50 Greatest Nick Cave Songs: The "new" Bad Seeds album rant & from #19 to #15

I read today about Cave's plan for doing the next Bad Seeds album and I have to say the last three albums: two Grinderman's and the last Bad Seeds Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! all now sound just the same so I'm hoping for something totally different next, even a quick U-turn in the opposite direction.

Dig album was pretty much the same as the Grinderman line-up except Thomas Wydler, the Bad Seeds drummer since 1985 who only played drums on three songs. Conway Savage does play piano & organ but didn't play any of the tracks on the Dig album. Mick Harvey played on all the songs but quit soon after it's tour. James Johnston who plays only four songs on Dig but didn't tour with them. Ed Kuepper joined last year for a festival tour after Harvey left.

I read a great long interview a couple of months ago which Nick Cave who said, "I'd be honoured if Ed would come in and play. But like I said, I'm not really sure what the next record's going to be. I know it's very exciting to me, because the possibilities now have opened up. Now that Mick has left, there's a void. And it's a kind of void of possibilities." Also he said this about Blixa Bargeld rejoining: "But there was certainly no animosity between me and Blixa. We're very good friends, and I think we both feel that what he did was, both for him and the Bad Seeds, the right decision. I mean, I would quite happily have Blixa back if he wanted to come back." Cool, eh? He should make that an official offer because I think everyone would love to see him back in the Bad Seeds.

Of course nothing has happened yet but here's my dream eight man line-up for the Nick Cave & the Bad Seed 15th album plus ideas or my wishlist for songwriting, recording and producing:
Nick Cave
The vocals.
Just write the songs, just sing them like a front man because what a great band you have here.
Blixa Bargeld
The guitars.
Back with his open tuned electric guitar, slide guitar and maybe even pedal steel guitar but on different songs.
Ed Kuepper
The guitars.
His first time recording as a Bad Seeds why not electric guitar and acoustic guitar too but on different songs.
Conway Savage
The piano, organ and all keyboards.
So just let him play them this time around.
Martyn P. Casey
The bass guitar.
Of-course.
Thomas Wydler
The drums.
Just put him back on the drums on all the songs, he's the Bad Seeds drummer.
Jim Sclavunos
The percussion.
That's it, no drumming this time for him he can wait for the next Grinderman album, god help us all.
Warren Ellis
The violin, mandolin, viola, accordion, flute, loops and programming.
Plus anything and everything else he can think off too.

Now here's a good question: can Nick Cave still write really bleak and depressing songs anymore??? Can he just let his sad and morbid side run wild and lock-up his dirty pervert side for Grinderman 3. Can someone please buy him a pet "Moose", maybe. The recording should be done outside of England, returning to American for the first time since the early 90's, maybe even New York might work great for them now. A different producer too would be good. It will be ten years since Tony Cohen did that job but after Nick Launay doing every album since Nocturama so he needs to take a break. Ten songs I think would be the best amount. Something with a totally different sound than the last three albums. Something entirely miserable, they wouldn't have to be all those piano ballads, I don't mean that. Can Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds do a complete back flip at this stage? Maybe not but Cave being a happily married man has done nothing for his songwriting so he should do the "Moose" album. Hey, maybe that is great working title: The Moose Album and here the album cover too, it looks very Bad Seeds to me.
The Moose, 1773, Oil on canvas by George Stubbs.

Whatever is going to happen is not going to happen until next year anyway so back to my countdown. Right now it's going down to number fifteenth which is getting a bit hard, numbering all these songs the higher I get but here goes...

19. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Wings Off Flies
Well, this seems like it's the only one from this album, the debut Cave album featuring The Bad Seeds. I do quite like it as an album but for some reason which I don't know myself and can't really explain I've only chosen this one track. The lyrics at the very start of the song repeat throughout from an old game picking one petal off a flower but Cave replaces it with flies which of-course only have two wings so it always ends on not. Can you imagine young Nick sitting at his London window on rainy day picking up dead insects pulling their wings off?
Find it on: From Her To Eternity (Album) 1984

18. Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - Magma
This one might seems like an odd one at this stage but I've been enjoying these soundtrack works so much more than say the two Grinderman albums and even the last Bad Seeds album. The Proposition and The Road soundtrack are great. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is the weakest one. Some tracks from the three previously mentioned soundtracks are collected on disc one of White Lunar but the second disc is even better. This track is from "The Vaults" which is apparently just vocals but with the FX pedals used heavily over it. Also I wish they would officially release Metamorphosis, Woyzeck and Faust which are all the theater soundtracks and could be on an album too.
Find it on: White Lunar (Compilation) 2009

17. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Jack The Ripper
Just like Loverman in the last post of these 50 tracks, I think this should have been included on The Best of... compilation album because I think it's one of the strongest singles, if not the best one they have ever released. What a killer promo video clip. This song has to be one of the best if not the best ways to close an album too. Wow what an album as well, it's like being hit by sledgehammer repeatedly.
Find it on: Straight To You/Jack The Ripper (Single) 1992 or Henry's Dream (Album) 1992

16. The Birthday Party - Zoo Music Girl
My favorite The Birthday Party album, I think Junkyard is so overrated and you can't call Mutiny/The Bad Seed an album because it's two E.P.'s. This track is the opener for it and I guess, I could say like I said with the previous song but the best way to start an album plus this track it's like a jackhammer . Am I just repeating myself now? If so sorry about that. What about this, can I call this track his first great love song?
Find it on: Prayers on Fire (Album) 1981

15. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Nature Boy
The first single from the epic double album and the only one from the Abattoir Blues side or disc here in my list. A great way to kick start the last truly great Bad Seeds and Nick Cave album. It's the first album without Blixa Bargeld but it's an album dedicated to Mick Geyer who's his best mate outside of his bands, and was someone Cave spoke to on the phone sometimes more than once a day and talked about everything including Cave's own music. He died soon after this album was finished and I would say it was his biggest loss in his life since his father at the age of 21. I can't underestimate Mick Geyer's importance to Nick Cave really so now it seems he's a bit lost without him.
Find it on: Nature Boy (Single) 2004 or Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus (Album) 2004

The top photo is of Nick Cave who is far left (with his very short hair cut). The Bad Seeds who going from left to right are Jim Sclavunos, Conway Savage, James Johnston, Martyn P. Casey, Warren Ellis (in white and blue not black like the rest of the band), Thomas Wydler and Mick Harvey walking the streets of Paris during the recording of the album Abattoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus and the photographer was Steve Gullick.

Stay tuned for more soon...

Live Act: Gareth Liddiard @ Sonic Session & Mojo's

I crap on about Gaz, don't I? Well, here I go again. I've been to two most wicked gigs over this weekend and wish there was more because if I didn't think he was the greatest singer-songwriter before, I do even more now.

Before him I thought Warren Ellis and Nick Cave were pretty great but together since about 2005, and I'll say nothing more about them in this post. Rowland S. Howard did show he's truly great but just took a lot longer in between albums. I'll say David McComb and his band The Triffids before that. I like to throw in Kim Salmon and Ed Kuepper too but no one listens to them enough, or should I say more people should listen to them. Paul Kelly also can be included too in this mammoth line-up. Sarah Blasko and Glenn Richards also and are the only other singer-songwriters currently building a career who come close to Gareth Liddiard. With his new solo album he's upped the ante to the exhaustively extreme. Maybe there could be some even newer songwriters on the way in but are yet to unquestionably prove it.

What about overseas singer-songwriters? Well do I need to say anything because they get so much press written about them and are championed by every man, women, child, dog, cat, goldfish, budgie. To me Australian music should talked about as much as stuff from two country's who started with the letter U, can guess which two?

