Video Tape: The Drones guest program Rage

Right, I have to do something else other than this 50 Nick Cave songs list, it's going to drive me mad (if I'm not already). So, what can I write now? Well, who's far better than him? The Drones that's who. No doubt they would have be the band/artist of the the last decade, the 2000's. The four unbelievably brilliant albums, if not totally perfect albums in a row: Here Come The Lies, Wait By The River..., Gala Mill, Havilah. With each album quite different but still the same The Drones but building upon the previous record. Also just releasing all the kind-of out-takes album: The Miller's Daughter, in the middle of all that is brilliant as well. No other band has had such a perfect run and under the noses of most people too. We will have to see what's next for the band. Next week Gareth Liddiard lead songwriter and singer is to release his debut solo album Strange Tourist, in the true sense of the word, just all by himself.

You can not possibly find another band who ripped up the rule book, then set it on fire, pissed and shat on it, kicked it into a bloody mess then just flicked it into the corner. I can not possibly praise them too much. If you don't know it yet they have already changed the Australian music landscape forever. Everyone will ask you in the future did you see The Drones live? And if you can say "Yes" well, you and I are the lucky ones. You can hopefully forget about horrible bands like The Living End, Wolfmother, Jet now. Even now Nick Cave is getting too popular for my liking which maybe is why he's getting a bit of a bashing here in my blogs but I'm not the only one with what Mick Harvey said. Now Liddiard joins in on this too. In a paragraph in the Aussie Rolling Stones magazine Liddiard say America is on it's way out, Aussies don't have to do that anymore and names an old Cave song but really he could have said Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! Why does Cave name drop U.S.A. cities in the last lead Bad Seeds single and title track for that album, other than to sell some more records to them. It's false, it's just as bad as like Molly Meldrum on Countdown in the 70's and 80's. Looking for validation in America is a waste of time (unless maybe you are one them) but that old mentality of the U.S.A. is the best place in the world, which should be shot between the eyes with a double-barrel shot gun, who better to do that that Gareth Liddiard and his band The Drones? So it's beyond doubt or should have been long, long time ago for Australians to stop mythologizing America. Don't get me wrong now, The Drones don't really have to get as stupidity big as the above bands or artists because they're already just as or more important that any of them in so many other ways and done it all their own way too.

So anyway this blog is called video tape because I'm going to link a youtube playlist I put together at the end of this blog based on a video tape (did I need to say that?) I've still got a couple of boxs in the back room which I recorded a television show called rage but too much about the past. I'm trying to catch up with the twenty-first century, I've got a mobile phone lately, started a blog here and joined facebook the other day. The last time I watched rage until the very end and started watching at the beginning and enjoyed it was a long time ago by the looks of it. It was of course when The Drones were on. Anyway here's what video clips they picked and played.

