"See, the beauty of Cale in the beginning was that he really didn’t know very much about rock. In fact, he knew next to nothing. So, if you turned him loose on an instrument he wasn’t able to play any kind of cliched anything because he didn’t know any of the cliches. It was all original."

Sterling Morrison

Fear Is A Man's Best Friend (Est. 1999) is the ultimate unofficial John Cale website

Ten commandments for Caleists

This text was posted by Bjorn Waller on the Velvet Underground list - February 8, 2002:

According to what I was told at a secret meeting of Caleists¹⁾ (which I managed to bluff my way into by claiming that Loop was much better than Heroin) the ten commandments of the Caleists are:

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, unless wearing short sleeves.
Thou shalt read and destroy everything that you read in books.
Thou shalt not go gentle into that good night.
Thou shalt bite the heads off chickens whenever inappropriate.
Thou shalt not commit hanky panky nohow.
Thou shalt scream at a potted plant until it dies.
Thou shalt not release the Gymnasium tapes ²). No way. Uh-uh. Never.
Thou shalt impersonate flight surgeons.
Thou shalt not mine coal.
Thou shalt have the style it takes.

A Caleist is a person who thinks highly of the Welsh musical genius. When you twist his arm, he will claim that Cale was the cool guy in The Velvet Underground, is the superior musician and has better looks. It's Caleist, not Caleite. The Mother Superior of all Caleists, Texas Blonde Margaret Moser, says so. (HW)
The Gymnasium Tapes are the complete performances by the Velvet Underground at a club called The Gymnasium in NYC in April 1967. They are, I think, the only known live document of the VU in 1967. Two of the tracks are on the Peel Slowly And See box. Cale has the rest and refuses to release them. (BW)
This no longer true. They were finally released on the White Light/White Heat - 45th anniversary deluxe edition in 2013. (HW)

Was that funny? Maybe then you will enjoy:

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» Praise for the Fear site...

"the ultimate John Cale resource"
Tim Mitchell, author of Sedition and Alchemy - A Biography of John Cale

"Excellent Fan Site"
Auntie Beeb

We strongly advise you to visit his extraordinary unofficial website - Hans Werksman's Fear Is A Man's Best Friend (active since 1999) - truly, the ultimate Cale location.
The Allen Ginsberg Project