Nick Cave Blog and Journals

She strapped him into the high chair then tied his little pudgy ankles to the sides with twine she had stolen from the nursery down the street. Twisting the lid off a half-drunk bottle of whiskey, she clamped her lips in a tight line around her cigarette. She up-ended the bottle, drenching the two year old in alcohol.

He just smiled at her, a solemn smile that a baby should never possess.

She hiccuped then, starting to cry with her cigarette almost falling out of her mouth. "Oh Jesus," she sighed and took five steps back from him. Taking one last drag and wiping tears from her cheeks, she threw the still lit cigarette onto the baby.

He burst into flame nearly immediately and she sobbed and sobbed. Inhaling deeply, the smell of charred flesh and burning hair overwhelmed her and she fell to the floor. She looked up then, with horror, as she realized what she was missing.

There were no screams. There were no cries as the baby boy's flesh grew grey and swollen and split. There was just a simple smile, that solemn smile.

She threw up and brought a hand up to her mouth, terrified beyond all belief.

The baby laughed.

[written on 2/18/09, if I remember correctly. Title from a Nick Cave song that's been stuck in my head.]

On the heels of their new album, Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds have announced that they'll be coming to a North American city near you. Get the 411.

The Brit-pop sensations return with their sixth album and a North American tour. Read more…

Hollywood - In an exclusive recent interview with Buzznet, Murder by Death, on tour with the heavy blues masters Clutch, spoke candidly about the origins of their new record, the inevitable comparisons to Johnny Cash, and the surprising news that they're trying to get on the soundtracks for two upcoming Cormac McCarthy film adaptations!

Who are Murder By Death?...

Radiohead, Justice, Arcade Fire and others were big winners at this year's Plug Awards, which went down last night at Terminal 5 in New York City. Comedian Patton Oswalt hosted the event, which included performances by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Dizzee Rascal, José González and more. Read more…
 

Nick Cave puts 800 personal items on display

 

NICK Cave does not look back. Until now, that is. The Victorian Arts Centre has convinced the musician to unearth more than 800 personal items for an exhibition.

"It's actually rather frightening," Cave admits of the exhibition.

"I don't look back. I don't even play my records once they're done. They go out there and I start the next one. Normally I've been -- on some level -- hugely embarrassed by the past.

"Some of this stuff is so far back I can see it with a sense of humour and not fret about it so much."
Thankfully, the dark troubadour is learning to let go. One can certainly not imagine Cave accepting last month's ARIA Hall of Fame honour a decade ago.

Curator Janine Barrand was thrilled that the macabre leader of the Birthday Party, the Boys Next Door and the Bad Seeds allowed her to trawl through his treasures.

"Nick has personally selected the lyrics featured," Barrand says. Those hand-scrawled sheets include Red Right Hand, Tupelo, And No More Shall We Part and No Pussy Blues.

Other items include diaries, the typed manuscript of And the Ass Saw the Angel, old concert flyers, artwork by Cave, statues, fanzines, a compilation of film footage selected by Mick Harvey and photographs by Polly Borland, Bleddyn Butcher, Peter Milne and Anton Corbijn.

Nick Cave: The Exhibition is decidedly unacademic, presented as a re-creation of Cave's office. Though the iconic local hero claims to not be a hoarder ("I travel light"), the collection speaks volumes of his life in London, Berlin, Sao Paulo and now the English seaside town of Brighton. Clearly his heart beats loudest for his hometown.

"It was an abstract idea until coming here to Melbourne and actually seeing the plans for it and seeing the enormous amount of work that's gone into it."

NICK CAVE ON:

Jesus statue:

"I saw the Jesus statue in a market in Buenos Aries. Warren (Ellis) and I had been walking around the port and Warren had been attacked by an incredible swarm of insects.

"His face looked unbelievable. I remember walking around this market and seeing this very serene Christ and buying it impulsively and having to lug it around.

"It was one of those things I managed to hang on to. Warren bought a statue of Beethoven, of course. I don't know if his face actually has recovered."