The Drones guest program rage on Saturday 21st February, 2009:
Saturday morning guest programming, from 10:00 till 11:00:
10:00am
THE DRONES - Shark Fin Blues
LOW - Breaker
TRICKY - Money Greedy
MILES DAVIS - Decoy
NINA SIMONE - Revolution
CAT POWER - Cross Bones Style
BOWERBIRDS - Ivy Climbing
BOB DYLAN - Not Dark Yet
10:30am
BOB DYLAN - Love Sick
AUGIE MARCH - The Cold Acre
TOM WAITS - Hold On
THE GIN CLUB - You Don't See
THE DRONES - I Don't Ever Want To Change (Live)
Saturday night guest programming starts 23:20:
23:23pm
N.W.A. - 100 Miles & Runnin'
WU-TANG CLAN - Can It All Be So Simple?
23:30pm
BUSTA RHYMES - Woo-Hah!! (Got You All In Check)
MISSY ELLIOTT - Pass That Dutch
CLARE MOORE - The Town Bike Song
ALAN VEGA - Wipeout Beat
IGGY & THE STOOGES - Loose
PATTI SMITH - Because The Night
LAUGHING CLOWNS - Holy Joe
12:00am
THESE IMMORTAL SOULS - Marry Me
STICKMEN - Without A Clue
THE JESUS LIZARD - Puss
DARLING DOWNS - Circa '65
KIM SALMON & THE SURREALISTS - I Fell
LOU REED I Love Women
GOD - My Pal
12:30am
JOEL SILBERSHER - Flappin' On A Hook
JOEL SILBERSHER - Through The Manoeuvres
TEX PERKINS & HIS LADYBOYZ - I'm Not In Love
DIRTY THREE - Hope
PALACE BROTHERS - Ohio River Boat Song
NEIL YOUNG - Harvest Moon
NEIL YOUNG - Change Your Mind
1:00am
DAN KELLY - Drunk On Election Night
PAUL KELLY - If I Could Start Today Again
BILLY BOB THORNTON - Angelina
THIRTY ODD FOOT OF GRUNTS - Memorial Day
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN - Atlantic City
THE MUPPETS - Ma-Na Ma-Na
TEAM AMERICA - America, F**k Yeah!
DRAGONFORCE Through - The Fire And Flames
1:30am
THE MELVINS - Honeybucket
EINSTURZENDE NEUBAUTEN - Armenia
THE DOORS - The End
SPARKLEHORSE - St. Mary's
MERZBOW - Minus Zero
2:00am
PINK FLOYD - Astronomy Domine
CAPTAIN BEEFHEART - Ice Cream For Crow
SPENCER JONES - Execution Day
FEATURED VIDEOS
THE DRONES - River Of Tears
THE DRONES - Shark Fin Blues
THE DRONES - Locust (Live)
2:30am
THE DRONES - I'm Here Now (Live)
THE DRONES - The Miller's Daughter (Live)
THE DRONES - Jezebel
THE DRONES - I Don't Ever Want To Change (Live)
3:00am
THE DRONES - I Looked Down The Line And I Wondered (Live)
THE DRONES - Motherless Children (Live)
THE DRONES - From Black To Communist (Live)
THE DRONES - The Minotaur
THE DRONES - Oh My (triple j tv)
3:30am
THE DRONES - Suicide Is Painless(triple j tv)

Here's all the clips I found on youtube (full playlist here) and I've made into a this thing:


Hope you like it, Cheers.

50 Greatest Nick Cave Songs: from #29 to #25

Well, today is Nick Cave's birthday so to help celebrate here is...

29. The Birthday Party - Happy Birthday
His parody song. I was going to include this track and it just happen to be on my list now right. I've got this list all worked out if you are wondering but there has been just a bit of fixing along the way, you know, changed my mind a little. Anyway back to the song, it's one of the only early ones co-written by Mick Harvey, Rowland S. Howard and Cave. It was very early in The Birthday Party that songwriting was divided and not really a group progress as a band, with Harvey in the middle and Tracy Pew only getting in on the act a few times. Cave was always way more prolific than Howard and Phill Calvert was never included and then thrown out of the band after a couple more albums. A few years ago Howard talked about what he remembered of the name changing and he said when talking with Cave about the shows or gigs and even the albums were to be special events like a celebration hence the name and to go with it this track was originally released as a 7" single. With Howard establishing his guitar sound plus Cave's bizarre lyrics, grunts, wordless shrieks and a barking dog - it is the perfect song for a birthday.
Find it on: Hee Haw - The Boys Next Door and The Birthday Party early recording 1979-80 (Compilation) 1988


28. Marianne Faithfull - Desperanto
Well, this might raise some eyebrows but I love this track and album. As a whole it is a bit disjointed but at the same time it is pretty wicked. Where or who else could get away with getting Nick Cave and PJ Harvey to do music for them plus one song each by Damon Albarn and Jon Brion. This is the musicians Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Martyn P. Casey and Jim Sclavunos who in a year or two would form a new band called Grinderman, so this is the first song by them just with a different singer, Marianne Faithfull. The sound by them is so similar you can't go past it even though it got universally panned by critics and fans alike. Cave doesn't sing on this track (if you don't count shouting in the background) or on the rest of the album but that's not a bad thing. The other two songs are more like his piano ballads and are beautiful too. Cave did end up singing with Faithfull on her next album Easy Come, Easy Go on the song The Crane Wife 3 which was originally by The Decemberists but I have to say it's more like backing vocals than a duet, maybe next time then.
Find it on: Marianne Faithfull's Before the Poison (Album) 2004

27. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Black Crow King
This is by far my favorite song from the second Bad Seeds album. Over the years of seeing him live I've wished he would play something other than Tupelo. It's not the greatest album, maybe could even be one of his weakest. It's the so-called "Blues" album but it's really so far from say John Lee Hooker or Blind Lemon Jefferson, I guess it's more of reworking that a straight blues album. Is it really the first time he's used that, I don't think so. It's one of the last albums with only a four piece band, after this members of the Bad Seeds started to grow. As for this track itself maybe it just fits in with my ornithology obsession because it seems like a recurring theme in my chart here. But did you know a group of crows are called a murder? Which fits in with one of Cave's own obsessions at least in songwriting and storytelling well, as far as we know he hasn't killed anyone physically. It would be a great song to sing if you where a gravedigger and coffin-maker or something like that, wouldn't it?
Find it on: The Firstborn Is Dead (Album) 1985

26. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Fleeting Love
OK this track should have been on the last Bad Seeds album, Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! It should have been maybe in between say Midnight Man and More News From Nowhere at the tail end of the album. I think to make it a better album overall you could of left of Albert Goes West even Today's Lesson could have been dumped to a B-side but they were on the album, this song was left as a B-side unfortunately. My guess, for it not being on the album is that it's a piano driven ballad and he wanted none of that but really you should hear it. It's an amazing song and proves Cave can still write music on his old favorite but now rejected instrument. This is another track here on my blog which could already be filed under forgotten but it's worth tracking down.
Find it on: More News from Nowhere (Single) 2008

25. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - God is in the House
This is another odd one but maybe all these songs I've picked are. The story goes that Cave wrote it while driving around small town America on his honeymoon with his new wife which is a really odd thing to imagine him doing but I guess if it didn't we wouldn't have a whimsical tale. For Cave who's a believer in someway, it's an album a lot of reviewers said was overly religious but the subject matter doesn't come off in a very kind way. For me it's become a highlight of his live shows especially the whispering bit at the end it's totally brilliant and classic Nick Cave.
Find it on: No More Shall We Part (Album) 2001

Top photo by Ingvar Kenne from 2001.

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50 Greatest Nick Cave Songs: from #34 to #30

Sorry it's been a little while since my last blog so I'm going to go straight into the next five songs and say nothing more about you know what because here it is anyway...

34. Grinderman - Palaces of Montezuma
Well, I was not going to include anything from this album but I'll admit this one is a really cool track. As for the the rest of the album it works better than the first Grinderman album and maybe just a little bit better than the last Bad Seeds album. I like the fact that there is only nine songs but it is longer overall than the debut album for 2007. With a killer rhythm section of Martyn P. Casey and Jim Sclavunos but the real star here is Warren Ellis all his mad sounds are amazing (you just wish the singer would shut-up) which leads into Cave's lyrics. What can I say about that other than it's a bit on the weak side but what can he possibly do now? I guess to be fair it's really not bad for someone who's going to be 53 years old next week. At around the same age Bob Dylan was releasing the horror of Knocked Out Loaded for his fans to enjoy so thank-god we don't have that just a different kind-of horror.
Find it on: Grinderman 2 (Album) 2010

33. Nick Cave and Warren Eills - Clean Hands, Dirty Hands
The first of three Traditional songs here on my list which I guess are kind-of covers too. The very last song from the first real Cave and Ellis only collaboration and still the best (couple of years before Grinderman). This track is more of a group or band with Martyn P. Casey playing bass, Jim White from Dirty Three playing drums and George Vjestica on guitar too. Just like his first novel in 1989 And the Ass Saw the Angel, The Proposition is one of his creative peaks. So that's his novel and film but what about his albums well, if I was only to pick one album a decade for the 80's it would be Your Funeral... My Trial, the 90's Henry's Dream and 2000's No More Shall We Part and for the Birthday Party it would have to be Mutiny/The Bad Seed which is just the last recordings of that band. Of course that is only my opinion which just like my charts here of his best songs. So it's not some higher authority but hopefully I do explain the reasons why, in someway.
Find it on: The Proposition (Soundtrack) 2005


