CHAPTER 12

 

 

 

#89: JOHN CALE

"Bicycle"

from the album HoboSapiens

Released: October 2003

 

 

Oxford, obviously. Cycling up a very steep incline all the way to the Library at Brookes University. The intermittent pumps of organ (or possibly harmonium) remind us of the premature autumnal glory of light (and perhaps Ivor Cutler). The quietly frantic citizen, trying to find Sid so that he can tell him about those gas shares. Dart round the village (or The Village) speedily enough to encompass its body in discounted gold.

 

 

The beat is a dancing lurch, grinding as it glosses. A 1981 fantasy of what a dance record could be as set against the screwed-in 2003 template. As opaque a flotation as the jelly of lemons (all the ducks wish they could cycle in the water). A looped, deepened, worn-out male voice ("do-doo-do-doo," teetering on the brink of an asthma attack) which may be winking wearily at Lou Reed's wild side (therein would lie the payback), eventually and lusciously counterpointed by a breezy, non-worried female equivalent. The bell of the bike, the afternoon toll of blue ghosts in the air.

 

 

Sometimes the beat comes to an awkward halt, as though having just encountered the sandwich-craving sheep of Top Withens. "Ponce!" cackles a sampled female voice, before the hymnal reverts to physical and the main voice eventually runs out of fitness (an elongated and possibly gratified "phew" at song's end).

 

 

The Wales, of course, the Llaggerub, John the Drone with the help of Brian the Drumloop. The vanished, the vapourised velveteens. And those sheep. And the reminder of how Nico died. A song for Chelsea.