..It speak volumes about the album’s universality that its songs have soundtracked everything from Michael Hutchence’s funeral to Shrek 2.
~Stuart Berman (pitchfork.com)The Boatman’s Call is one of his finest albums and arguably the masterpiece he has been promising throughout his career.
~Stephen Thomas Erlewine (allmusic.com)
Into My Arms – live
Continue reading March 3: Nick Cave – The Boatman’s Call (1997)
“If you got a trumpet, get on your feet, brother, and blow it!”
― Nick Cave
“I was about 12 years old and I was sitting watching the television and it was some kind of talent show, you know, and on marches this monkey, this ape, in a pair of red-checked trousers with a little matching jacket holding a ukulele and it started jigging around playing it, and it was looking straight into the camera, straight at me, and I remember thinking, that’s it, that’ll be me, you know, that’ll be me.”
― Nick Cave
Nicholas Edward “Nick” Cave (born 22 September 1957) is an Australian musician, songwriter, author, screenwriter, composer and occasional film actor.
Continue reading September 22: Nick Cave is 57 Happy Birthday
“If you got a trumpet, get on your feet, brother, and blow it!”
― Nick Cave
“I was about 12 years old and I was sitting watching the television and it was some kind of talent show, you know, and on marches this monkey, this ape, in a pair of red-checked trousers with a little matching jacket holding a ukulele and it started jigging around playing it, and it was looking straight into the camera, straight at me, and I remember thinking, that’s it, that’ll be me, you know, that’ll be me.”
― Nick Cave
Nicholas Edward “Nick” Cave (born 22 September 1957) is an Australian musician, songwriter, author, screenwriter, composer and occasional film actor.
He is best known for his work as a frontman of the critically acclaimed rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, established in 1983, a group known for its eclectic influences and musical styles. Before that, he had fronted the group The Birthday Party in the early 1980s, a band renowned for its highly gothic, challenging lyrics and violent sound influenced by free jazz, blues, and post-punk. In 2006, he formed the garage rock band Grinderman that released its debut the following year. Cave’s music is generally characterised by emotional intensity, a wide variety of influences, and lyrical obsessions with religion, death, love and violence.
Upon Cave’s induction into the ARIA Hall of Fame, ARIA Awards committee chairman Ed St John said, “Nick Cave has enjoyed—and continues to enjoy—one of the most extraordinary careers in the annals of popular music. He is an Australian artist like Sidney Nolan is an Australian artist—beyond comparison, beyond genre, beyond dispute.”
“O we will know, won’t we?
The stars will explode in the sky
O but they don’t, do they?
Stars have their moment and then they die
~Nick Cave ((Are You) The One That I’ve Been Waiting For?)
From allmusic – Steve Huey:
After goth pioneers the Birthday Party called it quits in 1983, singer/songwriter Nick Cave assembled the Bad Seeds, a post-punk supergroup featuring former Birthday Party guitarist Mick Harvey on drums, ex-Magazine bassist Barry Adamson, and Einstürzende Neubauten guitarist Blixa Bargeld. With the Bad Seeds, Cave continued to explore his obsessions with religion, death, love, America, and violence with a bizarre, sometimes self-consciously eclectic hybrid of blues, gospel, rock, and arty post-punk, although in a more subdued fashion than his work with the Birthday Party. Cave also allowed his literary aspirations to come to the forefront; the lyrics are narrative prose, heavy on literary allusions and myth-making, and take some inspiration from Leonard Cohen. Cave’s gloomy lyrics, dark musical arrangements, and deep baritone voice recall the albums of Scott Walker, who also obsessed over death and love with a frightening passion. However, Cave brings a hefty amount of post-punk experimentalism to Walker’s epic dark pop.
… read more over @ allmusic.com
Here is a brilliant live version of “People Ain’t No Good” (one of his best):
The Mercy Seat:
My Nick Cave Spotify playlist for today:
Nick Cave’s best album – The Boatman’s Call (1997):
Other September 22:
I’ve always had an obligation to creation, above all.
~Nick CavePeople think I’m a miserable sod but it’s only because I get asked such bloody miserable questions.
~Nick CaveEverything’s dissolving, babe, according to plan
The sky is on fire, the dead are heaped across the land
I went to bed last night and my
moral code got jammed
I woke up this morning with a Frappucino in my hand
~Nick Cave (Abattoir Blues)
Get ready for Love:
From Wikipedia:
| Released | 20 September 2004 |
|---|---|
| Recorded | March–April 2004 at Studio Ferber in Paris, France |
| Genre | Alternative rock |
| Length | 82:30 |
| Label | Mute |
| Producer | Nick Launay |
Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus is the thirteenth studio album by the Australian alternative rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, released on 20 September 2004 on Mute Records. It is a double album with a total of seventeen songs—nine on Abattoir Bluesand eight on The Lyre of Orpheus.
