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You can now own your own ‘Red Right Hand’ & other cool ‘Cave Things’ designed by Nick Cave
02.21.2022
01:20 pm
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Stickers featuring Nick Cave in his famous ‘Suck My Dick’ t-shirt.
 

“It’s the obsessive and dangerous end of granny-core. Fetishistic and deranged.”

—Nick Cave describing his newly launched Cave Things online store in 2020.

Nick Cave’s online store Cave Things has been offering up material possessions designed by Cave since 2020. This is good news if you, like us here at Dangerous Minds, are all about all things Nick Cave. Why use boring old No. 2 pencils when you can use Nick Cave’s Sex pencils? While I’m not sure when I might actually need to use a pencil these days if I had to, Nick Cave’s Sex Pencils would be the ones I’d want in my collection. If Satan is more your speed then Cave’s red Devil pencils with printed quotes by Cave on them should be more than evil enough for you. Do you still have hair and are in need of a fashionable comb? Look no further than Cave’s specially-designed Warren Ellis’ “Pure Exploitation” comb, named for Cave’s long-time contributor, the multi-talented Warren Ellis. There are so many ultra-cool items in the Cave Things store, from small delights like Nick Cave stickers (!!!), greeting cards designed by Cave, a dog sweater modeled after Nick’s famous “Suck My Dick” t-shirt, and even wallpaper with Cave’s illustrations of The Hyatt Girls. If you’re not familiar with The Hyatt Girls, here’s Cave explaining them to one of his fans via his Red Hand Files site:

“Just so that everyone knows what we are talking about, The Hyatt Girls are a group of beautiful and very naked women who live in my imagination and perform pornographic acts with each other, provided I stay at a Hyatt Hotel. For years I have drawn them, to the best of my ability, on the hotel’s notepaper whenever I have stayed at a Hyatt.”

Of all the covetable things in Cave’s store, if I had the money to blow, I’d be proudly wearing one of two necklaces designed by Cave—his eerie Red Hand chain and charm (in honor of his 1994 single “Red Right Hand”),  or his “Little Nick” necklace and charm, featuring a shirtless Cave flexing. So let’s take a look at some of the cooler Nick Cave things that could now be yours. You can see everything in the Cave Things shop here.
 

Little Nick charm (comes with necklace). Extra Cave points for the red right hand detail. $122 USD.
 

Devil pencils.
 
More Nick Cave merch, after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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02.21.2022
01:20 pm
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‘Ghosts… Of The Civil Dead’: Nick Cave makes psychotic cameo in harrowing 1989 Aussie prison drama
05.18.2020
10:25 am
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Director John Hillcoat (The Road, Lawless, The Proposition) made his 1989 feature debut with the gripping prison drama Ghosts…Of The Civil Dead, which contains a brief, but unforgettable appearance by Nick Cave. It’s a really amazing film, but one that is sadly little-known outside of Australia (and extreme Nick Cave fanboys—admittedly I saw Ghosts… almost alone, at its sole midnight screening in NYC.)

Perhaps it is a misconception, but due to the worldwide popularity of films like Chopper and the classic camp TV of the women-in-prison soap opera Prisoner: Cell Block H,  I can be forgiven, I hope, for assuming that Australians, on the whole, are a bit obsessed with criminals, violent crime and incarceration. I guess it’s in their blood, so to speak. (I kid, I kid, Aussie readers! Please don’t kill me!) Loosely based on the life and writing of Jack Henry Abbott—the psychotic murderer turned literary protégé of Norman Mailer turned psychotic murderer once again—and research done with David Hale, a former guard at an Illinois maximum security prison, Ghosts… Of The Civil Dead features a cast of real-life ex-convicts, former prison guards and tough-looking motherfuckers they found in local Melbourne gyms. This film is realistic. Scary realistic. HBO’s Oz is a day spa in comparison.
 

 
Narrated by a (fictional) former prison guard, Ghosts… takes place deep in within the bowels of a maximum security prison, somewhere in the Australian outback. The place is an incessantly humming, fluorescent-lit nightmare. Due to outbreaks of violence, there has been a three-year lockdown that is still ongoing. The tension is palpable, the place is a claustrophobic, concrete Hell that no sunlight penetrates, a hatred and resentment-fueled bomb with a very short fuse just waiting to go off.

