They have NICK CAVE polls now? I want one!: The ILM Nick Cave Poll Voting Thread (#106 in a series)

I saw Ry Cooder and Nick Lowe at the State Theater

I was at that one! it's a lovely place to see shows, but doesn't seem to be booking anything interesting these days

the NC boatman's call show I mentioned earlier was there, and not long after he did a weird solo show there with warren ellis, Jim white and Susan Stengar on bass - it was pretty good, probably a subtler proposition than some of those "grinderman blasts the bad seeds" shows of 10 years ago

Saw 2 nights of The Boatman's Call tour here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_Hall_(Warsaw)
Maybe my favourite, absolutely my most memorable NC gigs - first night was madness, audience going crazy any time the tempo picked up; second night the venue got in a ton of extra security goons to force people back to their seats (which were reputedly designed to keep people upright and awake during communist speeches) & just STOP THE FUN. You could see Cave getting more and more frustrated with a room that felt dead. Late on - maybe as late as The Mercy Seat - he said something like "I don't know what's going on here, but I do know there are more of you than there are of them" and it just exploded, everyone up, charging forward and overwhelming the goons.

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

the live versions of "jubilee street" really are phenomenal

I remember a lot of converts from the Lollapalooza tour, that seemed to be the first bump in his reputation in the US. I know he brings it regardless, but I can’t imagine seeing him on an outdoor stage or even an arena. The music is so suited to a theater size stage and crowd. I suppose I’d just find the music better in certain ventures. (I saw a Siouxsie outside gig and that was just wrong)

I queued up for hours to see him at Montreux Jazz Festival a few years ago, so that I could get to the front. The hall wasn't massive but wasn't exactly small either. If you're anywhere close to the stage it doesn't matter whether you're in a theatre or an arena.

When I saw him touring "Dig, Lazarus, Dig!" I took a friend who had not only never heard Nick Cave, but had never heard *of* Nick Cave. He still talks about that show to this day.

I remember a lot of converts from the Lollapalooza tour, that seemed to be the first bump in his reputation in the US. I know he brings it regardless, but I can’t imagine seeing him on an outdoor stage or even an arena

ah yes, I remember sitting in traffic for 3-4 hours and missing his set, which was the one thing I really wanted to see that year. It was an outdoor venue (some former air base iirc which didn't usually have large events, hence the traffic problems) and he was on in the middle of the afternoon or early evening, but it was still light out. I think it was the time slot Ministry had in '92.

are any of the many bad seeds live releases particularly worth listening to? they've always seemed like they're better live than on record, never seeming to quite capture their live intensity on record until abattoir blues/the lyre of orpheus, which was mostly live-in-studio.

Live Seeds is essential, and was largely released as a corrective to Henry's Dream, on which Nick and Mick had hated the experience of working with Neil Young's producer. As noted earlier, the stripped-down versions of Push The Sky Away tracks on the KCRW album are also refined from the album, but in the other direction.




forgot to include All Tomorrow's Parties 2009 in the accounting of my outdoor Bad Seeds shows, when the whole band curated a festival spread across various spaces on an island in Sydney Harbour that was a convict penal facility in the 1800s, then (with some overlap) a shipbuilding / dockyard facility for over 130 years. I'd guess somewhere between 5 and 10k for that, with an audience heavily tilted toward middle-aged folks who sat at picnic tables in front of the main stage all day with the weekend newspapers, instead of wandering around to see The Saints, Spiritualized, Fuck Buttons, Harmonia, The Necks, Laughing Clowns, Robert Forster, James Blood Ulmer, Michael Gira, Afrirampo, Silver Apples, Bridezilla, The Stabs, Dead Meadow, Rowland S. Howard, The Reels, Psarantonis, Conway Savage, Beaches, Hunter Dienna, The Holy Sea, Hoss or Passenger of Shit, plus a small Louis Wain exhibition that was apparently Nick's contribution to the lineup.

Mick Harvey appeared to be gritting his teeth so hard a molar might pop during Warren & Nick's dancing around and humping each other throughout the set; three days later, he quit the band.

That seems like a good sub-poll, doesn't it? Best (Red) Right Hand Man? Mick, Barry, Blixa, Warren?

