As our Readers well-know, I am prone to finding colored scraps of paper with notes, lists, and other forms of marginalia in the unmistakable handscript of my roommate Hedfonz. The following list on a crimson square read in brown sharpie thus:
Top 10 Autumn Records...that is...List of Albumns that Sound Better in Autumn Than During Any Other Season of the Year...To Do List: 1)Must articulate the difference between people who use "fall" instead of "autumn"...2)Must tell John to water the plants this weekend while I'm away.
Dirty Three - Horse Stories
the Rachel's - Music for Egon Schiele
Bonnie Prince Billy - Ease Down the Road
REM - Automatic for the People
Francoise Hardy - If You Listen
Ludovico Einaudi - Una Mattina
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada
Beatles - Rubber Soul
Yo La Tengo - I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One
Neil Young - After the Gold Rush
I think he leaves them intentionally to upset me...
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds live Sept.29.2008
A couple of nights ago my wife and I joined two friends with the rest of the over 25 Chicago population to see an oldie but a goody, Mr. Cave and his Bad Seeds. It was perfect night for show like this, Autumn has just started in the city and it had rained all that day. Everything had a crisp while we walked the seven or eight blocks to the bar where we were meeting before the concert, I started to think about all the recent shows I'd been to, and then realized how excited I was about this one.
I've been a fan of Nick Cave since the early 90's, after a friend of mine made me a cassette copy of "Henry's Dream". I remember first playing it in a friend's car, on the way to a party. The girlfriend he had at the time hated it and screamed at me to "Turn this pirate music off!" This instantly meant that I loved it (even though I still wasn't quite sure what it was yet) because I couldn't stand her, the fat little troll. What my friend ever saw in her I'll never know. When we got to the party I asked my freind to leave the car on because I wanted to stay listen to this, and so I did. Parked on the side of a suburban street somewhere outside Detroit, with an oil can of Fosters and a couple of cigarettes I listened to "Henry's Dream." Up to this point in my music appreciation, I had heard a lot of stuff, but nothing like this. What a first album to get turned on by, so vivid and striking were the images, so harsh and offensive was the music. It was brilliant. The next morning I went out and tried to find everything I could by Mr. Cave and ended up with three more albums (From Her to Eternity, Kicking Against the Pricks, Your Funeral… My Trial) and a his book (And the Ass Saw the Angel). Who was this guy?
15 years and almost a dozen albums later and I am still asking a lot of the same questions about Cave, but as we walk to the Riviera from the bar I couldn't have cared less about what he had done, I was just excited to see what he is going to do. The album Cave and his Seeds are touring to support is arguably one of their best in a while, "Dig Lazarus Dig!!!" The four albums Cave did with the Bad Seeds since the 1996's "Murder Ballads" were all very good (he doesn't make poor stuff), but they were lacking something. The "Boatman's Call", "No More Shall We Part", "Nocturama", and " Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus" are for the most part all cut from the same dark cloth, and not really something I want to see played live. Sure each of the albums I mentioned have a few bright spots, but overall they left you wanting. It wasn't till Nick's 2007 "Grinderman" project (falling in love with that album and then seeing it live) that I started to look forward to the next Bad Seeds endevor. "Dig Lazarus Dig!!!" is amazing, but thats all I'm going to say about the album. If you're reading this and still don't own Dig, stop! Go to a record shop (if you can still find one) and buy it right now, and don't fucking download it for God's sake.
Regardless of how good the album is, believe it or not, the show is better. Cave has rediscovered the Bad Seeds with the Ginderman project still fresh in his mind. Old songs, decades old songs; are now being played next to the new ones and everything sounds perfect. Cave's new guitar playing has helped him revamp songs like Mercy Seat, Weeping Song, and Tupelo and give them an edge that seems right at home along side songs like Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, Albert Goes West, Midnight Man, and We Call Upon the Author. A show like this one was never going to be long enough, I think all of us wanted to hear another three or four hours worth. The show ended after one encore with an unexpected and slightly terrifying verson of Stagger Lee. I never thought I'd hear (or ever wanted to hear for that matter) over a thousand people sing along to "And I'll crawl over fifty good pussies just to get one fat boy's asshole'Said Stagger Lee", but somehow on that night it sounded really nice.
Thanks Mr. Cave,
Stabb
I've been a fan of Nick Cave since the early 90's, after a friend of mine made me a cassette copy of "Henry's Dream". I remember first playing it in a friend's car, on the way to a party. The girlfriend he had at the time hated it and screamed at me to "Turn this pirate music off!" This instantly meant that I loved it (even though I still wasn't quite sure what it was yet) because I couldn't stand her, the fat little troll. What my friend ever saw in her I'll never know. When we got to the party I asked my freind to leave the car on because I wanted to stay listen to this, and so I did. Parked on the side of a suburban street somewhere outside Detroit, with an oil can of Fosters and a couple of cigarettes I listened to "Henry's Dream." Up to this point in my music appreciation, I had heard a lot of stuff, but nothing like this. What a first album to get turned on by, so vivid and striking were the images, so harsh and offensive was the music. It was brilliant. The next morning I went out and tried to find everything I could by Mr. Cave and ended up with three more albums (From Her to Eternity, Kicking Against the Pricks, Your Funeral… My Trial) and a his book (And the Ass Saw the Angel). Who was this guy?
15 years and almost a dozen albums later and I am still asking a lot of the same questions about Cave, but as we walk to the Riviera from the bar I couldn't have cared less about what he had done, I was just excited to see what he is going to do. The album Cave and his Seeds are touring to support is arguably one of their best in a while, "Dig Lazarus Dig!!!" The four albums Cave did with the Bad Seeds since the 1996's "Murder Ballads" were all very good (he doesn't make poor stuff), but they were lacking something. The "Boatman's Call", "No More Shall We Part", "Nocturama", and " Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus" are for the most part all cut from the same dark cloth, and not really something I want to see played live. Sure each of the albums I mentioned have a few bright spots, but overall they left you wanting. It wasn't till Nick's 2007 "Grinderman" project (falling in love with that album and then seeing it live) that I started to look forward to the next Bad Seeds endevor. "Dig Lazarus Dig!!!" is amazing, but thats all I'm going to say about the album. If you're reading this and still don't own Dig, stop! Go to a record shop (if you can still find one) and buy it right now, and don't fucking download it for God's sake.
Regardless of how good the album is, believe it or not, the show is better. Cave has rediscovered the Bad Seeds with the Ginderman project still fresh in his mind. Old songs, decades old songs; are now being played next to the new ones and everything sounds perfect. Cave's new guitar playing has helped him revamp songs like Mercy Seat, Weeping Song, and Tupelo and give them an edge that seems right at home along side songs like Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, Albert Goes West, Midnight Man, and We Call Upon the Author. A show like this one was never going to be long enough, I think all of us wanted to hear another three or four hours worth. The show ended after one encore with an unexpected and slightly terrifying verson of Stagger Lee. I never thought I'd hear (or ever wanted to hear for that matter) over a thousand people sing along to "And I'll crawl over fifty good pussies just to get one fat boy's asshole'Said Stagger Lee", but somehow on that night it sounded really nice.
Thanks Mr. Cave,
Stabb
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