John Cale

No Time, No Space. Rock eras and generations shuffle their cards in the eternal present of virtual spaces and real-world installations. Money, art, passion, career, marketing: they all merge into one big performance. That’s entertainment. For better or worse, or some remix of the two, you be the judge. Judge for yourselves whether it's fantastic, pathetic, or flavourless jam, depending on the case and on personal taste: Kevin Shields sharing a stage with Patti Smith, or Scott Walker duetting with Elizabeth Fraser, or the reunions of the Stooges, the Kinks (minus Ray Davies), Bauhaus, the Doors (minus who you'd expect, and, a little less obviously, with who they've got) and so on. Rock looks at itself in the mirror, spots the wrinkles, applies its maquillage, and everything turns into a staging of memory.

But is it always like that? In this particular case, the experience — grand and disorienting at once — was watching a rock legend in the full splendour of his 63 years play a show as if he were a rising star being hyped by the Nme. John Cale, decked out in a polo shirt and jeans as trendy as anything Pete Doherty might wear, and certainly more stylish than Kaiser Chiefs, in 2006 plays a plastic hard-funk in the vein of N*E*R*D*, with the conviction and energy of a teenager on the rise in the music industry. An “old man” who, at an age that used to mean retirement, is pure human beauty to watch, in his energy, his clarity, and his complete lack of pretension: John Cale simply doesn't need it.

Here, in the end, the music matters relatively little. It hardly matters that “Black Acetate”, the album the Welshman is touring behind, contains no truly memorable songs or major innovations; what matters instead is the persistence of a voice with the authority to speak, one you want to keep listening to even when it has nothing exceptional to say. It's a voice that keeps vibrating with exceptionality, and one that still feels utterly present.

John visibly enjoys himself from the first to the last moment of the evening at the Carling Academy, and I don't mean he smiles (never that), but he can't wait to pick up his guitars, because that's what he wants to do right now: play powerful funk and raise hell with the six-string. It's no coincidence that when he offers us songs at the keyboard, the renditions are ironic or entirely “understated”, clearly meant to give a detached, perspective-driven view of them: like the “medley” of “Femme Fatale/Rosegarden Funeral of Sores”, which gets laughs for the way John repeats, dry and comical, the line “Cause everybody knows”, as if smirking, all right, I'll give you the Velvet song because I know you want it, but it's been 40 years, enough already.

Songs from more recent albums, like “Walking On Locusts” (a shame nothing from the splendid “Hobo Sapiens” makes the cut), are reworked through the lens of 2006 Cale, but it's the tracks from the latest album that come off best, precisely because they were written for a power-rock lineup like the one on stage tonight: voice, two guitars, bass, sequencer and drums. Stripped-down, driving versions, touches of unexpected irony like the multiple falsetto choruses every musician takes a stab at, Cale included. Or like when, after playing a new, unreleased song, the band launches straight back into it once Cale asks the crowd to join in on the choruses, now that they know the tune. All in all, today's portrait of the Velvet Underground's electric viola man strikes me as guided by the healthiest possible “I couldn't care less”. And now I know I want to grow old just like him.

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