50 Greatest Nick Cave Songs: from #4 to #0 not #1

So after all this writing about Nick Cave and all 50 of my favorite tracks I don't think I want to listen to him for a while now. Anyway I wanted to finish off these epic blog posts before the end of the year. So here's my top five songs by Nick Cave starting with number...

4. Nick Cave with Bruno Coulais - To Be By Your Side
One of two tracks in my top five Nick Cave songs which are not on a Bad Seeds album, both are from soundtracks. I know that they all should be album tracks but I can't help but number this song up this high. it's one of his most perfectly written lyrics, a totally stunning, captivating and exquisite song. The music by Bruno Coulais absolutely and exactly matched his words. It's also needs to be heard more too because people don't know of it or just don't know how great this is. Plus where else do you get Cave sing along with Geese which are the stars of the film. A wicked movie too.
Find it on: Travelling Birds (Soundtrack) 2002 or under the title Winged Migration in USA or Le Peuple Migrateur in France

3. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Babe, You Turn Me On
Another of his tracks featuring more winged friends with butcher birds, nightingales and even bees too. This is the fourth song from the huge double album I've picked for my favorite Cave songs. Three tunes from The Lyre of Orpheus side and just one from Abattoir Blues and two were rehashed as singles which I would say are two of his best choices, I never liked the singles but those two are flat out outstanding and superb. Only one other album has four tracks here in my list of his best songs. I've only seen his perform it once live and wished he would play it last time but maybe next time, fingers crossed.
Find it on: Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus (Album) 2004

2. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Grief Came Riding
This is on my copy of this album but is not included normally. I got it the week it was originally available and it was a bonus track on the album. One of only two Bad Seeds albums recorded at Abbey Road Studios, the other one was the previous album The Boatman's Call. He rarely plays this one live but at a very short, invite only launch party for the album Cave said "the Bad Seeds actually deemed it too depressing" and is about "the misery of living in England". Three songs ended up in my list from this album which ties with The Boatman's Call in second place, the albums with the most tracks I've selected here in my list.
Find it on: No More Shall We Part (Limited Edition) 2001 or B-Sides & Rarities (Compilation) 2005

1. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Loom Of The Land
Well, here is my number one track (finally) and of-course has to be from Henry's Dream album. I really have run out of things to say now after fifty tracks but here goes. An album with only nine songs and I've picked four here it's the album that wins hands down here...if you count Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus as one album not two discs or a double album as some people do. I've only ever seen him play this once too but it doesn't matter I love this song so much and I don't really need to explain anymore, full stop.
Find it on: Henry's Dream (Album) 1992

0. Nick Cave with Dirty Three - Time Jesum Transeuntum Et Non Riverentum
But just to be difficult I'm including number zero here. So is this my top song or the previous track? See if you can figure that out. This is the very first Warren Ellis and Nick Cave collaboration, he joined the band Dirty Three for this classic song. In the liner notes for the soundtrack all that was written was "Zero is also a number" and your physically had to rewind your CD which some players didn't do. A hidden track which is the most hardest to find or even just play. The title is in Latin and translates to "Dread the passage of Jesus for He will not return". Epic, Do I need to say anymore?
Find it on: Songs in the Key of X (Soundtrack) 1996 or B-Sides & Rarities (Compilation) 2005

Top photograph by Bleddyn Butcher and was first published in Rolling Stone Australia in May 1994 and now can be found at National Portrait Gallery. He's wearing Smith & Wesson handguns T-shirt, he-ha.

Just to finish off here is a kind-off mix tape thingy called grooveshark so you can play all (but one) tracks on my 50 Greatest Nick Cave Songs, enjoy!

Photos: Gareth Liddiard @ Fremantle Arts Centre and Video @ Oxford Art Factory, 2010

Well I'm back with another Gareth Liddiard and The Drones post. More photos I found of him from last months gig I saw him at on the 12/11/10, it was only just over a month ago now. All these photos are by Graham Clark which I've got from the FasterLouder website (this time). I'm getting sick of these sites you have to click through pages and pages just see all the photos so I've just put an edited half a dozen best photos all in one place. They're great photos too. I remember seeing these at the time but forgot about them and I do like to keep track of these things so I'm re-posting them here, I hope no one minds about this one too. It was a great night and these are great photos of that night.