As events transpire, the viewer begins to see that the prison authorities are actively trying to provoke the prison population, and that they are pitting the guards against the inmates, preying on both to escalate the violence in order to crack down on the prisoners ever harder and to justify building a fortress even more fearsome, inescapable and “secure.”
 

 
Ghosts… has layers of unexpected meaning. Although the script (co-written by Hillcoat, Cave, one-time Bad Seeds guitarist Hugo Race, Gene Conkie and producer Evan English) tells a reasonably straightforward tale of the prisoners—captive in a high security fortress that escape from seems impossible—versus the authorities who manipulate them into chaos, there’s a wider allegorical message of the power dynamic inherent in Western capitalism: Conform. Do exactly what we tell you to do, or there will be consequences. Like this high security Hell on Earth.

Michel Foucault would have most certainly approved of Ghosts…Of The Civil Dead, I should think.
 

 
Although contrary to the way Ghosts… was marketed, Nick Cave is onscreen for just a very short appearance about an hour into the film, but having said that, it is a cinematic moment of pure genius. Cave plays Maynard, a violent psychotic who paints with his own blood. Maynard is an absolute fucking lunatic, deliberately brought in by the prison authorities to make an already bad situation much, much worse. His psychotic ranting and raving riles up the situation into complete murderous chaos. Although he is seen just briefly in Ghosts…, it is Cave’s Maynard who lights the bomb’s ever present fuse.

Ghosts… Of The Civil Dead is extraordinary film, as as bleak and as uncompromising a work of art as I have ever experienced, it might be difficult for the squeamish to sit through. Once seen, it can never be forgotten.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.18.2020
10:25 am
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Ratso Has A Record (and a duet with Nick Cave)
04.25.2019
11:13 am
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Portrait of Larry “Ratso” Sloman by William Beaucardet.

What most people dream about, Larry “Ratso” Sloman makes happen. Anyone who’s read Ratso’s first book, 1978’s On The Road With Bob Dylan, has witnessed his epic persistence. A young Rolling Stone reporter in ‘75, he took an invitation from a fueled Bob Dylan to join the tour being convened and he held Dylan to his word. Repeatedly treated as Slo-man on the totem pole by Rolling Thunder Revue functionaries and dubbed “Ratso” by Joan Baez for his slovenly, streetwise demeanor, he refused to give up, eventually melting down in a motel lobby in one of the best scenes in Renaldo and Clara, issuing the righteous demand of “Access!  I want access!”

Access he was given and access he has to this day.

I read On The Road With Bob Dylan close to its pub date in one furious sitting, completely unaware of who this guy Sloman was, but blown away by his chutzpah and ability to describe what it was like to hang with Bob better than any scribe before him. Within a couple weeks of reading it, my pal Kinky Friedman brought an entourage to West Village dive bar Bells Of Hell to see my band Slewfoot. I met Larry Sloman in that crew and a friendship of 41 years followed.   

We went on to edit the National Lampoon together with my brother Andy Simmons in the1980s and have had more adventures than there is room here to recount. (Hey Rats—remember The Babysitter at Baratta’s house in the Hamptons?) In addition to writing bestsellers with Howard Stern, Abbie Hoffman and Houdini biographies, acting/writing/producing movies and sundry side activities like managing strongman Dennis Rogers, the snappy-dressing Ratso decided he wanted to be a rock star. 

And so he is.

At age 70, he’s released his debut album, the appropriately titled Stubborn Heart (Lucky Number), and it’s a dark nocturnal emission—an atmospheric, minor-chord tone poem broken up into nine songs, including co-writes with John Cale. It’s beautifully produced by Vincent Cacchione of Brooklyn band Caged Animals, with guest shots by buddies Nick Cave, Warren Ellis of the Bad Seeds, Leonard Cohen’s collaborator Sharon Robinson and Lebanese chirp Yasmine Hamdan, among others. (Interesting footnote: Cave’s song “Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!” was inspired by Ratso’s Houdini bio.) And then there’s his intriguing voice – a talk/sing hybrid strongly reminiscent of Cohen and Dylan – two fellow Jewish mavericks also known for ensuring that miraculous artistry magically materializes.

