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Nick Cave: Taking the Piss, Or What?

  
 
Jack Fear
14:21 / 09.10.01
Spinning out of another thread (which it has threatened to overwhelm).

So: is Nick

(a) a barrel of laughs, concocting intentionally over-the-top bathos & gore for those who like their humor black, or

(b) a dour, bloody-minded brimstone-slinger, exhibiting his demons in public for the enlightenment of fans as humorless as he?

Exhibit A: "Lay Me Low," which I will have played at my funeral--a post-modern "My Way," self-lacerating and bombastic all at once.

Exhibit B: The Southern drawl employed on the spoken-word bits of "Until the End of the World."

My thesis:

The louder Nick is (most of Murder Ballads, swathes of Let Love In), the more likely he's kidding. When he's quiet (as on Good Son and Boatman's Call), he's probably not.

Discuss.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
14:29 / 09.10.01
He's both. Sometimes alternately, sometimes simultaneously. Your thesis is a bit buggered by God Is In The House (which is quiet and sad and also nasty and also very funny in parts).

I mean, if he was either/or, surely he wouldn't be so interesting?

[ 09-10-2001: Message edited by: Flyboy ]
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
15:14 / 09.10.01
A couple of worthwhile quotes: quote:The trouble is, he says, that journalists seem to think they have to ask him certain questions - you know the kind of stuff. Drugs. Murder. God. 'People think I'm a miserable sod but it's only because I get asked such bloody miserable questions.'
 quote:'My lyric writing reached some sort of hysterical crescendo about the time of The Boatman's Call, reporting what was going on in my life in the most melodramatic way; ordinary stuff magnified to heroic proportions. And I find it very difficult to listen to that record now because of that.' He thinks that, in many ways, it is quite a beautiful record and that he'd probably like it if he hadn't made it himself 'but. . . ' he screws up his face, 'sometimes it sounds like the moaning of a dying insect.'Telegraph, March 17 2001

quote:N.C : Well, I think that there is an Australianness to what I write. There's a certain brooding sensitivity towards things, which is greatly overlooked. It's not the way the rest of the world sees Australia - brooding, with a kind of twisted sense of humour on the top. I do write songs like that and I think that's because I'm an Australian. -Undated GW McLennan/Cave interview.

Sounds like he's just wry, to me, I guess. Dunno. Although I don't think the volume thing is true: "From Her To Eternity" does both. Maybe you could argue that you can predict it more successfully the older he is, but I think it's the mix, and the fact that he seems to be aware of the Dark Lord persona he's got (and uses/removes at will), that makes him intriguing.

Running out door - more later, mebbe.
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
15:14 / 09.10.01
I actually think that most of Let Love In is pretty serious (except 'Lay Me Low', obviously. Melodramatic, though.
 
 
mondo a-go-go
15:26 / 09.10.01
there's a couple of good interviews with him by kristine mckenna in her book of changes

in 1984, he said:
quote:with each year that passes i fiind myself able to do more things that a year before i would've refused to do because i would've considered them irresponsibly negative. i find myself developing a more cynical approach to things, and it's a selfish way to live

in 1990, he said:
quote:if i can create a character to do my dirty work for me then that's enough -- i'm satisfied

well worthwhile picking up the book -- interviews with cave, david lynch, brian eno, pauline kael, nico, william burroughs, patti smith, iggy pop, louis malle, peter weir, nina simone and loads of other groovy people, all illustrated by some cool comics people. from fantagraphics.

sorry, returning you to your thread now. though if someone wants to burn me up a groovy cave compo on cd, i wouldn't complain...
 
 
Seth
16:42 / 09.10.01
I think he's both. He's far too cynical to take himself and his work seriously. Plus I think he gets a real kick out his fire and brimstone moments. My reasoning: I get a kick out of mine, too.
 
 
that
19:17 / 09.10.01
I also think he is genuinely moving at times...and truly scary, too. But if you want any more pearls of wisdom from me on the matter, there is always the aforementioned 'other thread'...