One more bonus photo here which I've tagged on the end is of the crowd on the night at the show and I'm in it, the blurry guy in the the bottom left hand side which maybe doesn't need to be here but the six above it are wicked. I guess including this one gives a complete view of it all. I can't find any photos from the next night at Mojo's Bar but found a live video of my favorite song from the album and title track on youtube from the same tour, over east a few nights later.



So right at the very, very end of this post is the wicked video of Gareth Liddiard @ Oxford Art Factory, Sydney on the 20/11/10 (with almost perfect sound and pretty clear picture). This song has become my favorite from his new album which is the title track called "Strange Tourist". I've added the lyrics right below to go with the track below so you can read/sing along at the same as watching him, enjoy!

The "Strange Tourist" lyrics:

It was all falling down and a long way from cheap
So tell me why did we live where we lived?
Above the old fish shop where they served up slop
And all the alley cats talked in their sleep

I spent a year there with B
After I quit the Mitsubishi,
Dragged my mattress up some stairs by the sea
Then watched the old van rust in the gusts of the coast
Ending its knightly expeditions for beer

B went psychotic in the navy and he wouldn't mend
Something about a sunk junk and speed
Well he couldn't shake the illness or endure the cure
And there was no point switching treatments in the
Timor Sea

I have never known someone who needed to talk so much
Or even fool himself disguising a guess
I just steered his bullshit through the next diversion
Never bothering with reality checks

Bowerbird, you'd turn a birdbath black
What the hell could be the matter with you?
Where did you come from and why'd you go collecting
Anything that turns the colour blue?

B took his refuge in the open where it stings
You think you'd seen him but he's gone in a blink
Once those Stilnox hit their target don't trust nothing,
No one
And don't go believing anything that you think

He'd say, "I'm half way through
But I don't know what I'm doing
I ain't feeling much of nothing at all
But it's my first time too, if that's a valid excuse
I'm going to wait here for the engines to stall

I've seen the tracks of some giant, the smoke of some fire
Fuse like hot sands in a bottleneck
Does all of beauty lie in being dead and gone
Or is all history made of chickens and their unhatched eggs

I've seen the specter of a frigate on a dry rock face
A stone axe held together with an old bootlace
Anything betraying the drift of dead headway
You can shake it but it won't let go

All that so men can live like girls to keep their might pert
Digging music made by millionaires for car adverts
Save the whales, invade Iraq and have a hamburger
I can't distinguish between the nightmare and the joke

I was in Tokyo once without any cash
Koda Kumi sang a coda pink as sarin gas
I took a trip to Nagasaki in a rented Mitsubishi
Then went camping in the Jukai under Mount Fuji"

Bowerbird, you'd turn a birdbath black
What the hell could be the matter with you?
Where did you come from and why'd you go collecting
Anything that turns the colour blue?

But when his pension got suspended,
Well that spelled the end
And I joined his life of leisure in flight
It's too hard to row a boat using a periscope
Sometimes you gotta do wrong to do right

He got in trouble years back, I haven't see him since
In a men's room in a night club in Madrid
He sold some dexedrine or something to a plain clothes D
Then raised a stink so bad they ended up deporting him

Then last I heard he was as free as a bird or into Scientology
Or into Heaven's Gate or Sharon Tate
Or in the Legionnaires
Or gone to Georgia with the Mujahideen

And someone else was walking eggshells in his birdcage
Someone else shared his unending lease on hamstrung rage
He was someone else's problem, and that made me glad
They can indulge him 'till he's ironclad

Bowerbird, you'd turn a birdbath black
What the hell could be the matter with you?
Where did you come from and why'd you go collecting
Anything that turns the colour blue?

