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.
Stay tuned for more...
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