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.

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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.

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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.

Plus I should thank you for reading it more often, so thank you again. Stay tuned for more...

50 Greatest Nick Cave Songs: from #45 to #40

OK, I'm back with his next five songs of my favorites which will take it down to number 40. So without further ado, here is...

45. Nick Cave and Warren Ellis - The Journey
This is the longest track from the last film score by these two. This is the third for a full length movie. They have also made music for documentary's and theater's in the last five years. Cave has been doing more of these than anything else. I'm enjoying these more than say Grinderman project or even the last Bad Seeds' album and I'm not going to say anything about his dirty joke book. This really should be listened to as a whole album and I think these work totally great without the movies too. The Journey as a track has elements included in it which runs all the way though the whole score. Also did you know the "Ethnic" percussion was played by Paul Clarvis here but the year before he was the main man who did the crazy drumming beats for The Dark Knight film on those mad Joker theme songs?
Find it on: The Road (Film Score) 2009 or White Lunar (Compilation) 2009


44. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Hallelujah
This is the real beginning of the Nick Cave and Warren Ellis collaboration. Both worked together in the 90's with Ellis official joining The Bad Seeds in 1997 on the previous album the Boatman's Call. Ellis only co-wrote two tracks on this album but by the end of the decade both of them could be joined at the hip. Amazingly Ellis' violin takes over this album. Hallelujah as the third song in sets it up the rest of the record. Kate and Anna McGarrigle sing backing vocals on this album but they sing the final verse here. Please note this is not the same song as the famous Leonard Cohen track which Jeff Buckley did in the mid-90's, two completely different songs.
Find it on: No More Shall We Part (Album) 2001


43. The Boys Next Door - These Boots Are Made For Walking
Back to the very start of Cave's career with his most earliest cover. The song was original written by Lee Hazlewood and recorded by Nancy Sinatra who took it to number one in the United States and United Kingdom Pop charts. This is from a re-release by Aztec Music but originally came out on vinyl back in 1978. Suicide Records only ever released one album which was called Lethal Weapons (not anything to do with the Mel Gibson movies). This was way before The Boys Next Door debut album, also before Rowland S. Howard joined the band too. It's way more New Wave than pure Punk and you can tell how much Howard added to this band later but here that is not a bad thing because I think this is by far the best version of this song and there have been a lot of covers. The album features two more Boys Next Door songs and six other late-70's Melbourne bands and all new liner notes which is a great read. So it's well worth getting the whole album.
Find it on: Lethal Weapons (Compilation) 2007


42. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart
This is an odd one I have to admit but I love it so much I can't go past it. Cave did this in 1986 which is two years before Marc Almond's more famous version. The song was written by Roger Greenaway and Roger Cook and originally recorded by David and Jonathan and then Gene Pitney did his one in 1967. Off-course Marc Almond and Gene Pitney did a version together which went to number one in the UK in 1989. Anyway I'm supposed to be writing about the Cave cover which I find just so much more sincere and stripped of all the usually pop slime that it's covered in. It's so unlike anything Cave's done before this and with the simple three piece band arrangement with Mick Harvey on piano, Barry Adamson on bass and Thomas Wydler on drums. It's just perfect like this and proves that some times less is more but being the third track from the end of the album it's almost always just totally forgotten by everyone.
Find it on: Kicking Against the Pricks (Album) 1986



41. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Death Is Not The End
To finish up with the cover songs this is one of the last he ever did with the Bad Seeds as a group (plus a few friends too). A Bob Dylan song from his 80's forgotten songbook which was the last song on the Murder Ballads album. I really didn't think much of the record but this is so great. Also the only song from that album which made it into my list here, Murder Ballads is over rated as a whole album. Anita Lane, Kylie Minogue, PJ Harvey, and Shane McGowan with Cave himself and his bandmembers guitarist Blixa Bargeld and drummer Thomas Wydler all each sing a verse but the real surprise to me is Wydler's singing vocal which I would like to hear more of. It was recorded in Melbourne with Brian Hooper on bass and it's just a beautiful way to finish such an disappointing and silly album. This song is so different and unlike anything else on the album, it really seems out of place.
Find it on: Murder Ballads (Album) 1996


40. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Brother, My Cup Is Empty
Well, this has to be Cave's ultimate drinking song so I have to include it here. This was recorded in California after him leaving Brazil where he was living for a few years. I remember him saying he was sober for a little while before arriving there but as soon he got off the plane he said something like with all the sun and girls everywhere it was just a 24 hour party so it was like "Fuck this" and he started heavily drinking again. So this track would have to be Cave's anthem for getting pissed plus it would make a wicked shot game song too.
Find it on: Henry's Dream (Album) 1992


Top photo from Herald Sun with Nick Cave looking back on his past at the exhibition of his work at the Arts Centre in Melbourne.

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