I wound up working in a hospital
Renting TV's to the bored and the blind
Seems the DSS got sick of my BS
And had my unemployment privatised

They made a date with me, some agency
And I went down there like a fool in love
They made a few phone calls, found a real cure-all
Like I wasn't miserable enough

I was working night shift when he got there
The first time I'd seen a coma on the ward
The sister said he won't be needing TV now
Probably won't be needing nothing at all

He was in Tokyo for once until he stabilised
They flew him back here and the story unfolded
They found him frozen in a hollow in Aokigahara forest
Where those harrakiri weirdos go

He died a little later, and was wheeled away
I'd blame his morbid fascination for it all
And his doubtless, groundless faith
In his outdoors manship
He didn't kill himself, he didn't have the balls

Hope dies last in a hospital
But has a habit of doing it next to you
While you shit kick around with your eyes to the ground
Like a bowerbird appropriating anything
The colour blue.

The Gareth Liddiard @ Oxford Art Factory live video on youtube


P.S. I promise I'll get to the final five Nick Cave songs so it's all over and done with in the next post.

Photos: Gareth Liddiard & Dan Kelly @ The EG Awards, 2010

Well, here's an quick post of a couple funny photos of Gareth Liddiard and Dan Kelly messin' about at The Age newspaper EG Awards 2010 with Paul Kelly's new book (above). If you didn't know Paul Kelly is now a member of their Hall of Fame. Gareth Liddiard later played two songs. The first a Paul Kelly cover "The Executioner" (below) with Dan Kelly. Then he played his own song "Stange Tourist" solo but he didn't win any awards but who gives a shit about that.

These four photos are by Robert Carbone which can be found at Photos: EG Awards 2010 : Mess+Noise. Sorry, I couldn't help reposting them here so hopefully no one minds too much.

50 Greatest Nick Cave Songs: from #9 to #5

Right into the very last few tracks. the one and only rule I did make from this list was to not include anything from The Best Of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds compilation album (which I didn't break) but now into the last ten songs, all (except two tracks in the next post) are just from the Bad Seeds albums. So the next number is....

9. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Still In Love
Sorry, I can't help but include this track but I do know most hardcore Nick Cave fans totally dislike this album. This album reunited Nick Cave with Nick Launay who produced the "Release the Bats" single by The Birthday Party 20 years earlier and now has done everything since with him. Apparently Nick Launay said something like "you guys sound like old men on your death beds" which then Cave wrote "Dead Man In My Bed" in the studio quickly after. This song follows that on the album at the mid way point. I think it's one of the most amazing ballads he's every written. This albums main theme was to write about the middle period of love so not sad farewell and not the first blush but after being married for a few years like Cave himself. The intermediate part most singer-songwriters have ignored. This was also written and recorded live but he got rid of his piano after this album but if nothing else you've got to admit it was a transitional track and album.
Find it on: Nocturama (Album) 2003

8. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Breathless
Another beautifully, romantic track just like the last one which was written for his wife, Susie Bick. The last of his albums recorded and released almost two years apart. With Nocturama done March 2002 in Australia after a tour and out early February 2003 and the next one recorded around April 2004 in France, released at the end of September 2004. You can do the math but it looks like a bit of time in between albums to me. Now it seems he's desperate to record the next one even if he's just finished off the American tour and he hasn't written a word. Looking at the last three albums (plus that book) timeline, Grinderman released on March 5, 2007 and recorded in 2006 then Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! recorded June-July, 2007 then released on March 3, 2008 next came the dead bunny book, written on a Dig Larry tour bus and published in September 2009, audio-book was done at the same time as well. Recording of Grinderman 2 took from August 2008 to 2009 so it was completed a year after the original sessions. All were done in and around London as well. I'm not even including the soundtracks or scores from films and theater. He seems like an urgent, non-stop workaholic in last few years, like it's a race to the finish line.
Find it on: Breathless (Single) 2004 or Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus (Album) 2004

7. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Watching Alice
The first of a few more bleak tunes, it might be a little unhealthy that I've chosen so many songs like these but it does give me, myself and I more understanding of what I like listening to. So after two of his most romantic tracks here's peeping Tom Nick Cave watching a girl called Alice getting dressed year after year but keeping this explanation shorter than the last two: what could be more depressing than watching a girl getting dressed?
Find it on: Tender Prey (Album) 1988

6. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Where Do We Go Now But Nowhere?
Well this is the third song from The Boatman's Call album which I said in the first post in this series of posts that it wasn't his best album but it's seems it's his second best well, tied for second but I haven't finished yet. Is this the saddest from that album? maybe one of them, with lyrics like: "Around the duck pond we grimly mope, Gloomily and mournfully we go round again, And one more doomed time and without much hope, Going round and around to nowhere" but at least you could watch and listen to the ducks, Nick. Quack!
Find it on: The Boatman's Call (Album) 1997

5. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Sad Waters
The very start of Your Funeral... My Trial album which seems like the album which is tied for third place if I add up all the songs and which albums they came from. Not totally giving away the next final top tracks from the next post but third place albums are 2003's Nocturama, 1994's Let Love In, 1988's Tender Prey, this album from 1986 as all the Bad Seeds albums plus the 1983's The Birthday Party's Mutiny/The Bad Seed. Anyway I think I'll stop now and keep this explanation short and sweet as well.
Find it on: Your Funeral... My Trial (Album) 1986

The top plus the bottom photo are by Polly Borland (again). With Susie Bick (left) with her husband Nick Cave (right) taken from around the year 2000. This one below is the only photo I can find of Susie and Nick together, kissing. A very small one:
Or here is the bigger one with writing all over the middle of the pic. It's obviously posed for her camera but it's sweet and it's titled "Marital Bliss" too.

Stay tuned for the very last post soon of these: my 50 favorite Nick Cave songs.

50 Greatest Nick Cave Songs: His car crash, new interview book & from #14 to #10

To start with a new book about him is out early next year called Nick Cave: Sinner Saint: The True Confessions, Thirty Years of Essential Interviews edited by Mat Snow. By the way, the editor Mat Snow is the music journalist who is one of the subjects of Scum, a track by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds originally released as a green 7" flexidisc and Snow even talks about it on last years reissue's DVD film titled Do you love me like I love you Part 4: Your Funeral... My Trial which was pretty funny really. This new book has 224 pages it should make it a great read and it's going to be out on January 11, 2011.

Well, it's down to number ten in my fifty greatest Nick Cave tracks and it's getting a bit hard but these songs are my personal favorites. Which means if the song is say number ten in this list, it not necessarily that because all those charts of greatest whatever's I never ever agree with so I'm most likely going to disagree with myself after all this is done. I know I love these tracks more that all his other songs. I would love to see him perform these next few tracks as a set-list for an ultimate concert. I've seen a lot of these preformed over the years but some are still missing being played live well, some of these have never been played live at all.

Anyway here is number...

14. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - I Let Love In
The title track but without the "I" of-course and my favorite track from that album. With the opening lines of "Despair and Deception, Love's ugly little twins came a-knocking on my door, I let them in." It seems to me I like really morbid songs and it gets more and more so the higher I get in this list. Say with the opening lyrics of the first song on the debut Grinderman album he sings "I had to get up to get down to start all over again, Head on down to the basement and shout, Kick those white mice and black dogs out, Kick those white mice and baboons out, Kick those baboons and other motherfuckers out" which is the master plan for his new stuff so hence why I don't like his new words he's singing.
Find it on: Let Love In (Album) 1994

13. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Papa Won't Leave You, Henry
This is a total tsunami or avalanche of Nick Cave lyrics in just a few minutes he fills this song with an unbelievable amount words. This is the opening song from my favorite album of his and there are four tracks here in my chart. It was the first album I bought by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds too. The first album everyone gets from an artist who become a favorite artist always has a special place for anyone. It's funny because the songwriter plus even the band totally hate it as an album. I even got the new reissue and when you watch the DVD you see the band members all bitching about it then you have Mark Arm from Mudhoney, John Darnielle from The Mountain Goats, Gary Lucas from Captain Beefheart's Magic Band, his ex Viviane Carneiro among others all raving about how great it is, funny, eh?
Find it on: Henry's Dream (Album) 1992

