50 Greatest Nick Cave Songs: from #45 to #40

OK, I'm back with his next five songs of my favorites which will take it down to number 40. So without further ado, here is...

45. Nick Cave and Warren Ellis - The Journey
This is the longest track from the last film score by these two. This is the third for a full length movie. They have also made music for documentary's and theater's in the last five years. Cave has been doing more of these than anything else. I'm enjoying these more than say Grinderman project or even the last Bad Seeds' album and I'm not going to say anything about his dirty joke book. This really should be listened to as a whole album and I think these work totally great without the movies too. The Journey as a track has elements included in it which runs all the way though the whole score. Also did you know the "Ethnic" percussion was played by Paul Clarvis here but the year before he was the main man who did the crazy drumming beats for The Dark Knight film on those mad Joker theme songs?
Find it on: The Road (Film Score) 2009 or White Lunar (Compilation) 2009


44. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Hallelujah
This is the real beginning of the Nick Cave and Warren Ellis collaboration. Both worked together in the 90's with Ellis official joining The Bad Seeds in 1997 on the previous album the Boatman's Call. Ellis only co-wrote two tracks on this album but by the end of the decade both of them could be joined at the hip. Amazingly Ellis' violin takes over this album. Hallelujah as the third song in sets it up the rest of the record. Kate and Anna McGarrigle sing backing vocals on this album but they sing the final verse here. Please note this is not the same song as the famous Leonard Cohen track which Jeff Buckley did in the mid-90's, two completely different songs.
Find it on: No More Shall We Part (Album) 2001


43. The Boys Next Door - These Boots Are Made For Walking
Back to the very start of Cave's career with his most earliest cover. The song was original written by Lee Hazlewood and recorded by Nancy Sinatra who took it to number one in the United States and United Kingdom Pop charts. This is from a re-release by Aztec Music but originally came out on vinyl back in 1978. Suicide Records only ever released one album which was called Lethal Weapons (not anything to do with the Mel Gibson movies). This was way before The Boys Next Door debut album, also before Rowland S. Howard joined the band too. It's way more New Wave than pure Punk and you can tell how much Howard added to this band later but here that is not a bad thing because I think this is by far the best version of this song and there have been a lot of covers. The album features two more Boys Next Door songs and six other late-70's Melbourne bands and all new liner notes which is a great read. So it's well worth getting the whole album.
Find it on: Lethal Weapons (Compilation) 2007


42. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart
This is an odd one I have to admit but I love it so much I can't go past it. Cave did this in 1986 which is two years before Marc Almond's more famous version. The song was written by Roger Greenaway and Roger Cook and originally recorded by David and Jonathan and then Gene Pitney did his one in 1967. Off-course Marc Almond and Gene Pitney did a version together which went to number one in the UK in 1989. Anyway I'm supposed to be writing about the Cave cover which I find just so much more sincere and stripped of all the usually pop slime that it's covered in. It's so unlike anything Cave's done before this and with the simple three piece band arrangement with Mick Harvey on piano, Barry Adamson on bass and Thomas Wydler on drums. It's just perfect like this and proves that some times less is more but being the third track from the end of the album it's almost always just totally forgotten by everyone.
Find it on: Kicking Against the Pricks (Album) 1986



41. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Death Is Not The End
To finish up with the cover songs this is one of the last he ever did with the Bad Seeds as a group (plus a few friends too). A Bob Dylan song from his 80's forgotten songbook which was the last song on the Murder Ballads album. I really didn't think much of the record but this is so great. Also the only song from that album which made it into my list here, Murder Ballads is over rated as a whole album. Anita Lane, Kylie Minogue, PJ Harvey, and Shane McGowan with Cave himself and his bandmembers guitarist Blixa Bargeld and drummer Thomas Wydler all each sing a verse but the real surprise to me is Wydler's singing vocal which I would like to hear more of. It was recorded in Melbourne with Brian Hooper on bass and it's just a beautiful way to finish such an disappointing and silly album. This song is so different and unlike anything else on the album, it really seems out of place.
Find it on: Murder Ballads (Album) 1996


40. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Brother, My Cup Is Empty
Well, this has to be Cave's ultimate drinking song so I have to include it here. This was recorded in California after him leaving Brazil where he was living for a few years. I remember him saying he was sober for a little while before arriving there but as soon he got off the plane he said something like with all the sun and girls everywhere it was just a 24 hour party so it was like "Fuck this" and he started heavily drinking again. So this track would have to be Cave's anthem for getting pissed plus it would make a wicked shot game song too.
Find it on: Henry's Dream (Album) 1992


Top photo from Herald Sun with Nick Cave looking back on his past at the exhibition of his work at the Arts Centre in Melbourne.

