The groovy side of John Cale

Dec 22, 2008 at 4:27 PM
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"Groovy" is not a word I have ever associated with John Cale, but that is because I had never listened to Church of Anthrax, his 1970 collaboration with Terry Riley, until now. I thought I had, but I must not have, because I would have listened to it a lot if I had ever heard it. Terry Riley is known as a minimalist composer, so I was expecting something rather spare and austere; but no, on the long title track the repeated motifs that are the key ingredient of minimalism are played over a churning rock backbeat provided by drummers Bobby Gregg and Bobby Colomby and Cale's own bass, aligning the work more with the contemporaneous Anglo-European psychedelia of Hawkwind and Can than the academically-inclined Minimalists. That's my kinda groove.