany with hip-hop music already in this millennium. He doesn’t intend to sound like the rappers who dazzled him, like Tyler The Creator, but rather to take something from the way in which this genre conceives music, taking fragments of songs and reordering them to his own benefit.

Cale is playing a musical version of his compatriot Dylan Thomas’ poem, Do Not Go Gente Into That GoodNightwhich the Welsh composer recorded in 1989 and in its translated version says:

Do not go gentle into that good night,

That at the end of the day old age should burn and rave;
Rage, rage at the dying of the light.

Although the wise understand in the end that darkness is right,
As no ray has entrusted strength to his word,
They do not go gently into that good night.

The effect of an older John Cale singing this text live is very different from hearing it on a record, as Cale outlived his own myth and one could say that Thomas, whose last sentence before dying was “I’ve had 18 whiskeys, I think that’s a good measure” did not. The myth of Cale is that of his history in The Velvet Underground, with whom he recorded only two albums, enough to alter the path of modern music. Cale can invoke Lou Reed, not in his tone of voice, he does not pretend to imitate him, only to conjure that phrasing, that way of spitting out the words in some passage of his show.