Like Dylan, like Cohen, Ratso has the poet’s touch. In Cale co-write “Dying On The Vine” (first heard on John’s 1985 album Artificial Intelligence), Ratboy intones: “And I was thinking about my mother/I was thinking about what’s mine/I was living like a Hollywood/But I was dying on the vine.” Note the addition of “a” before the noun “Hollywood.” It’s a savvy – and mysterious—lyrical decision that kicks open doors of potential meaning that would’ve been locked shut had it not been present. What is “a Hollywood”?  I don’t know, but it’s a gift to be forced to think about it. And then there’s the Rat-wit. In the Cave duet “Our Lady Of Light,” he sings of the heroine: “She’ll dance round your shyness, poke fun at your gloom/But you can’t help but smile as she gooses the groom.”

June 12 will see the release of Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story By Martin Scorsese, the latter’s documentary of that fabled tour. Naturally, Ratso is said to be a key talking head in the film. (I know because it’s Ratso who says it.) Fittingly, Stubborn Heart ends with an audacious homage to the man who kickstartled Ratso’s career. His cover of “Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands” works because, like everything he does, he puts a twist on it, spicing up the proceedings by having several sad-eyed lady singers tackle each chorus, culminating with Ruby Friedman emitting the lungpower of a ferocious and fiery tigress.

As we aging freaks become more reliant on prostate medication (something my medical advisor Dr. Sloman keeps me up on), we will need our hearts to be even more stubborn than in our demanding youth, to meet the injustices of aging and to continue to foster creativity as our bodies fail. Ratso has lit one path with his decision to make a record at this point in his life. He’s an inspiration to each individual to decide if and how they’ll follow through for themselves.
 

“Our Lady of Light” with Nick Cave.
 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Michael Simmons
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04.25.2019
11:13 am
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The Sensational Alex Harvey Band: Live Agora Ballroom, Cleveland, Ohio, 1974

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Success was a long time a-coming for Alex Harvey. He started out on a high in the mid-1950s when he won the title of the next “Teenage Idol” in “a Tommy Steele rock-alike” contest. Giddy heights, perhaps, but the reality of being the next big thing was gigging across nowheresville Scotland playing working men’s clubs, where his group Alex Harvey and his Soul Band were generally hated by the audience who preferred the more traditional entertainment of pie-eating contests—as Harvey once told B. A. Robertson. His band played skiffle, rock ‘n’ roll, and the blues. He released a couple of albums in the early sixties which were more popular with his family and friends than the record-buying public.

In 1967, Harvey got a five-year stint playing guitar in the London West End musical Hair. It gave him some much-needed stability away from gigging, a regular income, and some good theatrical experience which furthered his ambition to kick-start his own rock ‘n’ roll career with a new band.

The band he eventually teamed up with was Tear Gas. He’d heard about them from a pal. Tear Gas was a prog rock group, who like Harvey were also from Glasgow. According to Harvey, they were loud, raucous, and undisciplined, but hugely talented. Onstage they were shy. Off-stage they were stars. They need some guidance—they found it in thirty-something “Daddy” Harvey.

The Sensational Alex Harvey Band was born. With Harvey on lead vocal, Zal Cleminson on guitar, Chris Glen on bass, and cousins Hugh and Ted McKenna on keyboards and drums respectively. Together they formed the greatest band that came out of Scotland in the 1970s. And the most influential band that came out of Scotland in the seventies. If you lived in Glasgow back then, the Sensational Alex Harvey Band (or SAHB) was bigger than Jesus and a central part of the city’s holy trinity alongside soccer and alcohol.

SAHB mixed rock, hard rock, prog rock, blues, with theater and cabaret. There was literally nothing to compare with them. As rock critic Charles Shaar Murray described it:

The Sensational Alex Harvey Band were one of the craziest, most honest, most creative and most courageous bands of their time…

Though they gained a cult-following and influenced acts as different as Nick Cave (who honed part of his act on Harvey’s performative skills and later covered SAHB’s “Hammer Song” on Kicking Against the Pricks), John Lydon, Ian Dury, and Kurt Cobain. To get an idea what SAHB could do, take a gander at Harvey’s definitive performance of the Jacques Brel’s song “Next” from The Old Grey Whistle Test in 1973.
 

 
Hear SAHB in concert, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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03.27.2019
11:29 am
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Miscreants rejoice! Artist Krent Able’s new ‘appallingly filthy’ illustrated book is coming!
11.19.2018
01:54 pm
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The cover of the forthcoming book ‘The Second Coming of Krent Able’ by Steve Martin.
 

“This book will make the perfect Xmas gift for elderly relatives, beloved friends, and hated enemies.”

