I seem to have lost the document with a planned entry � oh well

Last night I saw something written on the wall of a pub

Death�s icy grip has seized its prey

And claimed it for its own

Nature�s once boldest work � his clay

The spirit�s flown

It was meant to be there � it wasn�t graffiti. The words were written by the co-writer of the First World War song � It�s a long way to Tipperary�. He was the brother of the publican who once held the pub.

After I came back from New York at the start of the year I ordered a copy of Seditious and Sublime � a biography of John Cale � but by the time it arrived my enthusiasm for it had waned a bit and so I put it to one side. I have just picked it up again to find a lot of good stuff in it.

The Nico album that Cale was working on before he did the two tunes on Bryter Later was called Desert Shore � something I need to hear. It seems that Elektra dropped Nico after Marble Index had failed to sell well. Joe Boyd offered to make another record with Nico provided John Cale agreed to produce it. Boyd got Warner Brothers to agree to release it. To finish off Desert Shore, Cale came to London to work at Sound Techniques and that was how he met the engineer John Wood. While he was in London Cale made a short film called �Police Car� and this ended up in a Fluxus box which was subsequently reviewed by the New York Times.

At this point in his career Cale was still casting around for something to do post Velvets. The previous year, he had produced the first album of the Detroit band the Stooges and this seems to have gone well even though the album was made very quickly. The Stooges were much luckier in finding the right producer than the other leading Detroit band, MC5 � who were also dropped by Elektra after their first album.

When Cale came to Bryter Later his experience spanned several genres � the New York experimental/minimalist scene and its mutation into rock but also the cross-over from that kind of music into art-song, specifically with Nico but also in the two albums which CBS Masterworks had commissioned under Cale�s own name. The first of these, Church of Anthrax, was a collaboration with Terry Riley and the second, Vintage Violence, featured Cale written songs although at this point Cale was very unconfident about his own vocal abilities.

More study of Bill Viola and Dan Graham � especially their creative strategies � how they configure their work in the light of other recent work � and also their understanding of the potentialities of new media.