Album of the Day 8/19/10

Every day, we count down the 1000 best albums of all time all the way to #1. Thursday’s album is #894:

John Cale – Sabotage

A moment in time captured unforgettably: nothing Cale ever did before or after(White Light White Heat included) resembles it. By 1979, when this careening live set was recorded at CBGB, Cale had fallen in with New York’s punk crowd, and the songs reflect it. It’s by far the wildest thing Cale ever recorded, a crazed, drug-fueled night, Mark Aaron’s screaming, unhinged noiserock guitar and George Scott’s loud, distorted, melodic bass flailing against Cale’s off-kilter keys. It’s got the menacing punk/metal anthems Mercenaries/Ready for War (an English counterpart to Warren Zevon), Evidence and Dr. Mudd, a loud, sloppy cover of the blues standard Walkin’ the Dog and in the midst of all the madness, Floor Kiss frontwoman Deerfrance taking a turn in front of the band and stealing the show with her comfortingly calm, tender high soprano on the folk-pop smash Only Time Will Tell. John Cale’s 1970s albums are a mixed bag: the tersely melodic Romantic beauty of Paris 1919; the quirky avant instrumentals of The Academy in Peril and the forgettable stoner folkie songwriting of Vintage Violence. A considerably later Cale live album, 1997’s Fragments of a Rainy Season has him playing a whole bunch of classics including The Ballad of Cable Hogue, Paris 1919, Dying on the Vine and Buffalo Ballet solo on piano along with perhaps the definitive version of his crazed cover of Heartbreak Hotel. Here’s a torrent.