In a little less than three years, I've managed to ram through 100,000 scrobbles of all manner of audio enjoyment. Starting with my first track by King's X, to Onion Radio News podcasts, to a listen to the Paris Hilton CD upon release (she got the joke!) to several artists I'd never have encountered if not for Last.fm. It's been an interesting an mostly fun three years and Hundred Grand of tuneage.
I've made some marvelous friends via Last.fm. I'd list them, but you know who you are (I hope!) and I wouldn't want to forget anyone.
I've learned that while I like Al Stewart, I didn't realize I liked him THAT MUCH! Now, I know this. I also learned that when I get obsessed about something (Jazz) I go nuts. Lots of Jazz artists that weren't even on my radar a few years ago are high up my Last.fm charts. (Hello, Duke Ellington and John Coltrane!)
I was going to play my first track (a song by King's X) as my 100,000th. However I was asleep at the switch and missed it! MISSED IT! So, by counting backwards, I found that my 100,000th scrobble was All Except You by Nervous Eaters.
Listening to Radiohead's Kid A when I was 13 was what got me interested in music in a serious way. My listening stagnated or regressed around the time that I was 19, but then I took some big steps during the last two years. I've said before that Merzbow introduced me to real music, and that's true in a sense.
Nick Cave - The Exhibition is now on in Perth at the Western Australia Museum. The website here: http://www.museum.wa.gov.au/exhibitions/nickcave/
and I'm going to write a journal about it so I remember how unbelievable it is/was and if anybody reading this can go or if you can't well you can read my ranting and raving here. Thanks for reading this too, I'll say that first before you read it all, well if you get though it all or not thanks anyway for looking.
If you don't know the W.A. Museum there is a space for temporary exhibitions downstairs which is painted all black not just for this show but works so well. I go in there and stare at the walls some times even if the exhibitions are totally shity but enough about me.
When you are walking into this exhibition you hear it before you see it because of all the songs playing but all at the same time in some kind-of fucked-up, Nick Cave mash-up. What you see first is a huge photo of him kind-off like on the poster but standing up. Next is one of his 90's suits on a dummy with an animal mask on it face. There is also these little framed photos of all sorts of people like Ned Kelly, Marilyn Monroe, St. Francis of Assissi, W.H. Auden and others. I'll have to note down all of these because their is so many of these all over the place. Like this one of Ned Kelly the day before his execution.
I'm going to write about The Boys Next Door and The Birthday Party room. There are all these fake walls up painted with dark colors and words from his lyrics pasted on. In the corner of this room there is a stand-up lamp with a white lamp shade with WOOF! written all over it.
In a glass box (well everything is in glass boxes) is a 1979 diary opened on the week of March 26th to April 1st. On Monday is "Buy oil paint" and "Make a tape with Andrew". On Tuesday is "Crystal Ballroom" at the top and in red pen is "Dole form to be Handed in" for the rest of the week there is a gig every night something called "Bombay Rock" is on Wednesday and Thursday with The Radiators. Friday is "Bananas" off course and April Fools Day in 79 is "Crystal Ballroom" with The Radiators again.
Under his diary is a few flyers for the same time and it seems they're playing with Teenage Radio Stars, Jab and X-ray-Z and never on top of the bill. All these bands were on the same record label, Nick's first, called Suicide Records. As a side note here Lethal Weapons album (not the Mel Gibson movies) was reissued by Aztec Music a couple years ago if you haven't got the first songs ever recorded by them: These Boots Are Made For Walking, Masturbation Generation and boy hero you can get it here: http://www.aztecmusic.net/ it's a classic Aussie punk record everyone should have but seems again it's not on last.fm.
Anita Lane bit is next up with a crazy shirt design by her and wore by Cave but no photos of him wearing it. Above the small photo of Nick Cave & Anita Lane together is one these little framed photos this one is Robert Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter with his LOVE knuckles showing like this:
Under all this is the hand written lyrics to Dumb Europe which on Die Haut's Burnin' the Ice which seems to be written together with Lane but on the album liner notes only credits Cave. Nick Cave Man or Myth poster framed hung next to the band is listed by name which is Barry Adamson, Mick Harvey, Tracy Pew and Hugo Race with the Painters & Dockers supporting for only $8 and it's a New Years show too.
A Happy Birthday 7" single is framed which was a give-a-way at the last show before moving to England. The Boys Next Door is on it but after moving there they changed their name to The Birthday Party. A TV is playing some very old bootleg videos of songs from this time, some of this is so bad you can't see some of it really but it's amazing to see anyway. The Birthday Party poster and some of Cave's hand drawn artwork is hung up here too.
Hand-written lyrics to Sonny's Burning and Wild World are here but is more interesting is following Mutiny in Heaven's hand-written lyrics on hotel note-pad to the typed out final version with half a dozen different hand written versions. With more photos of the band around this time, a little photo Leadbelly is above all this but what is more interesting is an artist statement on a pink piece of paper which is Cave talking about recording, writing and recording the song Mutiny in Heaven. Which goes something like (for my notes, this is not all of it just bits I noted down) this: "...demarcation point between The Birthday Party and what would be Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds... people have said there's bad blood between me and Rowland S. Howard but I don't remember it like that at all... I didn't want to sing his songs... even his great songs. I couldn't exactly work out what some of them were about... There was this bass groove, no guitar or words and no one knew what to do with it... I remember sitting up there all night, writing not sleeping then going back to the studio... this torrent of wacked-out words... shit all over-layed, multi-tracked, over-lapping vocals... and loving it. There was no room for guitar and Roland hated it... then Blixa Bargeld picked up his Fender Stratocaster saying "I Can"... Mutiny was the last song Birthday Party recorded. Unbeknownest to anyone at the time. The Blueprint of the Bad Seeds was stamped upon it."
