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...
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