That's interesting - throw Rowland in there, and one can see that Cave has always had a foil, and you could group his albums by the contrasting personality. I suppose it's PJ on Boatman's Call.

ah yes, I remember sitting in traffic for 3-4 hours and missing his set, which was the one thing I really wanted to see that year. It was an outdoor venue (some former air base iirc which didn't usually have large events, hence the traffic problems) and he was on in the middle of the afternoon or early evening, but it was still light out. I think it was the time slot Ministry had in '92.

― sarahell, Friday, 27 November 2020 17:08 (yesterday) link

At about 2 in the afternoon in the middle of a blazing Minnesota summer Cave stalked on stage looking about ten feet tall and said "I wanna tell you about a girl" and proceeded to pin the crowd back for the next 30 minutes. They were terrifying and I had just seen the Boredoms like an hour before. Heady.

are any of the many bad seeds live releases particularly worth listening to? they've always seemed like they're better live than on record

there are undoubtedly still "unofficial" live recordings floating around -- totally worth it, well, I guess depending on your aesthetics re production and recording quality ...

also -- question for sic (or anyone really) -- did "Sad Dark Eyes" ever get put on an album proper, or was it just a cover song they did live?

xps Mick is the absolute definition of a perfect foil for just about everyone he works with

did "Sad Dark Eyes" ever get put on an album proper, or was it just a cover song they did live?

recorded for Kicking Against The Pricks but never released, but! Die Haut released a studio version with Mick singing in 1988 (on an album that also featured Kid Congo Powers, Anita Lane and Nick on vocals - the latter singing Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In) - and a Nick-sung version on their 1993 live album.

That seems like a good sub-poll, doesn't it? Best (Red) Right Hand Man? Mick, Barry, Blixa, Warren?

The thing is that his foil changed regularly - Tracy/Rowland, Anita, Blixa - but this affected the persona he was performing, or the character of the musical approach. His right-hand-man remained Mick for the best part of 30 years: writing nearly the entirety of the music in the course of doing the arrangements, staying sober and making sure the gigs got played no matter how fucked up everyone else was, doing most of the day-to-day management even when they paid someone 15% to talk to foreign labels twice a year...

Even though getting sidelined from this without acknowledgment must have rankled, and especially seeing Ellis suddenly get credit and publishing for the songwriting that Harvey had always done unpaid, he apparently only quit over dissatisfaction that the band was switching to doing the same simple rock-band greatest-hits performances*, instead of devising and rehearsing new arrangements for each tour.

*(that enabled Cave & Ellis to showpony over the top, one might editorially surmise)

All kinds of thanks for the album list, sic! I suspect that's gonna help out a lot of us.

I was present at that State Theatre show that's been mentioned in the thread. It was a very polished performance if a little underpowered. I do remember it directing my attention to what an excellent album Push The Sky Away was.

THere's live footage of the first headlining slot at the Electric Ballroom by the band I think advertised as the Cavemen, Filmed for Spanish tv. NIck forgets lyrics at several points but its a pretty good gig fro what I remember. First gig was supporting Nina Hagen at the Fridge i brixton which i didn't hear about until after.
Also I think from LA right around teh same time. Both of which were circulated on torrent sites etc

There's a Birthday Party show from Minneapolis that appears to be professionally filmed I think it shows footage fro at least 2 different cameras overlapping at points.

doing the same simple rock-band greatest-hits performances

I will say, when I saw "Distant Sky" (on a flight to Australia, come to think of it) it did feel a little phony (for lack of a better word) to see him and the band switch from "Skeleton Tree" and "Push the Sky Away" material to bursts of the hits. I mean, it was a great performance, but it did feel a little disjointed and superficial to me. Like the time I saw Mellencamp tour behind his folk-blues album, and it would be like low-key shuffling blues, low-key shuffling blues, subdued folk, R.O.C.K. IN THE USA! Or something like that. I do think when you *are* playing arenas, you're compelled to bust out the barnstormers. Yeah, they're better in clubs (everything is better in a club), but that's what they're designed to do, to ignite the tinder of a big crowd who by nature will always be more familiar with the hits than with the new stuff.

I did dig the fist time I saw Griderman, when they did iirc an all-Grinderman set and then a brief encore of Bad Seeds hits, except they were performed by the pared down group, seemed pretty unrehearsed and (relatively) sloppy and, in turn, felt like the rare, spontaneous encore rather than the pro forma leave the stage, come back and pretend it's not just the rest of the set routine.