32. Johnny Cash and Nick Cave - Cindy
The other song Cave sung with Johnny Cash. I love the album American IV: The Man Comes Around which this was a outtake from but this track is a totally wicked duet. Here Cave comes full circle, his earliest childhood memory in the late 60's, of music was sitting watching The Johnny Cash TV Show in country town Australia then skip to early 2000's and he's sitting waiting for Cash in a recording studio and to quote him "When Johnny arrived he looked very sick to me, very frail...then Johnny started to play and sing and he just turned into a different person - it was just this extraordinary thing to see. He came alive." and this up-tempo song proves that. It could be called another cover song so maybe I can't count too but it's a Traditional track which Cave picked to do. The lyrics in the chorus are "I'll marry you one day", which he did marry Susie Bick the year before this.
Find it on: Johnny Cash's Unearthed (Box-set) 2003

31. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Rye Whiskey
Yet another Traditional song which was recorded for the 1986 Kicking Against The Pricks album but somehow left-off for some mad reason and released in 1989 and again in 2005. I like this better than any of the previous covers that I've chosen before or after this which adds up to nine cover songs now. It's another drinking song too but I'm not a piss-head or anything, honest. Hugo Race plays guitar here and Tracy Pew plays bass too which will be one of his last times because by the end of year he would have passed away. I just adore the words for this track and when he sing "If the ocean was whiskey and I was a duck...but the ocean ain't whiskey and I ain't a duck" which if he wanted to give up his day job as a singer/songwriter I think he could still make a great duck. Maybe the Grinderman 3 album should have a duck on the front cover like this Pacific Black Duck. Can you imagine it first a monkey, then a wolf, next a duck with lyrics something like this: "Am I a duck or a man now, I can't tell anymore, quack, quack, quack!!!" They could all wear duck costumes in the video clip. I should say again I never really liked the promos videos for his singles which maybe is another reason for a list like this.
Find it on: B-Sides & Rarities (Compilation) 2005

30. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Wonderful Life
The opening song on the album almost every Nick Cave fan loves to hate. In the 90's he said he would love to make an album like Bob Dylan's Self Portrait which I think Nocturama would have to be the closest he's ever got to that. It's a very difficult album for fans to like which I understand but in the last couple of years I'm enjoying it more and more, is it a very, very, very slow grower like at a snails pace. It's Blixa Bargeld's last as a Bad Seeds member which now we know the details about this, well according to Cave. Bargeld turned up to recording with a Pedal Steel Guitar which he didn't know how to play but knew it's the instrument Cave hates and loathes and insisted on using it as his kind-off last stand because a little while after finishing the sessions for the album he just emailed Cave "It's over and I'm leaving". Nick had to ring him up to ask Blixa is he sure and why. Nick Cave then said at the time he was totally shocked and for a long time afterwards. Anyway it is a beautiful and wonderful way to start this album. Maybe give it another go and I'll give his new direction a fair chance too.
Find it on: Nocturama (Album) 2003

Top photo by Polly Borland from around 2002.

Plus I should thank you for reading it more often, so thank you again. Stay tuned for more...

50 Greatest Nick Cave Songs: Grinderman rant & from #39 to #35

Hello once again, for the third part of my 50 greatest Nick Cave songs and my fifth overall blog. I was hoping to get this done before his new album Grinderman 2 is out but because I take so long to type up these it's not going to happen. I hope you dear readers don't get bored of waiting for the next one, anyway I'm back now. I'm going say a little about that new album or what I've heard and seen. I'm in two minds so far because I would have preferred a new Bad Seeds album with Ed Kuepper on guitar but maybe it's still going to happen. The trashing of some of his best Bad Seeds songs live in the last couple of years was not very good so I totally agree with Mick Harvey and thank-god that Grinderman tracks are not on Bad Seeds albums. I can kind-of see why he's doing this Grinderman project eg to mix things up a bit and using a different working process but is it working as great as he thinks it is, well I shout "NO" and I'm of-course not the only one who thinks this, or am I?

Nick Cave is really facing a big problem in the next few years if he continues on this path he'll be 55 in a couple of years and by the end of this decade he'll be in his 60's. Now after over thirty years career of incredibly high standards (which not many have matched) now things are starting to get a bit sloppy. I can just tell by now after years of following Nick Cave and if just maybe one or two tracks becomes classic that's OK, I guess. All I'm hoping for this album is that it is a transitional album but the way things are going he could easily just continue chucking out this rubbish and by 2020 all we have is five or six more numbered Grinderman albums. In an interview last year he said "If I wanna do something I can do it. I don't feel impeded". Was he before and maybe he should be again. He's built with the help of others and his prolific gift of writing plus somehow outliving or just plain outdoing his contemporaries only Paul Kelly could challenge him here in Australia. Which makes his "do anything" attitude at the moment and "people will love it anyway" is totally disappointing to long time fans like myself which is like what Mick Harvey said "we deserve more" but I guess we'll see what happens next. Can someone please kick him up his posterior if it continues like this too long.

