The Soul and Music
“The soul is the condition of the body that gives our lives meaning. When the soul is energized our spirits are literally lifted, and we can participate in what could be called a religious experience. Music is the supreme exemplar of art as pure meaning because it directly animates the soul. All other art forms aspire to the religious condition but music is the utmost conduit to the truly transcendent encounter.”
Nick Cave, Red Hand Files #183 February, 2022
To fan or not to fan
I’m learning to become a fan. But I’m out of practice. Nick Cave’s music is new to me and besides listening, I’m learning about his long musical path. If I had paid attention to him in the 80’s, 90s and the dreaded millennium I would have, most likely, been dismissive. The Gothic period was hard enough without a Gothic Revival.
When I mentioned plans to travel to Los Angeles to see Nick Cave and Warren Ellis in concert this past week, my music friends knit their brows trying to place him. Few knew the name. That has more to do with who I hang out with than with his stature as a musician.
His most popular song on Spotify has over 80-million listens and when Teresa, Tony, Judith and I showed up at Shrine Auditorium for one of his two nights in Los Angeles, most of its 6,700 seats were filled. Cave and Ellis are currently on a North American tour with seventeen shows before they head to Europe, Israel and Australia for another thirty-plus shows. Sorry, Moscow, your concert has been cancelled.
Born in rural Victoria, Australia in 1957, he burst onto the post-punk scene with the group, the Birthday Party. In 1980 they left Australia for London then Berlin and were known as “the most violent live band in the world.” After that band exploded, (figuratively) he formed Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. With this group, he helped form a new genre, Gothic Rock. And though their music has changed, then changed again and again, the group is still intact.
Wikipedia describes Nick Cave's music as, “characterized by emotional intensity, a wide variety of influences and lyrical obsessions with death, religion, love and violence.” His Wiki biography reads like a transcontinental railway with every stop along the track, a new and different landscape, a new social history, and an ever refining quest for a deep spiritual sound without the dogma that often tags along like toilet paper on a shoe.
He has followed his artistic passion rather than succumbed to the pressure of repeating the big hits, over and over, reduced to a breathing jukebox. You’ve seen it. I’ve seen it, the sad old artist singing his or her one big hit till their last breath. Actually, I’m too hard on the stars. You gotta have respect for the artist who can muster some kind of Zen focus to keep that which should be relegated to the past, alive.
I can’t quite figure out why I’m interested in Nick Cave. I have mixed feelings about being a fan. It’s not his past drug addictions, his love affairs, the tragic loss of a son. I listen to some of his old music and it is so brutal. Maybe you had to be there.” People say it all the time when they can’t explain extraordinary moments in life. When they do try to explain, it rarely comes out well. Then they repeat, “you had to have been there.” I was not there, a voyeur, to Nick Cave and his musical scene. I’m just glad he finally finished the Old Testament and has now moved on, musically, to the New.
In the late 1980’s and 90s when Cave was helping invent Goth I was in his home country searching out bush poets, interviewing outback icons including Slim Dusty, Ted Egan and Bruce Simpson. I was looking the other way.
Henry Lee
To introduce you the passions of Nick Cave I’d suggest his adaptation of a traditional song, “Henry Lee,” sung here with PJ Harvey. This was recorded for his acclaimed album, “Murder Ballads.” In this video you can see, in real time, Cave and Harvey falling in love as they sing along. Their tumultuous love affair could not survive Cave’s spiraling drug use, at the time, and as Tom Taylor writes in Far Out, “Despite the flowering artistry and the fact that they were the aspirational dream couple for adolescent goths the world over, there was trouble in their paradise lost.”
The Shrine
I had not been to a big concert in years and had, pretty much, decided I hated gigantic music crowds. Our group, 3hattrio, occasionally performs at large festivals and the only space to call your own, is the green room and stage. I love the tranquility of the stage even when the house is empty. In fact, that is my favorite time to be onstage. For some reason I changed my mind when I read about Cave’s tour and realized we were only a seven hours drive away.
I’m going to fast-forward to the music Nick Cave is making today with his musical partner, Warren Ellis. It is an immense spirit-driven sound with simple transitions. The crowd that comes to his concerts are adults, mostly younger than me. I did not get the sense this was an audience that came primarily for nostalgia. They were there for uplift. My favorite song from the evening, informally filmed during the concert, the night after we saw him, is titled, “Bright Horses.” I love everything about it: the lyrics, the passion, Warren Ellis sitting there like a mad scientist holding his toy-looking, control-panel-keyboard and making gigantic music, the gospel trio in their reflecting robes, the grand piano, Cave strutting around the stage full of emotion and mystery, and lastly, the guy in the back making the rest of the music. It’s just plain cool. Don’t expect high production values but check it out start to finish. Here it is, “Bright Horses” at the Orpheum Theater, Los Angeles March 10, 2022
Why be a Fan Now?
Over the past two or three years we have lost some iconic musicians. For many, I barely keyed into their brilliance until I read tributes after they died. I had never really paid much attention to John Prine but Teresa had a long history, having gone to his early concerts in Chicago. He came to Las Vegas, in his last year, and we got to see him perform. I did not appreciate Leonard Cohen until the end. Again, Teresa was a fan but I came to him for his posthumous album then worked back from there. I want to appreciate and support the genius that surrounds me during my time on earth.
I suppose the first reference to Nick Cave that piqued my interest was his album titled, “Skeleton Tree.” I had composed a tune for 3hattrio called “Skeleton Tree.” It’s based on a ghostly white cottonwood tree that had dried up and died in the construction and rerouting of drainage for a housing development near our home. We made a wonderful music video centered around that very tree. Shortly, after the video came out the owner of the property had the tree removed. I guess he thought it was too morbid. At any rate, I came up with the title, “Skeleton Tree,” quite independently from Nick Cave and am still a bit offended he used the title first.
Then when I was about to start the Loose Cannon Boosts I studied up on music writers who wrote independently. One article mentioned Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files, where he publishes letters from fans along with his responses. I started this Boost with a quote from the Red Hand. Now I subscribe and find interesting things in almost every interchange. Isn’t it odd how you notice something or someone and then the universe serves up references.
As I write my Boosts each week I’m impressed by how many of the best things I learn come free, which brings me to asking a favor. If you are not a subscriber to the Loose Cannon Boost I would appreciate your interest and support. I hope you are enriched like I have been by learning about Nick Cave. Maybe you will choose to be a fan. Let me know.
My friend Andy Hedges reminded me of this phenominal cover of a Nick Cave song by Johnny Cash. take a listen to "Mercy Seat." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoJ0bAp4Eo8
Interesting that you posted this on my birthday. I went to hear Nick Cave at the Berkeley Greek Theatre June 2017 and loved the musical melodrama.