Sonic Session @ The Fremantle Arts Centre

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This gig was at an old mental hospital which is reputed to be haunted and now is an art gallery. It was in the middle courtyard which sounds like a great place for a gig in summertime in Perth but after a queer cold, windy, wet spring week here it was a stupid and uncomfortable idea. I was numb by the end and sitting on plastic chairs didn't help too but moths, mosquitoes and mice were having a good time. Sonic Session's is a bit of an odd gig and might need explaining. It's hosted by American radio DJ called Lucky Oceans who plays Pedal Steel Guitar which worked well with the older Drones songs but didn't with his new ones. Plus in between songs he asked questions but Gaz is a brilliant talker too so made for a good nights viewing. I'm going to write down some things I want to remember and share it with you.

First song up was 'Shark Fin Blues', which after playing Lucky said "How did you come up with that?" "I wanted to write a song like an old sea shanty but it didn't come out like that." he went on to say "It's started with a Karen Dalton song called 'Same Old Man' but changed into that." Lucky asked a lot of times about the songwriting process but Gaz didn't give too much away saying things like "he's a cut and paste kind-off guy" and "just start it by any means necessary" or "doing something you never done before just for something different". Next song was the title track from the new album 'Strange Tourist' which was unbelievable played live. Oceans said "Wow, there is so much in there." and asked more songwriting questions, then Lucky asked a where he was born and grown-up question: "I was born in Port Hedland"

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(Sorry but I've just discovered Google maps and I'm going a bit mad in this post with them). Port Headland looks closer to Darwin than Perth. He traveled a lot as a kid with his family in between London and Western Australia before stopping in Perth and starting school in the suburb of Warwick. Which is north of the Swan River and inland from the coast too. It would have say in the late 70's and early 80's been a bit of a trek into the city but not market gardens like say Wanneroo was back then. Perth as a city is very, very, very spread out because of all the space around. All the suburbs have just grown like some blob monster and it's only just now that all the gaps are being filled in but here's another map to shown you again.

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Liddiard's first and earliest music memory's, that he spoke of that night were Blondie's 'Heart of Glass', he said, "I knew I liked but didn't know why" and Pink Floyd's 'Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2', "I didn't stop singing the chorus which worried my folks". He was asked when did he started playing music - as a teenager Saxophone was his first instrument but after hearing Charlie Parker and John Coltrane because he couldn't do that this lead to go on to guitar but it was almost the same because of Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page but his sister gave him a cassette of Black Flag and he thought "I can do that". They talked about moving to Melbourne and Liddiard said "it was just something I had to do to keep playing music, just like going overseas too. Just more places to play", which makes prefect sense really.

One of the funniest bits in the first half was talking about the Aussie music scene because "sooner or later you meet and everyone is cool except one person who is a knob but I'm not say who", he was pushed a little more he gave clues "He's from here too and he's got big hair" someone shorted out Luke Steele to which he answered, "you said it not me".

Before the interval they played a wicked version of 'Words From The Executioner To Alexander Pearce', which I haven't heard since the Gala Mill tour live. After the break he played 'Blondin Makes An Omelette' which is one of my favorites from the new album. More talk about starting to work as a roadie, lighting guy, ringer just anything where music was being played and one word to describe himself in his early 20's is "cocky", he's 34 now and making a decent wage like someone with just a normal job but I done something I really love and have done crazy shit to keep doing it. The bands, or artist he name dropped throughout the evening were Blind Willie Johnson, Blind Willie McTell, Stooges, Dirty Three, Tom Waits and even Bob Dylan, "He alright ain't he but he's on the cover of Mojo magazine too much and all those critics rave about him way too much." Which then leads into talking about the English and American love affair which can/could go back to the war of Independence according to Liddiard, and how Australians, or for that matter any other countries in the world are never included. It's like those two superpowers are the whole world and the rest is nothing. Breaking into that is kind-of impossible no matter what you do and he knows people in Perth, in Melbourne or just Aussies doing so much better music but if a band comes to town from America you go to see them even if the local who is better than them is playing the same night. Lucky Oceans who is an American living here said, Americans just think they're the best and Aussies don't think that way because you're not raised to think like that so here it doesn't happen. It's disappointing but I guess that's what I was writing about at the start of this post too. They played 'Your Acting’s Like The End Of The World' next which was perfect timing.

