Nick Cave : Classic or Dud ?

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

the minor->major shift in "white elephant" is kinda deflating, it was great to hang around with Mean Nick for a few minutes again

yeah but it still rules, wish he snarled the mean part more though. absolutely the highlight so far

the first half is a peek into the alternate universe where instead of making the boatman's call he got really into electronic textures in the way so many bands did in the late 90s and tried to make something resembling trip-hop

bodes well for the long teased grinderman 3

"what doesn't kill you makes you........crazier" is a pretty classic nick cave capper

cool little album, kinda merges the arc of the last three albums into one

i prefer the moodier first half of the album though, it's more interesting than the second half which sounds beautiful but they did that territory better on ghosteen not too long ago. the first half at least goes to some interesting new places and doesn't mirror skeleton tree & push the sky away as directly

"white elephant" definitely my favourite

thanks for the heads up! also liked the first half better, and thought White Elephant sounded like self-parody :)

(obv Cave has always believed that self-parody is nothing to be frightened of)

Hmm, I wonder if "Weird" Al is even capable of self-parody, and how he would go about doing it? I guess like this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4wFviI79VA

lmao you and your thought exercises <3

For years Anita Lane was overshadowed by her collaborator and ex-boyfriend Nick Cave. Eleanor Philpot argues that we instead need to see the singer as an artist whose exploration of female sexuality was way ahead of its time.

I'm delighted she is getting a long, long overdue reappraisal.

I'm also delighted that Mute will be reissuing Sex O’Clock later in 2021, the album's first vinyl release