The photographs

"There are a lot of photographs I found very moving of people who are no longer around. It's made me appreciate what I've done in the past rather than the other way around.

"Peter Milne, he's the master of the funny shot. That photo with the (Bad Seeds) hats was basically us discovering the idea of merchandising. It's a moment in time."

His collection of other people's hair clippings

"I've always had a bit of a thing about hair. At the time of writing And the Ass Saw the Angel I was obsessed by similar things the central character was obsessed by.

"A lot of these desperate sorts of things took on huge significance to me. I found this noxious hair in this Berlin flea-market. The box that it was in held nylon stockings."

Manuscript for And the Ass Saw the Angel

"The book takes a little time to get going. I was worried the publisher would read five pages and go 'What the fuck?"'

D.I.Y. Dictionary

"I did that around the writing of the book. The central character is a mute and since he's telling the story I had the opportunity to create a language for him that wasn't a practical language.

"Part of that was using impossibly obscure words and searching through books. If I needed a word for 'drunkenness' I could look it up and there would be 15 ancient or obscure words."

DIY Sacred and the Profane book

"A lot of that was done in Berlin. I used to go to this market every weekend -- I hadn't slept -- and I'd go there after the clubs closed, walking around in this heightened state of consciousness, shall we say, and things would take on stronger meanings than normally.

"I'd run across packs of pornographic cards, an incredible collection of someone's home shots. They were terrifying!

"There was lots of religious paraphernalia and I started to put this stuff together. Because I was a chronic list-maker I always felt to put a sense of order to things, a systemising of tales."

 

 

CAVE OF SECRETS: Iconic Australian musician, songwriter and author Nick Cave is the subject of his own exhibition at the Arts Centre in Melbourne, opened this weekend and will run until April.

 

                 ***

and i live in melboune and im going to go and it'll be awesome!!! and i'll take photo's of stuff if they let me and i'll post them for you to see. =) how happy makeing this is!!!

I've been tagged by lexidiem (in a 5-minute moment of insanity) so here it goes...
 
Here are the easy rules:
 
1) Pick your 10 favorite musical artists.
2) Tag the journal "top 10 bands" so we can have a full tag page of all our lists!
3) Pick 8 more people to do this! Make sure to link them to your original post

Here are mine, in no particular order:

1 - Tom Waits - well, if you check out my 'top 10 celebrity crushes' you'll see how I got to know the wonderful music of Tom Waits. What else can I say?! He's brilliant, from music to lyrics.

2 - Nick Cave - also previously mentioned on my 'top 10 celebrity crushes'. He used to have the 'dark side' type of music but, IMHO, since he became parent of twins (he now has 3 kids) his dark side started to have a more pink undertone. Still, he's a brilliant song writer.

3 - The Beatles - everyone knows The Beatles... what can I say that hasn't been said yet? I believe that destiny sometimes takes a wrong turn: why did The Beatles have to end and not The Rolling Stones?!

4 - Mariza - a name that 95% of the people here will not know. She's a Portuguese singer who used to sing jazz and now sings Fado, a specific type of song, traditional from Lisbon and Coimbra. She's here on my list, not so much because of _her_ work, as an individual, but because she's today's 'Fado diva'. Those of you who never heard Fado will probably just think that I'm being a stupid alternative-wannabe European, trying to be 'different' because I'm referring to a type of music that most of you don't know - I really don't care. It's not like I listen to Fado everyday (or every month!) but I guess I'll always listen to it and love it because of its metaphorical and poetical quality. Plus, you need to have a great voice to be a professional singer of Fado.