[ 09-10-2001: Message edited by: Cholister ]
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
09:28 / 10.10.01
He didn't really do the 'confessional' stuff at all until Let Love In in '94 - and, generally, the funnier he's being, the nastier the place it's coming from. 'Lay Me Low' is hilarious, and the song anyone who's anyone wants played at their funeral - it's also the song with the lines

If you wanna be my friend and you wanna repent and you want it all to end and you wanna know when
Well do it now do it now
Take the long last bow
Make a stand
Take my hand
And blow it all to hell

It's also 'the divorce' album - bye-bye to Vivien Carneiro and son... Hence 'Thirsty Dog', both bitter and funny.

'The Curse Of Milhaven' is funny and terrifying (Like my eyes ain't green and my hair ain't yella/It's more like the other way 'round), given that it's an over-the-top account of multiple murder by a schoolgirl (anyone remember a boy named Jamie Bulger? Anyone?).

But Murder Ballads was, I think, a conscious effort to exorcise a little of the blood n' guts he'd become notorious for. Only two songs are played for 'laughs'.

And Haus is, in all likelihood, incorrect about his cover of 'Something's Gotten Hold Of My Heart', but correct about 'Tower Of Song'. Nick generally tends to love songs like the former - he just can't necessarily sing them. And the latter, on the Cohen tribute album I'm Your Fan (one of the most revolting titles for an album I've ever heard) was an edited version of the original recording, recorded after a herculean bout of drinking. The original version was allegedly over eighty minutes long, covering several different genres of music, and edited down to a more manageable length for the finished copy. I've got a thirty-three minute version, but that's it... Mick Harvey reckons they submitted it when asked because they hate tribute albums, and will not be doing another one. Poor old Len didn't realise, and said it was the best thing on the album, and that Nick "had obviously thought about it, and caught the spirit of the song". Generally, though, Nick's choice of covers comes from loving the originals, and he doesn't normally have any intention of being amusing recording his own version.

So, yeah, no polar oppositions, please. He's often snarled the funny lines and crooned the serious ones, as well as snarled the serious lines and crooned the funny ones.
 
 
deletia
09:28 / 10.10.01
I'd say that Uncle Len was quite right - getting fucked and recording an eighty-minute version of "Tower of Song" is precisely the best way to approach it.
 
 
Jack Fear
12:38 / 10.10.01
quote:Originally posted by Jack The Bodiless:
... Murder Ballads was, I think, a conscious effort to exorcise a little of the blood n' guts he'd become notorious for. Only two songs are played for 'laughs'.More than that, surely? I've always thought of "Murder Ballads" as a comedy album with a few serious songs, rather than 'tother way around.

I mean, "Curse of Millhaven" is an obvious laff-riot ("it's Rorschach and Prozac and everything is groo-vy"), and "Stagger Lee" is purposely, absurdly over-the-top (particularly the final verses, where the rhyme scheme falls apart unmder the weight of the obscenity).

But I would argue that "O'Malley's Bar" is primarily a piss-take, as well; besides the funny/grotesque imagery (the head landing amongst the dirty dishes, the bullet going through the head to the bowels) and the funny lines (again, the failure of language: "with an ashtray as big as a... a really fucking big brick, I split his skull in half"), there's some poking at male insecurity ("I've been known to be quite handsome, at a certain angle, in a certain light") and the trope of gun-as-penis-substitute ("my dick felt long & hard"), all leading up to the anticlimactic ending, as the killer surrenders.

And I get the feeling that "Death Is Not The End" is a joke, too, albeit a particularly nasty one.
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
13:26 / 10.10.01
Nick's comedy can be blacker than black... but I don't think even he would class his version of 'Stagger Lee' as comedy. There's a difference between 'absurdist' and 'amusing', I think... he's always had a taste for melodramatic and occasionally graphically violent imagery and metaphor, but it's not necessarily always funny, or intended to be so. Thoughts, my pretties?

But yeah, I'd go for '...Milhaven' and 'O'Malley's Bar' as being obvious caricatures, and intended to be amusing. Can't really see the others as falling into those categories.

Really, this brings up the argument (usually used in relation to literature) over how much the author's intentions matter when discussing experiences of art/songs/films, etc. If Jack F. finds most of Murder Ballads funny ha-ha (making an assumption for a second, I guess) when Nick may not have intended this, does that matter?

