ABSTRACT
The girl, in a paisley shift and tree-bark stockings, seems to be moving to some internal rhythm. Her partner is bathed in light: electric blue. He swings low, encircling her waist without touching. His tongue darts snakelike toward her hips, retreating as she grinds forward. The girl takes off her glasses and hands them to her partner. She swoops as the walls play a strobe-lit threnody. The dance is called the Gobble. It started on the Lower East Side. Now they’re grinding it out in Forest Hills. But the Gobble can be done anywhere. The dance floor is scuffed from the pounding of a million stomping polkas. Even though hippies have made St. Mark’s Place their drag, the old gestalt lingers on, haunting the Balloon Farm with the irony of tradition. John Cale is a classicist. His first composition was "written on a rather large piece of plywood".
