Barry Adamson has a spookily excellent CD, The Murky World Of Barry Adamson: stridently diseased big-band jazz laced with nasty samples of found dialogue, as well as covers like “The Man With The Golden Arm”. Great stuff, but not for late-night listening alone.
To sort of tie this wonderful thread into the interesting “Mack the Knife” thread also going on, check out this very interesting rendition of Nick doing “Mack the Knife”:
I’ve thought that as well… OR that the Narrator is telling the story to the actual killer. He’s finally tracked him down and is about to have his revenge.
No, it’s clear that the narrator is the killer. His ironic alibi should be enough of a clue: “I was visiting a sick friend.” This is the cliche phony alibi.
Even if you took that at face value, he wraps up his tale with “The sun to me is dark/ and silent as the moon / do you, sir, have a room?” The killer’s signature is John Milton quotes, and the narrator has feigned ignorance of the quote from Paradise Lost, only to immediately follow it up with a quote from Samson Agonistes:
Ahhh… okay, didnt know the signifigance of the sun and moon line. I liked the idea that the narrator driven mad by the murder of his family has wandered the country and has finally found the man who killed them… who himself is now a family man.
A “sick friend” is a cliche alibi but if you take it that the narrator was actually a doctor its not preposterious. A far more telling reveal is the “lunatic eyes” line. I could see an innocent man filling in details about the murders but not that tid bit.
Close enough. I’ve not actually listened to the song in years, and never bothered to rip it into iTunes.
I suspect (and am surprised that no one has mentioned) that most Nick Cave listeners might also listen to Leonard Cohen on occasion, although the kinship is more distant than some of the other connections mentioned. If you’re unfamiliar w/ Mr. Cohen’s work, I’d suggest one of his live albums; the instrumentation on his studio work tends to be a bit sketchy, and might put a new listener off (it did for me, for many years, when I first picked up “I’m Your Man”).
And I’m pleased to hear that I’m not nuts anent “Song of Joy.” When I pointed it out to my friends, they took the sick friend alibi at face value, and seemed shocked when I pointed out that he might just maybe be fibbing a little.
Finally, to end this rather scattershot post: I’ve not heard any of Cave’s stuff since No More Shall We Part; has it been worth picking up? I love NMSWP, Murder Ballads, and Henry; The Boatman’s Call, on the other hand, fell rather flat for me.
Don’t bother with Nocturama. The Abattoir Blues/Lyre of Orpheus double album is okay, though is does have a “more of the same” feel to it. I haven’t heard The Proposition, so can’t comment on it.
Nick has said in an interview that the ‘Songs of Love And Hate’ album was the first record that when he was younger really hit him hard, and the influence of it is massive (even aside from him covering a few LC songs). That’s one record everyone into Nick should listen to.
Lesser known, and probably hard to get these days, is the EP that Conway Savage of the Bad Seeds recorded around the time that he joined the band, with some members of the Seeds. Based on that record, I was spreading a rumour years ago that Nick got him into his own band to get rid of his #1 potential competition :D. Conway can also be heard singing on the b side ‘Willow Garden’.
Lastly, tangentially related to The Bad Seeds, is Simon Bonney, who was the singer with Crime and The City Solution. His two solo records from the early nineties are classics of the Aussie Americana genre, and well worth searching for.
Nice catch. Shame about the grotty quality, though: as I said in the other thread, that doco really needs a DVD release. Dunno why it hasn’t been done: with a lineup like Nick Cave, Elvis Costello, PJ Harvey, Lou Reed, David Johansen and William S. Burroughs, there’s gotta be a market for it.