—London-based artist and illustrator Krent Able (the alter-ego of author Steve Martin) on his upcoming book, The Second Coming of Krent Able.

If you think Mr. Able’s statement about the follow-up to his gritty Big Book of Mischief (2012), The Second Coming of Krent Able, sounds like a warning wrapped in a delicious piece of candy, you would be correct. There is nobody quite like Krent Able, a long-time illustrator of morally questionable comics, that initially ran in the UK bi-monthly mag The Stool Pigeon (RIP, 2013). Able’s work has also disgraced the pages of the Guardian and NME, often depicting musician Nick Cave as the no-good chain-smoking “Doctor Cave.” Or meat-is-murder crusader Morrissey, looking forward to devouring a plate of bloody entrails topped with a skinned animal head—one fixated dead eyeball staring right at you because, even though it’s dead, it is as confused about this fucking situation as you are. 

Does this mean Krent Able is a malapert of the highest order, here to provide us with “appallingly filthy” comic book tales full of mayhem, dicks, and death? Assuredly the answer to this question is yes, and knowing Krent’s Second Coming is coming is great news indeed. As a graphic novel enthusiast (amusingly, my last was 2017’s Nick Cave: Mercy on Me), and proud owner of Big Book Of Mischief, I can safely say The Second Coming of Krent Able will be chock full of vitriolic comics which will disgust and delight you at the same time. If you enjoy subversive subject matter, I’m sure you will enjoy looking at some NSFW images from Able’s forthcoming book, courtesy of the artist himself. If you’d like to learn more about Able, check out the engrossing, award-winning short documentary, Ink, Cocks, & Rock ‘N’ Roll (2017) which will give you yet another reason to appreciate the artist and his ultra-salacious take on satire.

The Second Coming of Krent Able is due out in the UK and U.S. on December 13th, 2018. Signed copies of the book can be pre-ordered here.
 

The not-so-good Doctor Cave by Krent Able.
 

William Burroughs and his creepy pal.
 

 
Much more after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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11.19.2018
01:54 pm
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Animated children’s stories by Nick Cave, Gary Numan, Will Oldham, Tom Waits, Laura Marling & more!


Cover illustration by Daniel Nayeri

Stories for Ways and Means is a new book that features original “grown up” children’s story collaborations by some of this era’s most compelling storytellers from the worlds of music and contemporary art. It’s being published by the long-running indie record label Waxploitation run by entrepreneur and photojournalist Jeff Antebi. The Stories for Ways and Means project lends support to several non-governmental organizations and nonprofit groups aiding children’s literacy causes around the world including Room to Read, Pencils of Promise, 826 National and many more.

Some of the featured musicians contributing to the project include Frank Black, Laura Marling, Del the Funky Homosapien, Gibby Haynes, Alec Empire, Kathleen Hanna, Devendra Banhart, Nick Cave, Alison Mosshart, Satomi Matsuzaki of Deerhoof, Will Oldham, Gary Numan and ska great, guitarist Ernest Ranglin.

You can order the Stories for Ways and Means book at SFWAM.org
 

“The Lonely Giant,” narrated by Andre Royo (The Wire), written by Nick Cave, illustrated by Anthony Lister.
 
Many more after the jump…

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Posted by Richard Metzger
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09.12.2018
08:44 am
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Go to bed with Motörhead, Nick Cave (as Batman), The Cramps & more with these badass duvet covers


A lovely Motörhead duvet featuring three images of Lemmy Kilmister’s unforgettable mug. 86 bucks. Get it here.
 
If you follow my posts here on Dangerous Minds, then you know at times my thoughts are often occupied with all things heavy and metal. Any day I get to jaw about any of my personal headbanging heroes is a good fucking day not only for me but for all you DM readers still carrying a torch for the genre. For today’s post, I feel like I’ve found the “adult”(?) equivalent of a tricked-out teenage bedroom with rock posters wiping out any trace of wallpaper—duvet covers with prints of your favorite bands. Because of course, you want to go to bed with Motörhead, don’t you?