12. The Birthday Party - Mutiny In Heaven
The very last Birthday Party track here but like I said at the top of this post these song go up and down in my opinion or depending on how I'm feeling on the day and today I'm numbering it twelve but it becomes a bit pointless (the numbering that is) because it could be all I wanted listen to next week. It is my favorite The Birthday Party song, I do know that. Critics say Grinderman are like this band which I don't get at all because if you listen to "Mutiny In Heaven" it makes them sound like a lame pop band plus his lyrics are so dense on this track you could drown in them which is something you could never say about Grinderman. His lyrics now are really like pop songs: simple, repeated, uncomplicated and very catchy too. Also this is the very first song on which Blixa Bargeld plays guitar for Cave.
Find it on: Mutiny/The Bad Seed (Compilation) 1983


11. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - People Ain't No Good
It was on his 1997 album but this song was later used in a Hollywood movie. Like "Red Right Hand" has been used to much in films, it's like they use it once and it worked so well so if they need a song just use that from now anyway according to me Hollywood's got a brain like a goldfish but whatever. This was very odd in that kid's movie at first but great, I guess in the end. Now this year "O Children" has been used in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1. It's funny the year "People Ain't No Good" was used in Shrek 2 was 2004 which was the year "O Children" was originally released on Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus album, it's like filmmakers are about six or seven years behind the times. "O Children" is not on the soundtrack but looks like it's all ready become the most downloaded song on iTunes by Cave. I guess it's a good thing, maybe.
Find it on: Shrek 2 (Soundtrack) 2004 or The Boatman's Call (Album) 1997

10. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - The Train Song
This is the first single I bought but I can't stand the A-side but flip side I still find totally beautiful and wonderful. I guess this is a funny one to start my top ten of my all-time favorite Cave tracks with a B-side but there is a reason to this madness. This was the first song heard after my little puppy died. The words really somehow match up to what just happened. I was like thirteen when my Dad gave me one of his dogs litter. I grew up with him and I was into my thirties when he got sick so he was really old for a Staffie. It's so sad writing it all down here and I still miss him but now "The Train Song" is all about that to me. I think I better stop or I'm going to cry.
Find it on: The Ship Song (Single) 1990 or B-Sides & Rarities (Compilation) 2005


Extra, Extra:
Nick Cave's Speed-Camera Car-Crash

View Larger Map
On Tuesday 7th December evening at around 7:OO pm Nick Cave with his his twin 10-year-old sons, Arthur and Earl crashed his Jaguar through a metal barrier and collided with the camera. The crash happened on the eastbound carriageway on Kingsway (road) in Brighton, East Sussex close to where Cave lives. Nobody has been arrested but police inquiries are continuing and a spokeswoman for Cave refused to comment. No other vehicles or people were involved and the speed camera and road barrier which was bent over at 45 degrees. The internet is great because I've found all these photos (below and after) which was taken by Brighton & Hove Studio Ltd and then looked up the road and the speed camera on Google Maps (above and before). Which by memory it's one of the main places/settings in his novel The Death of Bunny Munro but it's not the exact place the main charter dies in a car crash that was in Butlins but that would be too weird, I guess. Sorry for posting all this kind-off gossip maybe news but this is so funny I can't help myself, it's just like that dumb book he wrote last year with his the kids in the car too. He's only just come home after finishing his American tour last week.



The top photo is from Uli M Schueppel's film The Road To God Knows Where which was about Nick Cave & the Bad Seed 1989 tour of America. Nick Cave (front and centre then from left to right) Blixa Bargeld, Kid Congo Powers, Mick Harvey, Thomas Wydler and the late Roland Wolf.

Stay tuned for the final countdown.

Photos: Dimitron Benefit with The Drones @ The Corner Hotel

Hello and welcome to another post one and it's more about The Drones again. I just found some great photos of the last gig The Drones are and will play this year. I did NOT take these photographs these were taken by Matthew Harding and can be found on the Mess + Noise website. I just really love them, brilliant photos. Also if you didn't already know, I totally adore The Drones and will go as far as calling them the greatest band going currently and maybe of all-time too.