I haven't heard this album called imaginatively 2 yet but as you can tell I'm not putting very high standards on it. These remixes are totally wasting my time and the videos and or trailers are just adding to the long list of shit promo video clips Cave has done. Maybe I'm being too harsh, anyway we'll see I guess but now back to his greatest songs...

39. Nick Cave - Ramblin' Mind
Well, this proves that he's still capable of doing a killer song and at this point I'll say this is his best track of 2010 but hopeful I might be wrong. This was written by Jeffrey Lee Pierce just before his death in 1996 for the country album he was going to do next but here friends and fans finish the songs for him. This is so new so here is the Myspace page where you can listen to it. Plus this is also the closest we've ever got to an early Bad Seeds reunion with Barry Adamson on bass, Kid Congo Powers on wicked slide guitar and Mick Harvey for the very last time on piano and guitar. It's just pity Blixa Bargeld couldn't make it.
Find it on: We Are Only Riders: The Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions Project (Compilation) 2010

38. Grinderman - Honey Bee (Let's Fly To Mars)
To get this out of the way the only track from the debut album from his new band, ha. By far the best song from it just because of the pure raw energy from start to finish. If the rest of the album was like it this it might have worked better as a whole. If it had been so full tilt but I don't think they could do that even if they really wanted to so it's more like loud, quiet, then loud again, repeated thereafter. If you are one of greatest songwriters and just going to write dumb and stupid lyrics you might as well start buzzing like a bee too but the only problem with that is now on the second album we get him howling like a wolf. With that in mind it should have been a Honey Bee on the album's front cover but that wouldn't be very garage rock, or is it just cock rock?
Find it on: Self-titled: Grinderman (Album) 2007

37. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Jesus Of The Moon
Just like the last song this is the only song from the last Bad Seeds album to make it on my list here. It was the first one in four years at the time so I was hoping for more but it's now become as over rated as say Murder Ballads album is well, maybe only in my mind. This is track nine on the album with Warren Ellis doing a most beautiful flute solo plus mandolin and viola. Mick Harvey plays magical acoustic guitar and Thomas Wyder plays wonderful drums also James Johnston does great organ. Cave's piano and electric guitar work too. It's not just Jesus of the Moon but Jesus of the planets and the stars too which is just so epic and amazing.
Find it on: Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! (Album) 2008

36. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Supernaturally
The loudest track from the quieter and softer second disc from the double album which was the thirteenth Bad Seeds album. It is the last really great record too. It starts with a piano riff and hand claps by all the band members. Cave start singing in the first verse about being in the Arctic with Polar Bears and Penguins which is the only thing wrong about this song. I love it but this totally bothers me because Penguins are in Antarctica which is the southern hemisphere and Arctic is the opposite in the northern so Polar Bears and Penguins are never ever seen together, it's just one little annoying thing. Another thing did you know "You're my north, my south, my east, my west" from the second verse of the song is from W. H. Auden's poem called Funeral Blues which Cave called "a reference".
Find it on: Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus (Album) 2004

35. The Birthday Party - Swampland
Well, this is the track that overflowed into his novel And the Ass Saw the Angel. You could replace Lucy for Beth as the female lead and the song title is one of the main settings for the novel too. I could go on but I would recommend reading the novel yourself it's one of the main reason I consider Cave one of the greats. I wouldn't bother with his new book you could find better things written on public toilet walls. Even though the song kick started his novel it's the last song credited to The Birthday Party as a whole band with Mick Harvey, Rowland S. Howard, Tracy Pew and of-course Cave's screaming or choking and do you call that singing? Originally the song was released in 1983 which marks the end of that band and the start of something that wouldn't be finished until 1989, he claims that that novel almost killed him too.
Find it on: Mutiny/The Bad Seed (Compilation) 1983


Top image is an air-brushed painting from the National Portrait Gallery by Howard Arkley created the year he died in 1999.

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