Great Read: Nick Cave, Sinner Saint: The True Confessions, Thirty Years of Interviews edited by Mat Snow

Well, I don't know if it is a totally great read from begining to end because it's writers or should I say journalists which Nick Cave seems to hate most of them so maybe good, bad and ugly read would be more appropriate. To kick this off as well, the last few years has been the most disappointing time to be a fan of his, with Grinderman debut, the Bad Seeds' Dig Lazarus album which should have been Grinderman too just with Mick Harvey filling in on guitar and few other extras, the silly dead rabbit book, the next Grinderman. I have enjoyed the soundtracks more: The Road, The Assassination of Jesse James and the last totally great thing he's done The Proposition which of course he was more involved with writing the screenplay plus the music. Nick Cave & Warren Ellis' The White Lunar, double CD compilation is the best release in that time by far because you don't have to listen to his now shit lyrics. The last great album would have to be the Bad Seeds' Abattoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus from 2004. Don't get me wrong he's done bad albums before or one's I didn't think much off like 1996's Murder Ballads, 1990's The Good Son and 1985's The First Born is Dead are not great maybe one or two songs are great but not as whole albums. His 2007 to 2010 projects are his first run of pretty weak work, it makes me realise just how good his music before was.

So this is the latest in a long line of books about Cave and this will be my very last blog post about him until he does something at least good, I will not say great because I think it impossible at the moment and I'm sick of bagging him out too. Anyway I was reviewing a book about him here. The best interviews are the two by Phil Sutciffe for Mojo magazine in 2008 and 2004. The worst are two for NME and Q magazines which I won't name their names. It's funny the choices Mat Snow the editor made because I know I've read better stuff than in this book about Cave. There is only one interview for The Boys Next Door and The Birthday Party each, a few more for his drug fucked years in the 80's, only four from his cross-over years in the the 90's which you have to ask why? And the rest are from 2000's which starts on page 108 and the book is 240 pages long. I think I could have put togther a better book with Cave interviews but maybe I'm being way too negative. It's worth reading it just for the unedited Phil Sutcliffe interviews but there are others which are great like the full Debbie Kruger interview which is wicked.


What happens in this because it goes chronological even though I just said those last two interviews are the best, it seems growing older he's done his best to turn his life into just an office job with his wife and kids at home, just totally getting rid of any kind of chaos eg: the 90's and 80's. Like say did you know his first two sons Luke and Jethro where only born just ten days apart in two different countries and off-course by two totally different women. As well he was still on the drink and drugs until just 2001 but he's been sober and clean since then. I love those few albums for early to mid 2000's but after the Aussie Western movie he's lost his way a little really. Also that you find out that the writing of that film started at the No More Shall we Part album sessions too so it's even easier to group that time period together.

Anyway this book I would rate 3 stars or three out of five, it's just OK like most of his recent work to be nice about it, it's just OK. I guess we will see what Cave does next, He's writing the next Bad Seeds album now or if he can write another masterpiece before 85 which is the age he'll probably make it to according to this book.

Just to finish off here's him back in the good old days singing Bob Dylan's Knockin' On Heaven's Door, the picture is a bit jumpy but sound is pretty good. It's from around the mid-80's so its amazing it's been uploaded to youtube at all.

The top image is the book cover and the middle photo is for the mid-90's by Polly Borland.

Stay tuned for more soon...

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!

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

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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.

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...

50 Greatest Nick Cave Songs: from #24 to #20

Right, I'm back after moving house and finally getting back to my favorite Nick Cave's songs...

24. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Sorrow's Child
OK, sorry to say this is the only song from that album on my list. I think it is a bit over rated as an album and I'm totally sick and tired of The Ship Song (it's Jimmy Barnes favorite Cave track) and he should stop singing The Weeping Song live without Blixa too. This is I guess the most melancholic track from one of his most happy albums, well by his standards, which maybe why I don't like it as much. That in turn could explain why I don't like his new stuff. It's not a mid-life crisis because he sounds like he's having too much of a good time even when he's not getting any sex. Anyway I'm writing about Sorrow's Child. It's one of a few of his songs featuring rivers and water. It's not the first on my list and will not be the last too.
Find it on: The Good Son (Album) 1990

23. The Boys Next Door - Shivers
A song not written by Cave but Rowland S. Howard which he could not match up to at the time so it's really a track to make Cave work a lot harder as a songwriter in the early days. It was also banned by Molly Meldrum on Countdown which is of-course just another reason why it's so great. It made it into Triple J's top 10 Nick Cave songs on J-files in the 90's and pretty high too. Of-course some shit band covered it in the 90's and had a hit single with it and on the same label who dropped The Boys Next Door in the 70's after this album but then again Howard thanks Mushroom record's boss, Michael Gudinski on his final album credits Pop Crimes which would have to be the greatest album from last year and totally destroys anything Cave has done in the last five years. Should I say Howard is outdoing him again, maybe just haunting Cave from the grave.
Find it on: Door, Door (Album) 1979

22. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Up Jumped The Devil
A song sandwiched between two of his most famous tracks which for me I wish he would play this one live just once instead of those two, I think he's played The Mercy Seat every time I've seen him live and missed Deanna maybe once but what the fuck am I saying here? A few years ago when on myspace I asked a lot of people what their favorite Nick Cave song was. I remember that Gareth Liddiard from The Drones answered me with this as one of two songs he picked out. Plus it also was chosen for Mojo Magazine, Highway to Hell, the Devils best tunes, the cover mounted CD early this year too.
Find it on: Tender Prey (Album) 1988

21. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Hard On For Love
This is the second song Gareth Liddiard from The Drones picked out as his favorite Cave tracks too which I've kept together here on my list. Here is an interesting fact it was never played live until last years' 2009 Aussie tour so there is hope for those other tracks he never plays live too. This is an overly sexual or just totally erotic track but at the same time a song with so many religious reference's. He come in at her like Lazarus from above and few lines above that she walked straight out of the Book of Leviticus. Then the lord is his shepherd and then down few more line she is now Heaven and Hell so anyway you get the idea and before we get to the final repeated chorus.
Find it on: Your Funeral... My Trial (Album) 1986

2o. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Loverman
To finish off the twenties is a song that should have been on The Best of compilation album but of-course if it was it wouldn't be included here in my chart because of the rules made about this list. I think it was a better single than the others or maybe it was just because it has one of the best ever promo video clips Nick and the Bad Seeds's have made, they all got hypnosis for it, how cool is that. What is not very cool at all is the metal band and disco bloke covers, how to screw-up a great song two different ways but I will not say their names in this blog. Anyway check out the self-portrait drawing at the top of the page done by well... Nick Cave. I wonder if you could hire that today as a costume for Halloween somewhere?
Find it on: Loverman (Single) 1994 or Let Love In (Album) 1994
Stay tuned for more soon...

50 Greatest Nick Cave Songs: from #29 to #25

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.

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50 Greatest Nick Cave Songs: from #34 to #30

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.

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50 Greatest Nick Cave Songs: Grinderman rant & from #39 to #35

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.

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