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50 Greatest Nick Cave Songs: the Intro & from #50 to #46

Hello again and welcome to my third blog. Today I'm going to start the beginning of my 50 greatest Nick Cave songs. I saw Uncut magazine just the other day with their top 30 tracks which was very predicable and even boring at times so I didn't buy it but maybe will later on. Off-course the number one song was The Mercy Seat and number two is Into My Arms which does seem right I guess. An interesting thing is both songs where written at different times but he was in rehab. It just makes you want to get him addicted to drugs and booze again just you can throw him into rehab and get another truly great song out of it (that's a joke).

Grinderman's new song Heathen Child even made it into uncut's top 30 which I have to say it's not that good. So for the above reason and few others I'm going to do my own. It's going to be fifty tracks too, sorry but I couldn't cut it down to just thirty. Also I've not included anything from The Best of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds because I've heard all these songs hundreds of times and that would be a good place to start but this blog is kind-off for where to go next. It's going to be alternative, or different kind-off greatest songs. I never really liked the hit singles anyway of course these are my choice, so you whoever you are, reading this might disagree but this is my blog and nothing stopping you doing the same or just commenting below. I'm going to break them into the next few or more blogs because I'm going to write a little about each song like with the reason why or just a bit about it. Writing out a big list would be a bit boring and this is supposed to keep me writing.

50. The Boys Next Door - Sex Crimes
To start with is one of those totally forgotten, or was it ever remembered in the first place? But it was his earliest song to be recorded, it was rejected by the time of their debut album but really this could be a Grinderman song if you know what I mean. Sex Crimes is a 1978 demo on this double CD Inner City Sound which seems now to be deleted. Also included on this is Rowland S. Howard's first band Young Charlatans original previously unreleased Shivers, plus 45 other early Aussie punk songs, so it's worth trying to find a copy of it.
Find it on: Inner City Sound: Australian Punk & Post-Punk (Compilation) 2005

49. Nick Cave - Shine On Me
I going to included three covers at this point before I really get going. Cave has a long list of songs he's reworked to make his own but these can't be higher because they're just covers. I only got three more cover songs after these too cause he's such a prolific songwriter there is no reason to have anymore so these half a dozen are my all time favorites. The first is the oldest song going all the way back to 1930 originally on Harry Smith's Anthology Of American Folk Music and preformed by Ernest Phipps and His Holiness Singers. Cave's version was recorded at his Meltdown Festival in 1999 but not released until mid-2000's.
Find it on: The Harry Smith Project: Anthology Of American Folk Music Revisited (Box-set) 2006

48. Nick Cave - Here Comes The Sun
Well magazines like Uncut have The Beatles and their members on their covers with stories and write-ups about them until the cows could all be arrested for home invasions. Surprisingly this is Cave's only time he's been on the cover of this magazine. So with that in mind the greatest Beatles cover in my opinion is by you guessed it, Cave. In the early 2000's he recorded two Beatles covers Paul McCartney's Let It Be and George Harrison's Here Comes The Sun from Sean Penn's film I Am Sam but you could get both songs on the single, or if you could find the 20 track European edition with more Beatles covers than you could possibility want.
Find it on: Here Comes the Sun (Single) 2002


47. Nick Cave, Julie Christensen, Perla Batalla - Suzanne
He's recorded and preformed more Leonard Cohen covers than anyone else from his debut album as Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds to various tribute albums and shows. These songs have been Avalanche, Tower of Song, I'm Your Man and he also did Don't Go Home With Your Hard-On with Lou Reed and Jarvis Cocker one time and with Rufus Wainwright and Teddy Thompson another time which both those versions remained unreleased. But the best has to be Suzanne which was the first track on Cohen's debut album Songs of Leonard Cohen way back in 1967.
Find it on: Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man (Soundtrack) 2006


46. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Idiot Prayer
Right, now back to his own songwriting with one of the last songs on the album which critics dub his greatest, I wouldn't because it's good but not his best. For most of the album the band The Bad Seeds as a whole don't play together on these songs, it could be his solo album, almost. They're on Idiot Prayer with all seven members playing here with only Jim Sclavunos missing out which is no great loss really. You could say this is the first of many of Cave's depressing songs I've picked here which could really be the sub-title to this list. Not that that is a bad thing to me it makes him even better or should I just say the greatest songwriter of our time.
Find it on: The Boatman's Call (Album) 1997


Top photo by Jason South, Nick Cave at Melbourne Art Centre's Nick Cave — The Exhibition in November, 2007.

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Mix Tape: My CD-R from August 2005

Hello and welcome again to my second blog and to the first of hopefully another new series. This time I'm picking out an old Mix Tape, this one is just a CD-R from only about five years ago. I'm planning to go further back with a box full of very old and dusty Cassette Tapes. It's I guess to see if I can track down some old bands and songs I liked a long time ago.