In Mojo Magazine last year, the one with The Clash on the cover on the very last page in Hello/Goodbye bit Roland talked about this totally differently, it was something like, Cave didn't like his guitar playing on the same song and Blixa started to play on it and Roland packed up his stuff and left because he thought it was the last day and didn't come back but there was a week left recording. Roland said they played some shows after this in Australia but it was already over for him."
Anyway whatever happened I love that song so I spent forever looking at these lyrics. It's kind-off like a long vomit of words which is how Bob Dylan talked about writing Like a Rolling Stone, I know all the Dylan nutters will say you can't compare the two songs but well Mutiny in Heaven to me looks like a long vomit words on paper, I haven't seen Dylan's.
More of his drawings and then on the last wall in this room is more Birthday Party photo's. One is Nick wearing a black and white striped t-shirt above this photo is another little photo of a penguin like this one:
Cool, eh?
Just outside this room is a huge photo of early Boys Next Door up not under glass and someone's circled a photo of Anita Lane which is hung in the background and written her name so I guess that is why almost everything is under glass.
The next box has the hand-written and typed-out lyrics to From Her To Eternity which is one of the first classic Bad Seeds songs. On the first small piece of paper has one small black hair attached to it. More photos, then Cave's film synopsis for Ghosts...of the Civil Dead quoting Jack Henry Abbott, this was re-written by everyone in involved before it started filming but good to read his original. If you never seen it here is Cave's performance, I've found his opening scene on youtube
On another pink piece of paper is Cave talking about making this film "...well that was a trip ...is a miracle it got made... filmed in a aircraft hanger... the script that reads like it been thrown up in the air and picked up at random... film director straight out of film school... punch-ups, meltdowns, walk-outs, overdoses and somehow this raw, brutal beast of a movie got made, a bloody miracle." On more papers there's Cave's notes of his dialogue or what his character "Maynard" was going to scream in his scenes. Above all this, is another little framed photo, this time of Elvis Presley in his late period, he's got those flower necklaces you get in Hawaii around his neck so my guess is he's in Hawaii.
To finish off this journal (I'm going to have to write two or three more of these to cover everything) with more photos but this time it's of The Birthday Party's final concert in Melbourne on 9th June 1983. With little frames of Ludwig van Beethoven's portrait by Joseph Karl Stieler, 1820 and black and white photo of John Coltrane from his A Love Supreme album cover.
One more thing two great new books about Nick Cave are out if you didn't know. First one goes with The Exhibition called Nick Cave Stories and if your not in Perth get it here: http://assets.theartscentre.com.au/Merchandise/nickcave.htm
and second one called Cultural Seeds: Essays on the Work of Nick Cave Edited by Karen Welberry, La Trobe University, Australia and Tanya Dalziell, The University of Western Australia, Australia
find it here: http://www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&calcTitle=1&forthcoming=1&title_id=9761&edition_id=11081
I've got the first one which so great (I think I've written about it here before) and second one looks so great but I have to save up for it. Both look like the best books written about him so far. Anyway I should stop now, I'll write part 2 in a few days because right now I've overloaded my head.
101. Opal – Happy Nightmare Baby (1987)
102. Josef K – The Only Fun in Town (1981)
103. Portishead – Third (2008)
104. Bruce Springsteen – Born to Run (1975)
105. Modest Mouse – The Moon & Antarctica (2000)
106. The Stooges – Raw Power (1973)
107. Tom Waits – Bone Machine (1992)
108. Love – Forever Changes (1967)
109. Clipse – Hell Hath No Fury (2006)
110. Jimi Hendrix – Electric Ladyland (1968)
131. Pixies – Surfer Rosa (1988)
132. The National – Boxer (2007)
133. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion (2009)
134. The Slits – Cut (1979)
135. XTC – Skylarking (1986)
136. The Zombies – Odessey & Oracle
137. The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
138. Public Enemy – Fear of a Black Planet (1990)
139. Neu! – Neu! (1972)
140. De La Soul – 3 Feet High and Rising (1989)
141. The Strokes – Is This It (2001)
142. Talking Heads – More Songs About Buildings and Food (1978)
143. Animal Collective – Sung Tongs (2004)
144. Pearl Jam – Ten (1991)
145. Battles – Mirrored (2007)
146. Scientist – Scientist Rids the World of the Evil Curse of the Vampires (1981)
147. The National – Alligator (2006)
148. The Cure – Disintegration (1989)
149. Tom Waits – Swordfishtrombones (1983)
150. New Order – Low-Life (1985)
Ce qui devait être au départ un top 100 précis est en vérité une agrégation de chansons qu'il me plaît d'écouter, avec un vague ordre plus ou moins précis. L'opération est d'ailleurs compliquée par le fait que pour certaines chansons, j'ai choisi des versions bien précises qui perdent de tout leur charme interprétées d'une autre façon voire par un autre artiste.
Enfin bref, enjoy !
Türkçe
John Coltrane