The last two songs were from the new album too, they were - 'Did She Scare All Your Friends Away' and 'Highplains Mailman'. Lucky Oceans asked the crowd for questions too, at which point my mind went blank. I would like to interview Liddiard because I could fill a note pad with stuff to ask him but my head just wasn't working and then it was all over and I had to stand up which I couldn't do that too because I was numb with cold.

Album Lurch @ Mojo's Bar

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Well, this is the first show he's done totally solo in W.A., the previous night playing only two songs at the end of the sonic sessions solo. Plus he and Dan Luscombe together supported Augie March late last year but of-course he's done tours over east all by himself. As far as I know he's never done it overseas but hopefully a tour with be announced soon because the whole world should be able to see him perform like this.

Liddiard started at the beginning of the album and did every track on the new album in order plus even had a CD copy to get all in the right order. Then he came on for the encore with 'Shark Fin Blues' and 'Jezebel'. He did little intros about each song so I'm going to write down what I remember too.

'Blondin Makes A Omelette' is about "a 19th century wire walker who once hit the big time crossing Niagara Falls his manager kept thinking new and different ways to do the same thing but did something no rock n' roll manager did, let him piggy-back him across but this song is written from the point of view of his understudy". 'Highplains Mailman' is about "the men who live where I live in the Australian Mountains and think I'm just a softcock." Next song was 'Strange Tourist', one of my favorites from the album. He was saying the character in the song is like a combination of all the flatmates you lived with that you start out liking but you just want to kill them next time they're asleep but they don't sleep because they're on crystal meth and you just end up hating them." He also said to Google suicide forest in Japan so I did and here's one of the weirdest youtube videos I came across so here it is to watch...


'You Sure Ain't Mine Now' was next up some girl shouted out, "you look alone up there, do you want a hug?" which his replied was "No, I get payed to be alone, hey that sounds really cool, don't it?" at some point somebody else shouted out, "when are you going to have kids?" which the answer was, "I'm a lover not a breeder". There was abundance of laughing in between songs for someone who's a deadly serious song-writer. 'The Collaborator' which is another of my favorite tracks from the album is set in World War II but is about "old but also modern day collaborators too." Also he asked the crowd, "if anyone is still frightened of Nazis anymore? Like you could walk about with a swastika tattoo on your head now, can't you? It was like almost a hundred years ago." 'Did She Scare All Your Friends Away' is a love song. He said, you got to have love songs if you're a songwriter but he didn't really explain what it's really about but said "I do know I'm the only songwriter to put Winnebagos in a song. I've been on one too at an expo, somewhere. It cost like three million dollars and is like a yacht with wheels." He kept looking at the back of the CD for the names of his own songs and said he only remembers how the tunes go and not the names and sang the open riff to 'Heartbreaker' by Led Zeppelin.

Someone asked for 'Sixteen Straws' but Liddiard said I'll play this one instead which of-course is the last song on the new album, it's called 'The Radicalistion Of D' "which is NOT about David Hicks. It could be about anyone who gets radical like Timothy McVeigh or David Koresh or even anyone who just joined greenpeace too. It's the same thing, It's all getting radical" at which point someone yelled out "writing a blog" which Gareth said "yes, that the Gen Y way to get radical." So here I am writing what he said one night in a blog, pretty fucked, eh? I do remember making bombs as a teenager and blowing things up. We had a pine forest behind the high school which was perfect for wagging class and you didn't have to go very far. One day someone took all his skin off his hand while lighting one, he just said to everyone he tripped over on the pavement but we knew better. Anyway Gaz goes on to say "my generation bomb things up", proudly but there was a lot Gen Y's in the front row watching him. Because of the subject matter this song is a very, very long song just over sixteen minutes on the album but the person next to me said, "what is it ten minutes?" but what Liddiard did next was slow it right down and it ended up a bit past twenty minutes. He said "rock n' roll is a contact sport so why write a three minute song, I've been listening to a lot of music of North Africa and they do not have radio stations tell them how long to make a song. It's playing Kora or standing on a rock with an AK-47" or something like that. Anyway one of versus in this is about someone who stole a tank in Perth in the early 90's which was a bizarre thing I had totally forgot about, so I looked that up on youtube too and here it is to watch...


