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.
Stay tuned for more...
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