The Velvet Forum

Do the U.S. and U.K. versions of the "John Cale Comes Alive" album have different performances of "Ooh La La" and "Never Give Up On You"? I thought the only difference was that the place of the two songs was switched on the two versions of the album, but I've been compiling Cale cuts for easy listening, and noticed I have two versions of each song, with "Ooh La La" running 4:22 (U.S. pressing and Rhino compilation) and 3:25 (completely different performance), and "Never Give Up On You" running 3:26 (U.S. pressing) and 3:56 (very different mix, and longer - a different edit?). Weird.

Another question - some Ebay fella was selling a CD of the soundtrack for John's "Beautiful Mistake" film - but I cannot find a listing of this anywhere for sale (or even existing). Anyone have a source for this, or know anything?

From the Velvet Underground Appreciation society website:

Cale Comes Alive
--USA 1984 ORIGINAL LP "Never Give Up on You" and "Ooh La La" are different from the Euro LPs. Still in shrink, M-/M- $10 or VG+/M- $9 b c

Beautiful Mistake is a BBC Wales film of Cale interacting with other Welsh musicians. You can find details of it here http://www.xs4all.nl/~werksman/cale/mov ... stake.html

The soundtrack is almost certainly a bootleg

from what's welsh for zen:
my second live album, 'john cale comes alive' also appeared in 1984. i had a great american mix of that song 'ooh la la', which had skip-rope on it, like that malcolm mclaren record 'buffalo girls'. that was backbone to the whole track, but then people told me that skippong didn't mean a thing in europe. that single died a death.

Thanks, Ferges! I'd read "What's Welsh For Zen," but didn't remember that. Interesting that Cale prefers the U.S. version.

That's not the only Cale single that's different, by the way - the "Sylvia Said" 45 is a completely different performance to that on the "Island Years" CD - the latter sounds to me like a "Paris 1919" recording, while the former sounds like it's from the "Fear" sessions.

dsulpy wrote:Do the U.S. and U.K. versions of the "John Cale Comes Alive" album have different performances of "Ooh La La" and "Never Give Up On You"? I thought the only difference was that the place of the two songs was switched on the two versions of the album, but I've been compiling Cale cuts for easy listening, and noticed I have two versions of each song, with "Ooh La La" running 4:22 (U.S. pressing and Rhino compilation) and 3:25 (completely different performance), and "Never Give Up On You" running 3:26 (U.S. pressing) and 3:56 (very different mix, and longer - a different edit?). Weird.

Funny, I?ve been compiling Cale tracks too! I?m up to three discs and still going. Just picked up a copy of Villa Albani maxi single off of eBay for four bucks, and snagged a copy of JOHN CALE VS THE BEES/DOCTOR ROCKIT E IS MISSING + CHUMS OF DUMPTY e.p. from GEMM. The working title for my project is called?Anthology Starts Here? URGH! I know pretty lame!
If you wouldn?t mind, I?d like to p.m. you later with my track lists and perhaps you could give me some input by way of additions/suggestions.
Is anyone familiar with the boot DRIFT STUDY? I bought it back in the late eighties and it has SYLVIA SAYS and CORAL MOON. Both are listed as outtakes from FEAR and HELEN OF TROY respectively. But C.M. sounds a lot like the album version, at least to my ears, and I suspect S.S. is really the single and not an actual outtake. I don?t own a copy of the single of SILVIA SAYS so I can?t confirm this. If anyone could enlighten me it would be appreciated.
I?ll give the bootlegger of DRIFT STUDY some credit for having a sense of humor; he went by the name of Baal and released the disc on Shelter records. J.J. Cale?s label! LOL

Hi, feel free to email me at dsulpy at ptd dot net
I never heard of the Chums of Dumpty EP... I guess I'm a couple of years behind.
I have the "Drift Study" vinyl. I think "Coral Moon" is on there because the bootlegger assumed it was an outtake because they had the version of "Helen of Troy" that has "Leaving It Up To You" on it ("Coral Moon" was the replacement cut when that song was censored off the album). I never got the actual Sylvia Said single either, but I'm sure that's the version on the boot. There are several other Cale boots on that label ("Reise and Ende Der Nacht" comes to mind) - most of them quite horrible. Tracks fade in and out, many things are deceptively mislabeled, and on top of it all the sound quality and vinyl is pretty crappy. On the other hand, occasionally there's something quite nice, like "Satellite Walk" with the full backing vocals, which were presumably abbreviated on the released recording when someone realized "When The Red Red Robin Comes Bob Bob Bobbin' Along" might still be under copyright...

dsulpy wrote:"Reise and Ende Der Nacht" comes to mind)

Although I don't have it, I'm intrigued about this one - mainly because it claims to contain further tracks from that session with David Bowie that produced Velvet Couch and Piano-La. This page seems to suggest that most of the purported Bowie tracks are from other sources, but the first track may be the real deal. What's your opinion?

Anyone have the shorter version, I guess, of Never Give Up On You. The one I have is 4 minutes. According to Olivier Landemaine's site, the album version is 4:56. I assume that's a typo and it should be 3:56. So based on what I'm reading, I'm looking for the 3:26 version.

Also, if Bowie is featured on Reise Ans Ende Der Nacht, he doesn't sing. We can only hope that the Bowie/Cale sessions are released one day (including crisp versions of Piano La and Velvet Couch).

RE: Never Give Up... The U.K. version is 3:52, the U.S. version is 3:23... and you're right, there are no Bowie vocals on "Reise ans Ende der Nacht" -- hell, I'm not even sure if Cale is on those tunes.