Nick Cave : Classic or Dud ?

I see Cave’s point but, sorry, his music got way less interesting once he and many of his bandmates kicked/cleaned up. Just my opinion.

I'd say intoxicants have squandered more creativity (and often the health of creators) than they promoted, when you look at entire careers and lifespans.

not to be a cornball but i’ll take his post-heroin output over not having him around at all

mm has been consistently fucked up on painkillers and alcohol for thirty years and his art sucks ass and he hurt a lot of ppl along the way, he’s the one guy you shouldn’t take seriously on any level regarding the question of whether drugs and suffering improve art

cave's response is good, even tho i personally think writing and playing music stoned is really fun

To overgeneralize, Sonny and Trane had very deep spiritual concepts and practice routines to draw from whereas certain rock dudes trafficing in transgressive Dionysian Messianic Almost Famous Golden God imagery well, that can get old when they get old. Hope I die before I get old, see me, feel me, touch me, heal me indeed.

aerosmith made amazing music while completely fucked up but it also totally burnt them out, which is why their creative energy in the sober years is just… absent, replaced by professional song doctors

also not sure i trust that aerosmith were completely sober when they “got sober.” you’re telling me cocaine wasn’t involved in the making of permanent vacation? ok, sure

Otm x 2. I had a friend once tell me that she sat net to an Aerosmith roadie who told her about what a tight ship they ran to keep the guys clean but even the tightest of ships can now and then spring a leak perhaps.

aerosmith made amazing music while completely fucked up but it also totally burnt them out, which is why their creative energy in the sober years is just… absent, replaced by professional song doctors

This is kind of a side point, but...maybe bands should not be active for 40+ years? Far too many bands refuse to fuck off when they're done.

For that matter, I seem to recall our friend Jordan once referring to jazz as "music that doesn't hate old people."

Found it: Is there an age when you will give up making music?

a big part of this is the entertainment industry chewing people up and spitting them out, same as any other industry. the fault isn't on a band for aging. the idea that people can't make good art as they get older is horseshit. creating product for the culture industry is a different question entirely. the fault here isn't on artists it's on the industry. hard to generalize about drugs since they're pretty different for different people but i suspect part of this phenomenon is that drugs insulate from the industry and allow creativity a space to happen. being sober might make people face the reality that the demands of an industry is what kills creativity - pr not - the creativity can fall by the wayside because it isn't needed as the industry part takes over.

anyway nick cave seems totally otm in that quote and it almost makes me want to check out his stuff, huge blind spot for me.

I have been extremely annoyed with Cave's "both sides" centrist shtick lately, but that answer is very good.

map I recommend Tender Prey or Henry's Dream for initial investigation

cool thanks

Back when I listened to Nick Cave (mostly because my wife liked him) Let Love In struck me as at least OK.

i really do like Nick Cave a lot, and that's a good answer. he's not judging MM in his response, which is way too kind, MM is clearly a piece of shit. for good albums to check out i do maybe prefer his last several decade to his substance abuse years and it's hard for me to narrow down. i'm into dig lazarus dig! as far as the more fire and brimstone Nick, boatman's call for mellow sad bastard vibes.

Lyre of Orpheus/Abbatoir Blues is my fav Cave

And I think, as great as some of the art made by people in altered states of consciousness often is, from Exile On Main St. to dub

And even Exile wouldn’t be what it is without the extensive (and presumably somewhat sober) overdubs…

Replacements to thread!

Except they got wasted and trashed their tour bus so were unable to make it.

weed for inspiration, sober for extensive editing

Replacements show both sides of the equation for me actually.

weed for inspiration, sober for extensive editing

― ꙮ (map), Saturday, April 29, 2023 3:23 PM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

absolutely this

i think it's a nonsense that being trashed leads to greater art but i do much, much prefer Nick Cave's more dissolute works to his later 'more thoughtful' albums.