5 - Eric Michelet - I defy anyone on buzznet (yeah, right, the 2/3 good souls who will come and read this) to tell me where they've heard of this name before - they haven't. Ok, I'll explain: in 2005, when I was on my Summer holidays, spending some time in the north of France (near Karnak, to be more precise), I once found myself in a small place called Auray. At first glance it looked pretty dull. Just then we found a street that would take us to the old part of town. I remember walking down that street, seeing the river down bellow and hearing beautiful, dream-like music. When I loked there was a man with glasses and a pony tail peacefully playing... a hammered dulcimer! He was selling his own CD (it cost, I believe, 15€) and I must say it was one of the best CDs I ever bought. It's hard to explain what a dulcimer sounds like if you've never heard one... imagine a guitar with wings, light and ethereal! His music hasn't left my mp3 player since 2005!

6 - Kraftwerk - They were the matrix of the electronic music of today. Some of their songs are more like 'chill out' music and some others, like 'Radioactivity', make you think...

7 - gipsy music from the Balcans - in this one I'm not specifying any band/artist because I know a few of them and they tend to be very similar. I first listened to a gipsy brass band in the OST of 'Underground', a brilliant film by Emir Kusturica. Others followed, like 'Black cat, white cat', only to make my love for this type of music grow even more in me. I must say that I have a certain special sympathy towards the gipsies: I love their 'free' life, their sense of beauty and rhythm, even if I don't agree with how they raise their kids (specially the girls) and with certain 'paralel businesses' they very often have. Anyway, gipsy music makes you want to dance and sing along, like in one of the scenes from 'Underground': 'Louder! Faster!'

 

8 - Rammstein - their lyrics are raw, strong and not for the faint-hearted! Either you know German or you get a friend who does; translations into English are not so good and there's a lot that can't be translated. In my 3rd year at University I skipped an English literature class to go to their autograph session, before a concert that night in Lisbon. What else? Oh, yes, listening to their songs was a great help when I was preparing for my Zentrale Mittelstüffe Prüfungen :-D

 

9 - Paolo Conte - an Italian songwriter and composer. Brilliant lyrics and music and a good voice. His music is kind of jazzy and very 'danceable' as well.

 

10 - Carlos Paredes - a genius of the Portuguese guitar, he died a couple of years ago. He lived a hell of a life and, while composing some magnificent music, he had a quite dull professional life - he claimed he couldn't live off of music, because to him that would be like abusing his music. Once, as he was travelling to play abroad, his guitar was lost in all the airport confusion. He later commented with a friend that, at that point, he had considered committing suicide. He used to make his own guitars and he was working in a new type of Portuguese guitar by the time he started having a disease which affected his central nervous system. His death is an irreparable loss - to me, at least.

 

 

And in no particular order, I've tagged: 
kathy1981, ruipfg, boz48730, rhiwena, kiastar67, raquel23, bennbell and eshalovsyou

So, I know all you kids love Panic and MCR, but for me, Nick Cave is where its at. I love this vid, you should check it out.

(and the bad seeds too, just didn't have the room in the title.)

 

people just ain’t no good
i think that’s well understood
you can see it everywhere you look
people just ain’t no good

we were married under cherry trees
under blossom we made our vows
all the blossoms come sailing down
through the streets and through the playgrounds

the sun would stream on the sheets
awoken by the morning bird
we’d buy the sunday newspapers
and never read a single word

people they ain’t no good
people they ain’t no good
people they ain’t no good

seasons came, seasons went
the winter stripped the blossoms bare
a different tree now lines the streets
shaking it’s fists in the air
the winter slammed us like a fist
the windows rattling in the gales
to which she drew the curtains
made out of her wedding veils

people they ain’t no good
people they ain’t no good
people they ain’t no good at all

to our love send a dozen white lilies
to our love send a coffin of wood
to our love let all the pink-eyed pigeons coo
that people they just ain’t no good
to our love send back all the letters
to our love a valentine of blood
to our love let all the jilted lovers cry
that people they just ain’t no good

it ain’t that in their hearts they’re bad
they can comfort you, some even try
they nurse you when you’re ill of health
they bury you when you go and die
it ain’t that in their hearts they’re bad
they’d stick by you if they could
but that’s just bullshit
people just ain’t no good

people they ain’t no good
people they ain’t no good
people they ain’t no good
people they ain’t no good at all