John Cale - Guts

It went like this: Lou Reed into Velvet Underground and then into John Cale. And the first John Cale album I was exposed to came from a dubbed copy of Guts that I nabbed from the former Assistant Manager at Disc Jockey Records who learned how to play the acoustic part of “Wish You Were Here” in his basement.
Not that this has anything to do with John Cale, but…you know, K-Town was kind of a fucked up place growing up and the musical tastes of others kind of reflected this fact.
I knew that Cale was in V.U. and I knew he played the unrocking instrument called a viola, so I wanted to try before I buy’d.
He may have had other Cale selections, I cannot remember, but I remember being intrigued with Guts because the cover featured him in a hockey mask, just like Jason Vorhees, playing a Flying V guitar. It was badassed and, unlike a cover of John Cale playing a viola, it looked totally rocking.
It was totally rocking: the very first line on that album, the title track “Guts,” was “The bugger in the short sleeves fucked my wife/Did it quick and split.” Cale then weaves a tale at how he blew him away “like parrot shit” before encouraging us to “kill all you want/But make sure to do it right.” Terrifying stuff, and I began to think that perhaps everyone associated with the Velvet Underground was somehow mentally deranged.
From start to finish, even with covers of “Pablo Picasso” and “Heartbreak Hotel,” Guts is impeccable. So imagine my surprise that when I eventually got around to buying a real copy for me that 1.) the fucking thing was out of print and 2.) the fucking thing was a compilation album.
Apparently, Island records let their John Cale catalog fall out of print almost immediately after the initial pressings ran out. Then, Cale got a little bit of notoriety for donning a goalie mask and killing a chicken on stage, which caused Island to think “That kind of press is sure to sell records!”
Hence the release of Guts.
So I have tried to locate Guts and, because it was a chicken-killing marketing compilation, I’m having trouble finding it. And since John Cale hasn’t killed any poultry for nearly thirty years, it’s no longer in print. The other reason I’m having trouble finding it is because the rise of cds brought the retarded idea that you had to fill every nook and cranny with shit. So that means the 40 minute long Guts has been replaced with the 140-minute long compilation called The Island Years which has itself probably been replaced with John Cale’s Greatest Hits and Now That’s What I Call John Cale’s Music.
Actually, 140 minutes worth of John Cale probably isn’t the worst thing in the world, but my point is: Why fuck with a good thing, particularly when Guts is a great thing. Start to finish, it wonderfully captures Cale’s productive mid-70’s period where he was consistently delivering better albums than his more notable V.U. nemesis.
Part of the reason is because Cale seemed to embrace the harder elements of the young punks, using their amplified power to cut through all the melodramatic bullshit of art rock. For the record, I like Cale’s melodramatic art rock stuff too, but I also like it when he just straight-out rocks like a nutter, advising us that we can “feel safe like Sharon Tate” (“Leaving It Up To You”). Guts is a near-perfect collection of his heavier moments that all subsequent Cale compilations have a tough time matching in terms of power, consistency, and overall enjoyment.