Either familiar or unfamiliar with world famous artist & musician Nick Cave, once his music is heard, the feeling of his sound never leaves & is always easily accessible in the shadows of back alleys or the dark mysteries of sewer drains. Cave through the employment of his narrative, rather than hide behind complexity & prey on the angst of his audience, openly confronts conflict, his own poeticism, the music industry & the dynamism of modern experience, into a completely new & now endlessly expanded on view & sound.
Beyond the music, Cave is now a massive entity & a part of modern music history – a Morrissey type figure if you will. Love him or hate him, praise him or discount him based on fame, he’s there & will be for some time.
Perhaps the impetus behind the undertaking of this writing is a question of fame, what ‘popular’ music is & to put it more crucially (perhaps more blog worthy) a meditation on the sold out phrase of ‘selling out’. Free ticket aside (hey you can be a volunteer writer/editor too, I hear we’re accepting editorial positions) I am drawn to the experience of musicians, large or small & seek their stories for a meaning not necessarily spiritual, & not restricted to rigors of science or academia.
Nick Cave is a gnarly reminder that in order to thrive art must assimilate, then detach, grapple with & let go of society to parody a sense of individuality simultaneously praised & considered artistic heresy. Yet the freedom to make space to instill & proliferate a sense of inspiration & vitality throughout his work is by nature ‘underground’, & arguably has been since the spawn of his career in the late 70’s with The Birthday Party. His books, film scores, movies and relationships with fellow musicians, set the standard for self-erasing artists due to his complete oddity and a vapid sense of tenacity coming off soft like glue.
Soon to begin a North & Latin American tour, Cave is taking a brief stint in Massachusetts & New York for multiple on-stage conversation events where he’ll speak of his career bridging and redefining music, stage performance, film and literature into a total art of the self. ‘I can always play songs at the piano if it all goes horribly wrong’ Cave states, selling the enduring quality of his performances.
Since the beginning of his career, like many wealthier than average bearers of culture, the largeness of his voice has grown with, or in the artists role, in spite of a totality.
The long drawn out narratives of the fringes of society, akin to the writings of the Beat generation, highlight the staying power of this mindset not only to working artists but to a public that seeks the continuation of the small. Speaking in terms of east vs. west, Cave highlights a moral dilemma happening under our noses: the erasure of narratives specifically those of the poor, brown of skin and the feminine.
To capture these stories as a mission of the artist, Cave takes on and achieves with tenacious accuracy and self renewal with such prowess; his illumination is, for better or worse not to be discounted, nor to be held up, just experienced.
‘Ah want to tell ya ’bout a girl
You know, she lives in room 29
Why, why, that’s the one right up top a mine
Ah start to cry, Ah start to cry
O Ah hear her walkin’
Walkin’ barefoot cross the floor-boards
All through this lonesome night
Ah hear her crying too.
Hot-tears come splashin on down
Leaking through the cracks,
Down upon my face, Ah catch’em in my mouth!
Ah catch’em in my mouth!
Ah catch’em in my mouth!
Walk’n’cry Walk’n’cry-why!
From her to eternity!
From her to eternity!
From her to eternity!
Ah read her diary on her sheets
Scrutinizin’ every lil bit of dirt
Tore out a page’n’stufft it inside my shirt
Fled out of the window,
And shinning it down the vine
Out of her night-mare, and back into mine
Mine! O Mine!’
*Lyrics from Song ‘From Her to Eternity’ off 1984 of album of same name.
L On-stage Conversation Event Dates:
April 30 Northampton, MA Academy of Music Theatre
May 1 Boston, MA Boch Center Shubert Theatre
May 3 New York, NY Peter Norton Symphony Space
May 5 Brooklyn, NY The Murmrr Theatre
Tickets:
nickcave.com/live
Featured image credit: Christie Goodwin
Chris Hughes is a writer, music journalist & music editor for bostonhassle.com. They can be reached at [email protected] or @crsjh_ via twitter & instagram.