As you can see and hear I like a lot of different music which I think is cool but you might disagree. There is a skip button on this very cool thing called Grooveshark which I found today. I've been looking for a player or something on the internet which I can find all the songs I'm looking for and Grooveshark seemed to do that today. You my dear reader can play all these tracks below so Grooveshark seems pretty great, so far. I've made my widget player in Shark Bait colours to go with it's name and I'm adding a bonus track, one of my favorite songs of all-time onto this mix called Shark Fin Blues to go with this theme. Well, I don't know if it's really a theme as such maybe if I made a cover for this Mix Tape it could be something like this:

EDIT: It seems that the Grooveshark player don't work anymore so here's want I found on youtube.

Track listing:
1. Southern Can Is Mine - Blind Willie McTell

2. Blind Willie McTell - Bob Dylan

3. Moonshiner - Cat Power

4. Where Did You Sleep Last Night - Nirvana

5. You Better Run - Junior Kimbrough

6. Slow Night, So Long - Kings of Leon

7. Stella Was a Diver and She Was Always Down - Interpol

8. And This Day - The Fall

9. Cry - The Birthday Party

10. I Am Hated - Slipknot

11. Multinational Corporations - Napalm Death

12. The Mercy Seat - Johnny Cash

13. Take, Take, Take - The White Stripes

14. That Was My Veil - P J Harvey

15. It Serves Me Right to Suffer - John Lee Hooker

16. You Got To Take Sick and Die Some Of These Days - Muddy Waters

17. Black Is The Color Of My True Love's Hair - Nina Simone

18. For the Widows In Paradise, For The Fatherless In Ypsilanti - Sufjan Stevens

19. (Bonus Track) Shark Fin Blues - The Drones


Stay tuned for more soon...

Classic Album: Dirty Three's Whatever You Love, You Are

Hello and welcome, This is my first blog. I've been posting journals on last.fm but this is hopeful the first in a new series. I'm going to pick out my favorite and most beloved albums and write all about them. It's really just an exercise for me to keep writing which I'll elaborate about later.


How do you I write about a band who doesn't have lyrics, or a singer and plays instrumental music? Well, I don't know how to write and spell so it should be easy, shouldn't it? I was diagnosed with dyslexia but I did finish year 10 high school with pretty basic English skills. The last few years I've had a writing tutor to help me but that has finished now so this is the first real one by myself but I know I'll have to get someone to edit it a bit after.

After High School ended badly, I hung out in the small town I grew up in for a little while but moved to the city as soon as I could. To Perth where I was born, so it felt like I was coming home. Since about the age of 16 I was taking six hour bus rides to the city to see gigs & concerts and get a CD or two because I couldn't get anything back where I lived.

I'm a 90's kid so everything is on CD. People have forgotten or just never known how hard it was pre-internet or post-Nirvana breaking the mainstream but maybe it was just me living at the arse end of the world.

The first night in the big city (it's really not that big). After unpacking I was going out and that night was one of those life changing moments not for the band I was planning on seeing but the support band stealing the show and destroying everything I thought about music. It was of course the Dirty Three and how do I sum it up? It's like when you see a nuclear bomb wipe away everything in it's path on the TV. The way it started was the most unlikely way to start a gig and the band members didn't even look like roadies, let alone musicians. Who I thought was the singer started talking and talking about it being their first time in Perth and wouldn't shut-up while the other two - one with his guitar and the other behind the drum kit looked on totally bored. After giving the longest ever introduction speech by a support band they started to play. The tracks seemed to go for half an hour each like time slowed down for them but most likely they were ten minutes, give or take. The pub wasn't even half full and most people were around the bar or pool tables missing who were going to become one of the greatest bands of the 90's. I got the self-titled debut album Dirty Three at the front door so it must have been early to mid-90's. I would still call Dirty Three the greatest live band I've ever seen and I've seen every show they have played here in the western capital.

I could have chosen that debut album but I think it would be runner-up to Whatever You Love, You Are as my favorite and most beloved Dirty Three album, I could listen to it forever. It was released in early 2000 but recorded in July 99. Making it the first "Classic" album of the 2000's and the fourth in a row of a great run of albums. Starting with that debut self-titled album then the recorded over-seas trilogy of Horse Stories, Ocean Songs and Whatever. I'm not counting Sad & Dangerous because it's basically home recorded demos. Everything changed for Dirty Three after the Whatever album so She Has No Strings Apollo and Cinder both have their great moments but less consistent as albums. Cinder sometimes wins out because of shear volume of songs, nineteen in all plus Cat Power's Chan Marshall singing the first ever lyrical vocal on a Dirty Three album. Ocean Songs also has been picked out of the batch of albums for the Don't Look Back concert series and I can understand why some people like it better. Made with "Don't call me a producer" Steve Albini and in the U.S.A., Aussies love it when bands go to American to made albums and Americans love to have them there too. It's quieter and nicer and easier album to get into and adding the piano helps with that too. It could be called the saddest album too. Did you know Dirty Three were in the recording studio when news bloke that Princess Diana died in a car crash?

