Here's another old one... from 2010

Here's an old thing that I wrote after seeing Grinderman at the Phoenix.  Man, I really love those two records! It's a little thing tracing my obsession with Nick Cave over the years. 
It's kind of fun, maybe? I'm still an insane Cave fan, though the last album was not really one of my favourites...

Also the subtlety of the original title should be noted- 

Nick Cave blows minds/ changes lives -again!

I’d guess I’ve been listening to Nick Cave for about 25 years- first thing I heard was Release the Bats, which as a young boy, whose friends all seemed to be listening to Iron Maiden at the time, blew my little mind.
It must have been about 1985, on the old CBC late night show, Brave New Waves, which was awesome if you spent lots of time in a small cottage/ fishing community – as I did. It was THE way for people like me to hear new, challenging music unless you had really cool friends- of which I had but one.

That’s where I got introduced to the Birthday Party and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds on the same night- it was the Brave New Waves on air birthday party, if I remember correctly, so naturally they started with the Birthday Party and continued with Nick Cave stuff for a solid hour. Played songs, read quotes – host at the time was CBC mainstay Brent Bambury- I’ve got the show somewhere on an old cassette that I used to tape over and over and over capturing whatever was cool the show played in those days. One Nick quote I think I remember is “women are the rock stars of the world, and I can only worship at their feet.”

ANYWAY- Nick Cave changed my life back then- it was so outside and noisy, intelligent and bloozy and punk rock - and hey, I hadn’t really listened to Beefheart or the Stooges yet. It was mesmerizing, he didn’t really sing, he howled. It was messy and lyrically challenging improv rock and roll. I loved it, I bought it, I bought his first book, I bought all the albums for years. And I still do.

Move forward to tonight. I just got back from Grinderman. It’s years and years down the road. Nick still howls like a man possessed. His lyrics still come on like a bible student who has taken to the bottle and illicit sex for kicks. The music is still based in the blues with a white noise smear of distortion and feedback over the top.

I’m still in love with it. It does something to me I can’t quite explain, but imagine that someone might feel in a drunken backwoods religious communion. I don’t just want to hear/ see it. I want to be it.
My own musical path has been towards simplicity, trying to find the most basic structures, acoustic guitars, three chords, no changes, simple melodies, heartfelt lyrics. Tonight I want to break out the electric guitars, distorted amps and grind!

Thank you Mr. Nick Cave for 30 plus years of rock and roll.


wanna talk about it? Try me on twitter @ThatChristianD

 

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