Yeah, the Dirty 3 ATP that kind of felt like a launch party for Grinderman had a whole show by the small band (advertised as a solo Nick show) and was one of the best Bad Seeds shows I'd seen in a long time just because it had the sort of new arrangements Mick had been arguing for.

So my own story I suppose is that having seen the Bad Seeds since very early on I got to be a bit ambivalent after Let Love In came out and really didn't care for Nocturama at all - to the point where I remember being surprised at the use of O Children in that Harry Potter film and assuming it was just something I had never paid any attention to. Went through a bit of a revision and got up to speed then it sort of happened again immediately after not being bothered by Dig Lazarus Dig and picking back up after Skeleton Tree. And I've done it again, not even listened to Ghosteen for reasons I can't really work out.

The live shows are still worth it and the arena show was good but weird after so long in normal venues and it felt like Nick As Cult had taking over events to a degree.

Very sympathetic to Harvey on the live-hits issue - the times I've seen them late-noughties onwards they've felt a less interesting band. Still a great setting for a great frontman, but in a lot of arrangements(*) some build or dynamic felt lacking. First felt it I think at Hammersmith Apollo in about 2008 - Deanna seemed a bit rote and flat, the tumbling-over-itself chaos just wasn't there. I can see the live shows still work, but they don't quite work for me - always entertained, never astonished.

(*)If you'd asked me at the time I think I would have jogged round various explanations - he's getting old, I'm getting old, demonic spirit has gone, no Blixa - but after hearing Harvey's complaint I suspect that his being sidelined is the core of it.

i'd really forgotten how great DLD!!! is, really krauty with lots of noise.

I thought the Hammond grooves helped with categorising the Bad Seeds as a mod band that and the bespoke suits.

Though may just reflect Cave loving Larry Young. I 5hink he said Grinderman was heavily influenced by Lawrence of Newark.

What is your view on the BBC decision on censorship of certain words in Fairytale of New York this Christmas?
JOSEPH, THE HAGUE, HOLLAND

What is your view on the BBC 'amendments' to Fairytale of New York?
ROY, LINLITHGOW, SCOTLAND

Dear Joseph and Roy,

Truly great songs that are as emotionally powerful as Fairytale of New York are very rare indeed. Fairytale is a lyrical high wire act of dizzying scope and potency, and it rightly takes its place as the greatest Christmas song ever written. It stands shoulder to shoulder with any great song, from any time, not just for its sheer audacity, or its deep empathy, but for its astonishing technical brilliance.

One of the many reasons this song is so loved is that, beyond almost any other song I can think of, it speaks with such profound compassion to the marginalised and the dispossessed. With one of the greatest opening lines ever written, the lyrics and the vocal performance emanate from deep inside the lived experience itself, existing within the very bones of the song. It never looks down on its protagonists. It does not patronise, but speaks its truth, clear and unadorned. It is a magnificent gift to the outcast, the unlucky and the broken-hearted. We empathise with the plight of the two fractious characters, who live their lonely, desperate lives against all that Christmas promises — home and hearth, cheer, bounty and goodwill. It is as real a piece of lyric writing as I have ever heard, and I have always felt it a great privilege to be close friends with its creator, Shane MacGowan.

Now, once again, Fairytale is under attack. The idea that a word, or a line, in a song can simply be changed for another and not do it significant damage is a notion that can only be upheld by those that know nothing about the fragile nature of songwriting. The changing of the word ‘faggot’ for the nonsense word ‘haggard’ destroys the song by deflating it right at its essential and most reckless moment, stripping it of its value. It becomes a song that has been tampered with, compromised, tamed, and neutered and can no longer be called a great song. It is a song that has lost its truth, its honour and integrity — a song that has knelt down and allowed the BBC to do its grim and sticky business.

I am in no position to comment on how offensive the word ‘faggot’ is to some people, particularly to the young — it may be deeply offensive, I don’t know, in which case Radio 1 should have made the decision to simply ban the song, and allow it to retain its outlaw spirit and its dignity.

In the end, I feel sorry for Fairytale, a song so gloriously problematic, as great works of art so often are, performed by one of the most scurrilous and seditious bands of our time, whose best shows were so completely and triumphantly out of order, they had to be seen to believed.