Gareth Liddiard releasing his debut solo album would have to be the highlight of the year, for me. The album of the year no doubt at all, it's still mind blowing even after a couple of months listening. I've also heard the news that Mike Noga, The Drones drummer but singer-songwriter in his own right has done his follow-up to his 2006’s Folk Songs album, March next year he will released his new solo album. The "new" Drones DVD will be releasing some time over this summer (no date as yet). I have also read Gaz is helping Ben Salter from The Gin Club doing his solo album which will be another thing to look forward to next year. I'm hoping for a "new" The Drones album maybe late next year or is that pushing it a bit but I have to guess it's got to come sooner or later at some stage, doesn't it?

It's been a quiet year really for them as a band with only nine gigs this year in total. So just to go over it here from the start of the year was Last drinks at the Tote finishing with Joel Silbersher doing the the last song of his old band's GOD classic track My Pal on 18th January. Then a run of three shows at East Brunswick Club Hotel with Gaz blowing up his amp in the very first song. All of these shows were filmed and recorded for the "new" DVD too. The gigs were on the 20th, 21st and 22nd of February then it was up to Sydney at The Annandale Hotel on 4th and 5th March. Off to England for ATP festival curated by Pavement on 14th to 16th of May. Then back to Melbourne at Forum Theatre on the 22nd October. Then to finish of with this show (that the photos are from) at The Corner Hotel on the 1st of December 2010. I wish I lived in Melbourne and could have seen these concerts but if you went could you tell me about them? I have no idea if this little run through of their gigs is interesting to anyone but me but I do like to keep track of these things and it's my blog plus if you enjoy all this too well that is bonus.

As for any new recordings from The Drones the closest we got this year is on the Maurice Frawley tribute album. I've bought the whole three CD's album but you can listen to the song they did which was the title track Long Gone Whistle; linked here). In the liner notes it only credits Gareth Liddiard and Dan Luscombe as The Drones members but has Augie March's Adam Donovan on Pedel Steel Guitar plus backing vocals and noises. Before that the one I'm missing from last year is the FBI radio's The Live Feed compilation album which I think I'll have to get now, a bit late but it's the only thing I'm missing (I think) so writing it down here reminds me to get it. There are some more great Aussie bands and artists on it too plus a few others from overseas. They're a few other discs from last year which Gaz and The Drones are on, my recommendation would be triple J’s Like A Version Vol. 5 with The Drones' cover of the TV show M*A*S*H theme song Suicide Is Painless. Also Gaz was on Magic Dirt's White Boy EP singing and playing guitar on Love Is The Armour. Plus Adalita and Liddiard did a cover and duet of early The Saints' classic song Messin’ With The Kid on Rockwiz TV show as well. Maybe I should put together a complete discography some time because I like doing stupid shit like that.

Anyway here are the photos below. Did I not tell you they're awesome photographs?















This was a benefit gig for local artist Dimitra Bucolo who suffers from lupus and has been hospitalised due to serious complications. Hopefully this gig will help and hope they get well soon.

All sixty photos for the night can be found here: Photos: Dimitron Benefit Feat. The Drones, Love Of Diagrams, ZOND : Mess+Noise but I've puttogether my favorites in this post because it's well, my blog and as someone said in the comment on their page "the M&N photo gallery format needs a total overhaul. it's completley un-viewer-friendly" which I totally agree with. There are some beautiful and wonderful photos but, you know what he said pretty much says it all.

All photos by Matthew Harding. Unfortunately I can not find his website to link back to other that the Mess + Noise site because I do like to show other peoples work here so if it is problematic for some reason please let me know. Did I already say how much I love these photos. I totally adore them and I would like to thank you personally for such great photos but the internet is at times unlike that. I hope it's all fine reposting the photos here on my blog.

On a final note: I deleted my last post because was unhappy with it, sorry if you liked it I'm going to re-do it sometime soon. Thank you for looking and even reading. I think I'll go back to the 50 Nick Cave songs next and just finish it and be done with it.