Nick Cave : Classic or Dud ?

I’ve seen Nick Cave a slightly embarrassing number of times going back to Henry’s Dream. The highlights were the tours for The Boatman’s Call and Abattoir Blues, absolutely exceptional shows with the new material feeling super vital. I’ve seen the last few outings and the new stuff has been good but for me they get a bit rote when the setlist warhorses are wheeled out - Red Right Hand, From Her to Eternity, Tupelo, Into Your Arms, Ship Song. I get why you’d want to play those songs and if any of those shows was your first NC show it would totally deliver.

The show I saw on the Push The Sky Away tour had Jubilee Street as like the 3rd song and it was unbelievable, one of the most extraordinary live music moments I’ve ever seen. I could have left at that point totally satisfied.

Nick Cave, David Bowie, Joe Strummer and one other famous rocker
Bob Marley or GTFO

Iggy IMO

saw bad seeds in a theatre san diego in 2017... still probably the best rock show i've been to. never seen a band with dynamic range as broad as that. nick's presence was out of this world, and being part of the crowd rushing the stage was surreal.

No More Shall We Part tour for me. I'm more or less a casual fan but to this day it was one of the best rock shows I've ever attended.

The new record's just ok imo. I really love "Night Raid" but none of the others are sticking. FWIW I didn't much care for Skeleton Tree either.

yeah. it's a shame the last two records don't really hold up to the amount of fuss - and magnetism - of the recent documentaries, tours, talks, etc. i really do think the seeds are world class musicians and nick's an amazing writer, but i just expect something a little more than microkorg for an hour.

So after bailing early on the stream as I noted up thread I held off on listening until the actual physical thing arrived. Listening last night my impression was I liked it quite a bit more (listening to a youtube stream on my headphones on my phone at work isn't probably the ideal listening environment) and approaching it in terms of Alice Coltrane's late devotional records I think helped but it into better prescriptive.

Musically, it reminds me of a lot of weird late 70s French synth stuff, Bernard Szajner or Richard Pinhas, though it isn't as urgent as any of that, more languid, more Tangerine Dream-y, ("Hollywood" is basically the score of a William Friedkin movie)...but with Nick obv singing/decanting over the top of it. More slippery then I usually like to hear NC/Bds but it was growing on me

Lots of weird animal/burning/fire/LA/Jesus images coming through in the lyrics...made me wonder if being semi-Malibu based they were affected by the Woolsey Fire

Made me think he has actually made a weird/divisive record that he always claims "Nocutrama" is, but overall I think I liked it, it makes up an interesting triptych with the last two, but I totally get why people wouldn't like it, my wife was really not feeling it.

Also interesting, Warren & Nick are the only ones who have their pictures in the artwork anywhere, in the very smeary, 80s gatefold

Love this album. Shouldn't play it on the way to work, in a morning, though.

https://www.stereogum.com/2076046/nick-cave-addresses-change-problematic-old-lyrics/news/

lol what a fuckin dope

Just so I'm clear, you would have songwriters like Cave revisit their previous work and alter any lyrics that might potentially offend someone? I guess I don't find his reply to that question especially unreasonable.

I read that like three times yesterday and still couldn't make heads or tails of it, what a dumb answer, if he doesn't want to change words in old songs (or if he does or whatever) I just think the way he couches his answer is stupid. Just say "yeah people might be offended by it but that's how the song goes" or "yeah people might be offended by it so I've amended it" but don't say yr songs are special children on the playground or whatever

I'm really growing annoyed with these missives, there was one the other day that about the meaning of a certain song that pissed me off cuz I just wish people wouldn't explain what their songs are about

i don't give a shit whether he changes the lyrics in his songs or not but that's a stupid, defensive answer

this whole exercise started out pretty neat but he's increasingly shown himself to be a pretty typical narrow-minded older dude on quite a few subjects you'd expect

I'm really growing annoyed with these missives, there was one the other day that about the meaning of a certain song that pissed me off cuz I just wish people wouldn't explain what their songs are about

― chr1sb3singer, Monday, March 9, 2020 11:28 AM (forty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah i hate "explainer" and "song exploder" type shit, drains everything of life

the dumbest thing is like oh it was 30 years ago who could have known...like this was TWO years after gnr's "one in a million" sparked a huge controversy, you knew what you were doing

i don't think he's under any obligation to change anything, or do do old songs or not do old songs but don't pretend

In 1992, the song was fully intended to be offensive, as far as I could tell. What's changed is that a young'ish white dude being offensive in 1992 (or 82, with the swastikas and such) could be taken as a strike against The Man, maybe even a show of camaraderie coming from a band of dudes with different ethnicities and sexualities, but now just feels like another rock band full of dudes.

> this whole exercise started out pretty neat but he's increasingly shown himself to be a pretty typical

The "holy song as a messager from the unknown" shtick is pretty thin after years of deploying it.

it's just the dumbest possible way to do the standup comedian "i'm just a teller of hard truths that some people can't handle" bit, art was such a mistake

the dumbest thing is like oh it was 30 years ago who could have known...like this was TWO years after gnr's "one in a million" sparked a huge controversy, you knew what you were doing

and in the 28 years since the record came out, approximately one person has not realised the song is written in character

The "holy song as a messager from the unknown" shtick is pretty thin after years of deploying it.