In the first verse people in the crowd were laughing about D building a bomb but by the next verse the bloke in front of me sits down on the floor and hung his head. It took one more verse for his girlfriend to turn around and head for the bar for a drink. I don't know how many people have heard this before tonights show but they seem like they all were in a state of shock but the end of it, it was unbelievable to witness, a killer song literally. Anyway Gareth finished off with 'Jezebel' which was awesome.

I wish I bought a t-shirt or tea towel but going to these shows I'm missing some money to pay the rent with. One last thing just before the show started and Mojo's turned into a sardine can I was sitting on couch up the back and Fiona Kitschin you know The Drones bass player and Gareth Liddiard's parter tripped over my feet and she squealed which I said sorry but I don't think she heard me over Syd Barrett's Madcap Laughs. This is totally embarrassing really almost making a member of your favorite band almost fall over so if somehow I could chop my feet off before she did I would but she was the only one of all those people who did but you know it's still pretty bad, eh?

This and the top image is by photographer Olga Bennett and is where Gareth lives in outback Victoria. That's Max the dog, his blue-healer who's also on the inside the CD copy of the new album. Another reason to buy the real thing and not just download it. This bottom photo here is in my girlfriend's latest Frankie magazine.

They were remarkable and astonishing shows so you should go and see him if he comes to your city. I have gone a bit overboard with all these little details and wrote too much so I better finish now, the end and full stop.

Live Act: Dachshund U.N. @ Perth Cultural Centre Amphitheater

Well, I'm going to put my Nick Cave top songs on ice again, Sorry I'll go back to it but today I'm going to write about something much more important than him. I hear you saying what could be more important than Nick Cave? Well, sausage dogs of-course. At the Perth Cultural Centre Amphitheater which is just outside PICA in Perth yesterday (and will be on next Saturday again at 2pm) Dachshund U.N. was performing or playing (what is the right word?). It would have to be the best performing arts event I've ever been to and the most enjoyable visual arts I've gone to in a long time. You could really call it a concert because all the people were behind a fence and the performers were on a stage of sorts and the biggest crowd, all with cameras too. I should explain it a bit more. We have a hell of a lot of Dachshund apparently 47 which is a replica of the former U.N. in Geneva which was like what we have now with the United Nations General Assembly except that all nations have a Dachshund representing them. WOOF!!!


I could not help but smile the whole time. I really had to stop myself laughing because it was so amusing and delightful. I think they would do a better job than the current government we have so if I was Bennett Miller (the artist who came up with the idea) in time for the next election should start a Dachshund party because I think people would actually vote them and I wouldn't put it past them to get more things done than the current politicians. Yesterday they barked, woofed, panted, howled, fell asleep, tails wagged, a couple tried to jump off, sniffed each others bums and even the dog for Pakistan tried humping Hungary which to me seemed like quite a great deal in just 45 minutes. Just imagine what they could do if they where running this country?

Here is two videos I found, one from ABC's Art Nation TV show and the other is just hand held camera filmed at the Melbourne's one as part of the Next Wave Festival. Plus you can find another video here at the Museum Victoria. I did borrow a video recorder but some how I filmed it all side ways.




Here's the write up from The West Australian and don't forget to check the photo gallery too. Also Dachshund U.N. is on the cover of the latest Artlink magazine but unfortunately only one line is written about them but at least they're on the front cover, I guess. Anyway anyone can leave a comment if you like this and I'll get back to my music post next week but I think I would call it music it's just dogs performing and maybe even singing at times, ha. It was brilliant and if your in Perth next weekend go and check it out or if it come to your town at some later date you can't miss this, it's a total classic.