The album was produced by Nick Launay at Studio Ferber in Paris in March–April 2004 and Nick Cave used The Bad Seeds line up of Mick Harvey, Thomas Wydler, Martyn Casey, Conway Savage, Jim Sclavunos, Warren Ellis, and James Johnston. It was the first album by the group for which Blixa Bargeld did not perform – English guitarist and organist Johnston, of the group Gallon Drunk, replaced Bargeld. Cave decided to split drumming duties for the two parts, with Sclavunos on Abattoir Blues and Wydler on The Lyre of Orpheus. According to Launay, the whole album was completed in twelve days.
The album’s release was supported by the Abattoir Blues Tour, which travelled through Europe from 2 November to 5 December. In January 2007 a double live album and DVD was issued as The Abattoir Blues Tour. Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus’s last track, “O Children”, was featured in the 2010 film Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 and the song is referenced as an achievement in Lego Harry Potter: Years 5-7. In March 2005, to complement the success of the double album, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds released B-Sides & Rarities, a three-disc, 56-track collection of B-sides, rarities, and tracks that had appeared on film soundtracks.
From allmusic.com – Thom Jurek:
When Blixa Bargeld left Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds, who would have predicted his departure would result in one of the finest offerings in the band’s catalog? Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus is a double CD or, rather, two completely different albums packaged in one very handsome box with a stylish lyric booklet and subtly colored pastel sleeves. They were recorded in a total of 16 days by producer Nick Launay (Kate Bush, Midnight Oil, Girls Against Boys, Silverchair, INXS, Virgin Prunes, et al.). Abattoir Blues, the first disc in the set (packaged in pink, of course), is a rock & roll record. Yeah, the same guy who released the Boatman’s Call, No More Shall We Part, and Nocturama albums has turned in a pathos-drenched, volume-cranked rocker, full of crunch, punishment — and taste. Drummer Jim Sclavunos’ aggressive, propulsive kit work is the bedrock of this set. It and Mick Harvey’s storm-squall guitar playing shake things loose on “Get Ready for Love,” which opens the album. As Cave goes right for God in the refrain — “get ready for love” — in the maelstrom, a gospel choir roaring “praise Him” responds. His tense, ambivalent obsession with theology is pervasive; he mocks the Western perception of God in the heavens yet seeks the mystery of His nature. … read more @ allmusic
Personnel:
–
| ….. Bargeld’s departure seems to have shaken Cave and his cohorts in the best way imaginable. The Bad Seeds sounded reined in on Nocturama, a waste of perhaps the most distinctive backing band in rock. Here, they sound energised and unfettered. There is a surfeit of breathtaking moments: Hiding All Away’s finale, where they shift from queasy funk to full-on hellfire-and-brimstone mode; the angular repetitions of The Lyre of Orpheus; the opening of Windswept, with Cave singing “through the windswept coastal trees, where the dead come rising from the sea”, over a frantic, rolling backing of hammering piano and pattering drums, whose the cumulative effect is enough to give you motion sickness…. Abattoir Blues is packed with standard apocalyptic Cave imagery, but he sounds most horrified about a visit to Starbucks: “The sky is on fire, the dead are heaped across the land,” he moans. “I woke up this morning with a Frappucino in my hand.”
You can’t really imagine anyone else in rock writing lyrics like that, but then, you really can’t imagine anyone else making an album like this. Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus is an entirely unique return to form. |
Nature Boy:
Album of the day:
Other September 20:
“And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks”
– Acts 9:5
Kicking Against the Pricks is the third album released by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. First released in 1986, the album is a collection of cover versions. Like many of our favorite artists (Dylan, Springsteen), Nick Cave dove into “the great songbook from the past” and gave us an album that really stood out in 1986. It wasn’t country, and it most certainly did not fit that new-wave look of Nick Cave and The Bad Seed. They play the songs in a straightforward way, not trying to modernize or make them more rock’n roll. This album was very important in my journey back to traditional folk music and blues standards.
It still stands up very well, and is one of my favorite Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds albums.
The Singer (made famous by Johnny Cash):
My favorite song on the album is Hey Joe (together with The Singer), it is right up there with Jimi Hendrix and Willy DeVilles’ interpretations.
Hey Joe (Mick Harvey,David Sanborn,Toots Thielemans,Charlie Haden and the NIghtmusic Band):
“…often holding everything back is the key, as the creepout build of “Hey Joe” demonstrates. Even more striking is how Cave’s own vocals rebut the charges that all he ever does is overdramatize everything he sings — consider the husky, purring delivery on Johnny Cash’s “The Singer.”
– Ned Ragget (allmusic)
Kicking Against The Pricks on Spotify (missing Black Betty and Running Scared):
– Hallgeir
Sources: Allmusic, Wikipedia