The boss duvets below feature artwork and images from a plethora of punks and a multitude of metalheads such as the Plasmatics, The Clash, The Cramps, Van Halen, King Diamond, Alice Cooper, Iron Maiden and others too numerous to call out by name. I do feel compelled to note a duvet cover featuring an image of Nick Cave looking like a neon-colored Batman exists, and it is as excellent as it sounds. Most of the duvets can be had for less than 100 bucks (depending on the size) over on REDBUBBLE, and from the reviews, they all appear to be well worth the investment. Plus, I’m pretty sure a possible perk of owning one of these unique duvet covers just might lead to you getting lucky. (Or maybe not...) In most cases, the prints can be put on other items such as pillows and such because who really wants to grow up. Not me, that’s for sure.
 

Alice Cooper’s famous eyes on a duvet cover.
 

MANOWAR! The duvet cover.
 

Black Flag logo duvet.
 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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01.09.2018
11:14 am
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Nick Cave’s life & work come alive in a stunning new 328-page graphic novel ‘Nick Cave: Mercy on Me’
10.17.2017
07:48 am
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An illustration by Reinhard Kleist from his new graphic novel, ‘Nick Cave: Mercy on Me.’
 

“Floods, fire, and frogs leapt out of my throat,” he explained. “Though I had no notion of that then, God was talking not just to me but through me, and His breath stank. I was a conduit for a God that spoke in a language written in bile and puke. And for a while, that suited me fine.”

—Nick Cave ruminates on God during a broadcast by BBC Radio 3 Religious Services in 1996. Read/listen to it here.

From his origins growing up in Australia glued to The Johnny Cash Show, to his days with The Birthday Party and later The Bad Seeds—author and illustrator Reinhard Kleist has left no stone unturned when it comes to his exploration of Nick Cave’s life in his new graphic novel, Nick Cave: Mercy on Me.

Kleist uses his dark and striking illustrations to help bring out emotions such as dread, desperation, persistence, and revelation as they witness Cave’s life and long career, from his huge-hair and heroin days with The Birthday Party to his more polished yet still antagonistic times with The Bad Seeds. The book even incorporates things from 2014’s documentary, 20,000 Days On Earth. Like life in general, the book is often a grim ride—especially when it concerns Cave’s early days in and out of addiction clinics and his time in Berlin—which, according to Cave, was a moment in his life where he felt “quite lost.” There he met Christoph Dreher, founder of the post-rock band Die Haut whom Cave credits with “basically keeping him alive” for a few years (you can see a blistering performance by Cave with Die Haut back in 1992, which is depicted in Kleist’s book, here). If you’re wondering how the legendarily cantankerous Mr. Cave feels about Kleist’s book, here’s more on that directly from the man himself:

“Reinhard Kleist, master graphic novelist, and myth-maker has - yet again - blown apart the conventions of the graphic novel by concocting a terrifying conflation of Cave songs, biographical half-truths and complete fabulations and creating a complex, chilling and completely bizarre journey into Cave World. Closer to the truth than any biography, that’s for sure! But for the record, I never killed Elisa Day.”

Stop me if I’m wrong, but I do believe that Cave just gave Kleist two goth-thumbs up for his efforts. I agree with Cave’s assessment of Kleist’s work, and if you are at all of a fan of Nick Cave, I recommend picking this book up right away. An English version of the graphic novel (which was initially published in German), can be found here. In case there is still any doubt that you need this book, I’ve posted a large collection of Kleist’s starkly beautiful illustrations from Nick Cave: Mercy on Me, below.
 

An illustration from ‘Nick Cave: Mercy on Me,’ Reinhard Kleist.
 

 

 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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10.17.2017
07:48 am
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Breathtaking comix panels inspired by Nick Cave’s first novel
10.06.2017
04:10 pm
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But Now by God, it ROARS!
 
You might remember the name Tom Neely for his whimsical tribute to punk rock’s most famous gay couple, Glenn Danzig and Henry Rollins. Neely’s Glenn and Henry Forever, which came out in 2010, received a positive notice from Rollins (“if I were to find that anything less than hilarious, then I am in the wrong business”) but from Danzig, not so much (“I didn’t think it was very funny ... it was a very crappy, opportunistic book”).

In Pasadena during all of September, there was an intriguing exhibition that documented, quite unusually, the failure of an artistic project. Birds of Death presented the art that Neely had generated for a comix adaptation of Nick Cave’s first novel And the Ass Saw the Angel. Unfortunately, after being approached to undertake the work (and after Neely had spent considerable time and effort creating images for the graphic novel), he discovered that the rights to Cave’s novel had not been “properly secured,” which meant that Neely would not be able to produce an authorized adaptation of And the Ass Saw the Angel after all.