If you believe things, you should stop saying them, to better demonstrate your sincerity.

a young'ish white dude being offensive in 1992 (or 82, with the swastikas and such) could be taken as a strike against The Man, maybe even a show of camaraderie coming from a band of dudes with different ethnicities and sexualities, but now just feels like another rock band full of dudes.

― Julius Caesar Memento Hoodie (bendy), Monday, March 9, 2020 2:54 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

speak for yourself?

Not sure if anyone else watched Idiot Prayer last night, I was lukewarm on the idea going into it, the whole forced "live event" feel, clunky ticketing processes, solo piano, etc, but man it was really awesome, he did a great/wide selection of Bad Seeds stuff, a couple of Grinderman songs, a new song, all of it was great. The two Ghosteen songs (a record I have really come around on), esp "Galleon Ship", sounded perfect as solo piano jams.

I was hoping for "Wild World" but I'll take "Papa Won't Leave You Henry" any day of the week.

The execution (at least in North America, I know UK & Australia had issues with the stream) was excellent and expensive, I am sure this will get released in wider form at some point

yeah it was really nice; it was essentially a PPV film since it was made last month, but this made up for the cancelled tour this year. Performances were top notch. Yeah I'm sure this will be available later and likely is already on torrents somewhere; if you streamed this to your computer (which was kind of a pain in the ass) they just hosted it on vimeo and despite the "you can't log in later than start time" you absolutely could, and you could pause and rewind and even start over if you wanted to.

Bjork is doing 4 livestream concerts in August, via dice as well; but these appear to be actual live events. Looking forward to them.

Wasn't part of the point (and price) that it was a one-off, not to be released at a later date?

(Difficult to imagine that it won't be obviously).

It was, but the way the thing was shot & recorded it would be insane to think they are just going to sit on it forever.

And yeah despite all the "one time only! basically live event! not really!" hype it was stream-able right away, though I wonder if that had to do with the technical problems that it had in Australia and the UK? Like maybe they decided to be on the safe side and just have be like a normal streaming video.

And would I be cheesed if it were available later to people who didn't shell out 20 bucks? Not really

yeah I downloaded this from a torrent site already

I would've paid for this if it was actually live and I thought about paying anyway. A couple of his films (the concert one and the one about the previous album) were supposedly one-night only as well, weren't they? I don't really mind all this stuff. As someone who's followed him for a long long time, I have a kind of respect for how fucking skilful he is at making shitloads of money nowadays. Every time he does something like this, I think of his song "Easy Money" - that really nailed it. And I get it - providing for his family and then some is his priority above everything else, fair enough.

This is funny: https://www.theredhandfiles.com/piano-you-played-for-idiot-prayer/

https://www.theredhandfiles.com/1164-2/

stan culture strikes again

Vol. 1 of a major biography in the works:

https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9781460713211/boy-on-fire/

Nick Cave seems like someone that would write an exemplary and honest memoir that still manages to elide major events and subjects, like Springsteen did, imo.

Did anyone see last week’s solo concert?

Oh nevermind, missed the earlier posts.

crowdfunder for nick: https://www.theredhandfiles.com/1172-2/

that follows on an earlier report where apparently people have been calling that piano company telling them to give him a piano; he asked them to stop

these toxic nick cave stans (cave trolls??) are out of control

Looking back at his facetious post:

Now, one of the things you may or may not know about being a famous musician is that companies give you shit for free. The more famous you are, the more shit you get — you just have to wear one of their t-shirts or a branded cap or something.

I'm struck by the thought that if you have to explain a joke to the room, you're in the wrong room. The wit of cult-artist years of songwriting were built around the fact that he never winked. That post needed a winky emoticon, which would further kill the joke, so he shoulda caught himself.

tbf the internet is mostly one very large wrong room

yeah!

crowdfunder for nick: https://www.theredhandfiles.com/1172-2/

Nick's response is quite funny, good to see he isn't taking himself too seriously.

And would I be cheesed if it were available later to people who didn't shell out 20 bucks? Not really

― chr1sb3singer, Friday, July 24, 2020 11:43 AM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

And there it is

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/nick-cave-idiot-prayer-concert-live-album-1054536/

The film is going to be in released in cinemas with extra songs as well.

I'm not one to watch a concert movie, but I just listened to the audio version of Idiot Prayer that was just released as an album and it's kind of the perfect thing to close this really terrible year with.

My only regret is that I cannot listen to it with the biggest Nick Cave fan I knew and one of y best friends, who passed away from cancer almost exactly two years ago.

Incidentally, charlie rex has proposed a Cave et al ballot-based poll in coming days. Expect an actual dedicated thread very soon...

omg definitely will participate in that :D

https://www.theredhandfiles.com/how-is-your-lockdown/

the upcoming quarantine album is titled Carnage

Carnage is out now! Cave/Ellis only. sounds great so far.

Seeing there's a new book out on the young NIck Cave
There was a competition on the ROiwland S Howard FB p[age for copies last week.

i'm kinda surprised this ended up being just a cave & ellis album, was expecting at least some remote contributions from the other bad seeds

those "hand of god" backing vocals make me think of pj harvey

so far it's pretty in line with push the sky away and skeleton tree in sound, except with electronic beats

like specifically this feels like the album "animal x" would have fitted on