Yet, time and time again the integrity of this magnificent song is tested. The BBC, that gatekeeper of our brittle sensibilities, forever acting in our best interests, continue to mutilate an artefact of immense cultural value and in doing so takes something from us this Christmas, impossible to measure or replace. On and on it goes, and we are all the less for it.

Love, Nick

someone should write in and tell him Roy was not asking an accurate question in good faith

reminds me of my sadly passed Gran who felt the same about the removal of The Black & White Minstrel Show from xmas

btw, if folks looking to do some random relistening don't know, there's an official 24-hour "Bad Seed TeeVee" channel on youtube - video clips, live performances and doco excerpts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbWdmZ7hXY4

had never actually bothered to listen to nocturama before due to its bad rep and it's definitely one of his weakest albums. "babe i'm on fire" is fantastic but the rest is a real drag, some of it the most adult contemporary he's ever been, and it doesn't hold together well as an album at all.

from memory no more shall we part wasn't much chop either - I remember those two LPs back to back marked a real low point in my engagement with his music

on the other hand preparing a response for this poll reminded me of this (IMO) gem - if I were nick cave this would be a setlist regular!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzp8I-naJOg

which in turn reminds me of the song he did with tim friese-greene for the batman forever soundtrack which I've heard him say was the one time he made a corrupt sellout songwriting decision and vowed never to do so again... at the time I kind of liked it but it's a shit nick cave song I guess

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D17Tih8B-z0

no more shall we part isn't a favourite of mine either but there's hints of where they went on abbatoir blues/lyre of orpheus on it and it generally sounds more alive

Funnily enough "...Till the End of the World" was the pretty much the first thing on my shortlist. The carnage in the verses (and the delivery of it) is arguably kinda preposterous, but that may have been the appeal for schoolkid me.

it’s always been a huge favorite of mine

My #1 will either be "Mercy Seat" or this motherf***er:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26qQ4ciy-QA

Amazing how many great covers he's recorded. 'Kicking Against the Pricks' definitely makes my ballot. In terms of tracks, "Stagger Lee" and this Johnny Cash cover will place high on mine:

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

I love his version of “Running Scared”. And “Long Black Veil”. And “Somethings Gotten Hold of My Heart”

ok fine the whole album is a+

in case folks don't know, they did an 18-minute version of O'Malley's Bar on a BBC radio session in '96, that's on the B-Sides & Rarities box

Cave's catalogue includes several dozen covers outside of Pricks btw, right up to this contribution to a T-Rex tribute album from six months ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wc7mDChiiNU

(Jon Wurster on drums,btw)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJW1zG_GMAc

It's ridiculous, and I love it

As I re-listen to the disappointing albums, I can confirm "God Is in the House" is the worst song he's ever written. Cave's songs are at their best when it hard to determine what he thinks of the characters, including himself. Jello Biafra-levels of easily digested irony and sarcasm just blow his whole game.

my vote for worst song is "the curse of millhaven" which is totally insufferable for its entire 7 minutes. it's just circus music and really did not need a total of thirteen choruses. i would hate it enough if it was just a normal length but it really has to drag things out. "god in the house" is pretty bad though yeah

today i realised the krautrock + organ + noise makes dig lazarus dig!!! almost a stereolab album

......I like "The Curse of Millhaven", it's fun

I'm not sure what the worst Nick Cave song is but I'm pretty confident it's on Nocturama.

It's Rock of Gibraltar, without a moment's hesitation.

narrowing down to 20 songs is hard, gonna have to really go with my gut

I haven't really needed to hear "Curse of Millhaven" since high school but I have fond memories of it. I was listening to Lyre of Orpheus and I do not get the title track at all, some very nice songs later on the album though.

Big fan of this, always cracks me up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZAarUlIhn0

20 songs is tough

Wee feature in the FT today on his "Cave Things" shop

https://www.ft.com/content/3b360711-b18b-43da-b4de-36dbb0d40bd1

Always immaculately tailored, he has been described as “the greatest living songwriter” by Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

^^^ this made me laugh considering Nick is famously quoted with

I’m forever near a stereo saying, ‘What the fuck is this garbage?’ And the answer is always the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

lmao

I would be curious to hear Nick cover "Give it Away"

very easy to imagine "What I got I gotta give it to your momma" etc over the intro to "Get It On"