I think Nick should get into glue-sniffing and make an album about it, can't be any worse than all the other unbearable shite he has done!

I got confused and thought this was a Nick Lowe thread revive and was quick to agree.

you aren't being cruel to be kind here. also, not really in the right measure either

(What's So Funny 'Bout) The Ass and the Angel

i think it's a nonsense that being trashed leads to greater art but i do much, much prefer Nick Cave's more dissolute works to his later 'more thoughtful' albums.

Nick Cave is a guy whose interests and styles have changed many times over his 45-year career, plenty of options for n00bs to find a phase or mode that they like, and either dwell there or hop about for other stuff in that mode

Tom Petty got hooked on heroin in his late 40s, it didn’t suddenly result in his most brilliant and edgy run of albums.

I guess the thing is that Manson, and for a long time Cave, mistook being fucked up for being interesting.

fwiw I think Push the Sky Away and Skeleton Tree are brilliant.

With Dan on this one.

Apparently he has been invited to and will be attending the coronation, so screw him.

that's very disappointing to hear.

I am not a monarchist, nor am I a royalist, nor am I an ardent republican for that matter; what I am also not is so spectacularly incurious about the world and the way it works, so ideologically captured, so damn grouchy, as to refuse an invitation to what will more than likely be the most important historical event in the UK of our age. Not just the most important, but the strangest, the weirdest.

I don't really buy this explanation and I'm also, as a long-time fan, somewhat disappointed. But what it doesn't do is make me any less of a fan or any less likely to buy his records and attend his shows.

what will more than likely be the most important historical event in the UK of our age

Now if he was talking about yeeting Boris Johnson and David Cameron into space without suits I'd understand, but.

That is a profoundly idiotic statement

I’m fairly agnostic on this dude as an artist but these days he seems constantly to be firing off “thoughtful” missives that sound like every other nuancepilled wise-man-bowed-his-head shitlib in the mediasphere

what will more than likely be the most important historical event in the UK of our age.

what a crock of the highest grade bullshit. lost it!!

I once met the late Queen at an event at Buckingham Palace for ‘Aspirational Australians living in the UK’ (or something like that). It was a mostly awkward affair, but the Queen herself, dressed in a salmon coloured twin-set, seemed almost extraterrestrial and was the most charismatic woman I have ever met. Maybe it was the lighting, but she actually glowed. As I told my mother – who was the same age as the Queen and, like the Queen, died in her nineties – about that day, her old eyes filled with tears. When I watched the Queen’s funeral on the television last year I found, to my bafflement, that I was weeping myself as the coffin was stripped of the crown, orb and sceptre and lowered through the floor of St. George’s Chapel. I guess what I am trying to say is that, beyond the interminable but necessary debates about the abolition of the monarchy, I hold an inexplicable emotional attachment to the Royals – the strangeness of them, the deeply eccentric nature of the whole affair that so perfectly reflects the unique weirdness of Britain itself. I’m just drawn to that kind of thing – the bizarre, the uncanny, the stupefyingly spectacular, the awe-inspiring.

this is pathetic

damn, nick cave. he is now in third place in the artist named nick cave contest

Was better on the drugs.

This is your brain on centrism

I guess what I am trying to say is that, beyond the interminable but necessary debates about the abolition of the monarchy, I hold an inexplicable emotional attachment to the Royals

Finds debates about the abolition of the monarchy "interminable", holds "an inexplicable emotional attachment to the Royals" — I think this 65-year-old Australian man has shockingly been revealed to be...a boring old conservative!

I'm just balancing this against Rollins's story about the two of them crashing some sort of official Australian cultural event in LA in the early 1980s where Cave wandered around the garden holding his hands out, looking through a triangle formed by his fingers, and telling curious guests that he was an avant-garde filmmaker who only shot through triangular lenses. The arcs one travels.

old guy Nick Cave kinda reminds me of old guy Boba Fett.

But did Boba Fett cry when The Emperor died?