But I think Whatever You Love, You Are is by far the better album. The leader and violinist Warren Ellis said the band gave up trying to have hit album after Ocean Songs and with that I think they got to their plateau with this album by letting them go to the next level. I do admit it's a hard record to get into but it's very rewarding if you do. It's so much more epic and extreme with all the lengths of the songs going beyond the five minute mark. The shortest track is just over six minutes "Some Things I Just Don't Want to Know" and the first two tracks at six minutes plus "Some Summers They Drop Like Flys" and "I Really Should've Gone Out Last Night". The last two tracks going up to the seven and half minutes. "Stellar" and "Lullabye for Christie". "I Offered It up to the Stars & The Night Sky" almost reaching an unbelievable fourteen minutes. As you can tell even the song titles are vast and elephantine. Only six songs would normally be an E.P. but the total time just drops short of fifty minutes. Ellis playing with his new toy, an effects pedal which adds on top of one another until it sounds like a symphony of crazy fiddle players. The first time I saw them play these songs he continued adding until it sounded something like standing next to a jumbo jet taking off with half the crowd putting their fingers in their ears to block the feedback out and a couple leaving as fast as they could run out the door.



Joe Mckee of Aussie band Snowman called Whatever "The most visually evocative Australian record ever ". With the guitarist who does all the painting for the album covers. Mick Turner's "Landscape" painting of Melbourne jetty and beach, the only real or non-abstract album artwork on a Dirty Three cover.

This is second album to be recorded in England, this time it was on the banks of the Thames. In a studio which was build by The Who's Pete Townshend but at the time of recording was owned by Cocteau Twins' Robin Guthrie. Would it sound odd to say if The Who and Cocteau Twins somehow could have a lovechild it might be like Dirty Three's Whatever You Love, You Are. There were two tracks recorded at the same time but which were only available for sale at their shows and tours on Lowlands album. The two songs are "Cottonhead" and "Three Mile Creek" which would have taken it up to eight tracks which would be closer to a normal amount on most albums at the time. It would have taken the album up to sixty minutes but I for one am glad these two were left off, they wouldn't work with the rest.

"It kills me that album" is what Will Oldham aka Bonnie 'Prince' Billy said on the Dirty Three Documentary and Mick Harvey added "Whatever could be even better than Ocean Songs" which leads me into the last bit of this blog. Warren Ellis said in Perth at the beginning of this year that it would be the last time they play the Ocean Songs album in Don't Look Back concert series so why not do Whatever You Love, You Are album with the Don't Look Back concert series next? It's the ten year anniversary this year too and since that show here in Perth they haven't done one show. It doesn't seem like we are ever going to get a new album with Ellis joking they finished their new album and "it's a dance music record this time". I'm hoping they continue as a live band, he did say "see you next time". Warren Ellis apparently didn't want to do the Ocean Songs shows but Mick Turner and Jim White out voted him and talked him into doing it, so the story goes.

Maybe I'm wishing for something that is not ever going to happen but I wouldn't be the only one who would love to see Whatever album played in full in the next couple of years. Then again I really can't see them doing anything with the three member on different sides of the world. Ellis in Paris, White in New York and Turner the only one in Melbourne. Ellis has become Nick Cave's "side-kick" White playing drums for everyone from PJ Harvey, Cat Power, Nina Nastasia, Marianne Faithfull, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy etc. Turner doing his paintings and solo shows too, playing lately with Jeff Wegener which is funnily Jim White's favorite drummer of all-time. Nick Cave & Warren Ellis' first soundtrack together came out just after Cinder and included a couple of tracks with White and Turner. Now it's been over five years since that last Dirty Three album. It's a bit unfair calling them a nostalgia act just yet but surely one or two months in the next couple years or so could be put aside and made into a Whatever You Love, You Are album played in its entirety tour, a part of the Don't Look Back concert series.

Anyway it's most likely wishful thinking, I wouldn't be surprised if Dirty Three never played live again but who knows maybe they're are working on a comeback album. There was no promo video clips for this album, not that they made it on to MTV before. I did find someone uploaded a live version of "Some Summers They Drop Like Flys" to youtube taken from the bonus VCD on the Taiwan edition of Whatever. Ellis introduces this song sometimes as being "about coming home to find everyone he knows has gone and died."



Dirty Three's Whatever You Love, You Are track listing

1. Some Summers They Drop Like Flies – 6:20
2. I Really Should've Gone Out Last Night – 6:52
3. I Offered It Up to the Stars and the Night Sky – 13:40
4. Some Things I Just Don't Want to Know – 6:08
5. Stellar – 7:30
6. Lullabye for Christie – 7:46

The end.