In a hurry, must go...
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
08:22 / 12.10.01
quote:Originally posted by Luke Wing:
Go listen to 'Mutiny in Heaven' and weep at how the mighty have fallen.Or go see him live and see that he's still got it.

Frankly, I'm glad that he's progressed a little further than "Nick The Stripper", as fucked-up and brilliant as that tune is. Wild-eyed and flailing isn't the only way to get a message across, and I think he's spent the past couple of albums enjoying doing that.

Related: Nick Hornby reviews No More Shall We Part and seems to not really get it. (I'm surprised that he shows some hesitancy suggesting that The Birthday Party's prime reason for existing was to scare audiences - of course it was! Well, that and the accumulation of smack, presumably.)
 
 
Jack Fear
11:59 / 12.10.01
Mm. Nick Hornby writes semi-regularly on music for The New Yorker, and regularly astonishes me by how much he simply "doesn't get it." His stock as a cultural critic has plummeted in my view since he took the gig: it's some of the most embarrassingly clueless writing currently appearing in American magazines.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
12:02 / 12.10.01
The man has ears of tin and a heart of lead.

(Nick Hornby, not Cave. Cave has ears of beauty and a heart of blood.)

[ 12-10-2001: Message edited by: Flyboy ]
 
 
Jack Fear
12:23 / 12.10.01
I smell a new thread coming on:

"Nick Hornby: Dumb Sack of Shit, or What?"
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
12:44 / 12.10.01
Is Nick Cave Australian? I thought he was cockney like Damon Albarn.
 
 
Jack Fear
13:02 / 12.10.01
Australian who's had long residencies in Berlin, Sao Paulo, and now London. And whose imagination has had a long residency in the American Deep South, although it's a mythical South, the territory of Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor.

Which gives his songs a sort of placelessness, or multi-location, you know? Cultural commonalities and resonances that blur the lines. Like, The Good Son is a Brazilian record, through and through: but while Henry's Dream is also an album of hot climates--"the maddening heat and the relentless rain," the buzzing flies, the roughnecks with machetes--is it the outback, or the rain forest? Echoes of Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, yeah, but of the Aussie outlaw myth as well. In either case, it's a rough and wild land where the veneer of "civilization" is thin at best.

"Crow Jane"--violence in the mining town--is it the coal mines of Wales--or Kentucky--or the opal mines of New South Wales?

That geographic haziness is one of the things I find fascinating about Cave's work. Which is perhaps why I found Boatman's Call and No More Shall We Part--both of which seem to me to be very "English" albums, very rooted in the bricks and smoke of London--to be less riveting than his older, less-locatable work.

[ 12-10-2001: Message edited by: Jack Fear ]
 
 
Hush
14:13 / 12.10.01
last time I was going to go and see Nick Cave was about three years ago, but the gig was an all seater so I didn't bother.

Time enough for sitting still when your dead as my Granny used to say.

In reply to the original question I (taking the Piss or what?) I quote the sleave notes from the live album (Live 1981-82) sleeve notes

'.. embarrassing only to those who expect purity of intention....they appal by revelling in the pain of artifice.... a ritualistic theatre of lustration'

They were always taking the piss; but Nick has just got up my nose by being clever- clever about it. And sitting down;

Enjoy it if you can and I wish you well.
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
14:30 / 12.10.01
Odd. I thought he'd been clever ever since the beginning. Maybe he's just rid himself of the desire to write about Stanley-knife abortions?

Last gig I saw had a lotta standing, of which I was one. And he was still straddling the space between the stage and the barrier, shoving the songs down the audience's throat - didn't seem to be that much lost, I thought. Maybe it was just the venue where you were at?
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
14:31 / 12.10.01
No they bloody weren't. And just because some poncey hack writes some shite on an old album liner doesn't make it gospel.

Talking of the 'taking the piss' idea - out of who exactly? Out of what? Himself? Goths? The fans? The press? Discuss.
 
 
Jack Fear
15:07 / 12.10.01
The idea was originally raised in the "covers worth a shit" thread, specifically about Cave's covers: whether they were done with respect and affection, or in a sarcastic spirit. The salient points, drastically edited:

Cave's overblown vocal inflections were offered as evidence that he might be having one on, but Saveloy demurred: quote:Originally posted by Saveloy:
I, urgh, I don't like this 'comic genius' thing. Puts me off to think it's all just meant to be a bit of a giggle... I'm not into the idea of Nick Cave as tortured genius either. I just think it's a great song and like the way he sings it. ... I've always thought that [his vocal style] was just him going for it, rather than deliberately hamming it up.Cholister felt Saveloy's pain: quote:Originally posted by Cholister:
... I certainly wouldn't say that Nick Cave is invariably taking the piss, I think genuine emotion is by no means beyond him ...[but] I know what you mean ... if you've taken a song at face value, it can be painful to realise that other people assume it was meant to be a piss-take, or to mean something different, at least...Saveloy affirmed that he certainly doesn't think Nick's an utter gloomy-puss, but he'd hate to think that Nick was dissing the artists he covers: quote:Originally posted by Saveloy:
All the interviews I've read suggest that he's got a much more developed sense of humour than his detractors would have us believe ... and I'm sure he wouldn't be 'above' putting it in his music. I think I'm just a bit uncomfortable with the idea of using it in a cover, because it suggests that maybe he's taking the piss out of the original song, singer or genre it represents. Of course, it might be an affectionate poke, or he could even be taking the piss out of himself, or none of the above, the band just went "heh, that's funny, do it that way". It's no big thing, I'm just curious to know if I've missed something.And the Haus neatly skewered the idea of a necessary either/or dichotomy.... quote:Originally posted by The Haus of Connection:
I think that piss-taking need not be other than affectionate or respectful. There is no possible argument, I am sure, that Cave hates Leonard Cohen. ... And yet "Tower of Song" is a hilarous rerendering of the song into hillbilly style, with self-parodic doomy exclamations and impromptu George Formby impressions.As so it is.

Cave has, at times, put forth such an extreme image that it's bound to shade into a cartoon--ripe for parody itself. Part of the reason I found Murder Ballads so funny was that it seemed to me an intentional, calculated self-parody--raising the blood-and-thunder quotient to absurd heights perhaps as a form of exorcism: following that path to its end extreme, thus to be rid of it.

I think it's significant that his post-Murder Ballads work has been less overtly violent and more focused on emotional complication than outright carnage.
 
 
Hush
16:07 / 12.10.01
Thanks for your reassurances; next time a Cave gig is on I will go with my mates and not moan about falls from perfection.

Part of the charm was always in the pisstaking, it was the taking themselves seriously that put me off, that and the audience falling into line, the reverence, and the willingness to be taken into images of corrupted humanity and the Ennis like comedic, laddish, violence when I lost touch with Nick Cave.

The essence of pisstaking is to point out weakness and invite others to enjoy the humour of their own humilition, and thereby rise above it. The birthday party took the piss out of themselves as a band, the audience and the world. But they loved their mum.

The precise moment when I lost Nick Cave was when he tried to co-opt Polly Harvey in a publicity driven celebrity romance. This struck me as inutterably showbiz.
 
 
Graham the Happy Scum
12:47 / 13.10.01
I can never remember whether he was from Warracknabeal or Wangaratta. Sent to Caulfield Grammar in Melbourne to board, of course.
 
 
Jack Fear
16:19 / 13.10.01
Warracknabeal.

Yes, I'm a sad fucking fanboy.
 
 
Jack Fear
14:33 / 11.06.02
bump, to accomodate the shitstorm brewing in Prodigy thread.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
18:21 / 11.06.02
haven't been paying attention to the Prodigy one, but would just like to add that, much as I see Cave as a god, his best line ever has to be "they'll sound a flugelhorn". Just for the incorporation one one of my favouritely-named instruments ever.
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
20:23 / 11.06.02
"The precise moment when I lost Nick Cave was when he tried to co-opt Polly Harvey in a publicity driven celebrity romance. This struck me as inutterably showbiz..."

Oh, you WHAT? Cave & Harvey, along the same lines as Evans & Halliwell? Get a life. That's why he wrote half of his next album about her, is it? Christ... unless you're joking, in which case that's quite funny.
 
  
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