Bummer! As the notes to the show explain, the bleak and haunting series of images “allows an abstract interpretation” of not just Cave’s book but also “Neely’s disappointment in the circumstances surrounding the project.”

Published in 1989—right on the heels of Tender PreyAnd the Ass Saw the Angel was (and is) as Cave-ian as they come, as you can see yourself from the images. The book covers bleak and doomy life of Euchrid Eucrow, the self-styled “Monarch of Doghead” in Australia’s (fictional, I think) Ukulore Valley. The book sounds a bit overcooked—one review called it a “messianic, overheated tirade” (the review was not actually negative) while another referenced the “clotted, gutsy prose which ranges from poetic to rabid”—and Cave actually cut a lot of the purple prose for a 20th-anniversary edition that came out in 2009.

According to the gallery website, some of the images are still available for purchase.
 

One Full Quarter
 
Much more after the jump….......
 

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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10.06.2017
04:10 pm
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If this is Heaven, I’m nodding off: Watch Nick Cave and the Birthday Party dissolve in a druggy haze
07.11.2017
10:58 am
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When director Heiner Mühlenbrock showed up with his cameras to document the tense April 1983 recording sessions for the final Birthday Party EP, Mutiny!, the group was well beyond the verge of druggy dissolution and barely on speaking terms. Mutiny! was cut at Hansa Ton studios in Berlin and the viewer is shown the development of the haunting “Jennifer’s Veil,” one of The Birthday Party’s finest—and darkest—moments on record and Nick Cave adding his vocal to “Swampland” (some truly, truly impressive scream-singing during that bit).

Although he seems pretty sharp here, initially at least, at a certain point, Cave just nods off in the studio… for several minutes. (Maybe he was… tired?)

Mick Harvey told the Quietus:

“From an outside perspective it wouldn’t have looked like our creative juices had dried up, but I can assure you they had! Getting those five or six songs that ended up on Mutiny! out of the writers was really like getting blood out of a stone.”

More after the jump…

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Posted by Richard Metzger
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07.11.2017
10:58 am
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Gavin Evans’ magnificent portraits of Bowie, Björk, Iggy, and Nick Cave

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David Bowie.
 
The Monday morning mailbag arrived with its usual gifts of bills, party invites, ransom demands (which I really must get around to paying), and “Dear John” letters. I was about to tip all this largesse into the bin when I noticed a postcard from a dear friend Christopher. It was the usual greetings of “Having a lovely time” and “Wish you were here” kind of thing but what saved it from the trash was the front photograph of David Bowie by Gavin Evans.

Now we all have favorite photographers and one of mine is certainly Mr. Evans who has taken some of the most magnificent, gorgeous, and iconic images of the past two decades. The photograph of Bowie shushing with a finger to his lips like he did in the promo for “China Girl” has been used on numerous magazine covers, photospreads, TV documentaries, and pirated for Internet memes, urban graffiti, and even tattoos. Its ubiquity one would hope should have made Mr. Evans a very rich man—but somehow (sadly) I very much doubt that.

Another of Evans’ Bowie photographs—a color portrait in which he wore blue contact lenses—captured a vulnerability that I’d never seen before (see picture above). It was as if Bowie allowed his guard down for just a moment and had unknowingly (or perhaps willingly) revealed a more vulnerable and intimate side. The picture was taken in 1995 for a Time Out cover. A couple of years later, Bowie contacted Evans and asked for a print of this picture to hang in his office. Bowie explained to Evans that this was his favorite portrait.

That’s the thing I like about Evans’ work—he has an uncanny talent for capturing the very essence of his subject matter. His photographs make the gods flesh. Look at his portraits of Nick Cave which reveal something of the man behind the public persona or his series of photographs of Björk which capture a tender and humorous side sometimes lacking from more traditional photo shoots. Or just look at his portrait of John Hurt where you can see the pores of the actor’s skin and peer right into his soul.

Christopher’s Bowie postcard is now pinned to the wall. I browsed for more of Evans work and was happily surprised to find a selection of his most powerful and iconic work is currently on tour. Then something even better, a selection of Evans’ beautiful prints are availble to buy. Now every home can have a Gavin Evans on their wall.
 
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David Bowie.
 
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See more of Gavin Evans majestic photographs, after the jump…

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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07.10.2017
11:18 am
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The Singer: Why Nick Cave is the greatest ‘serious’ rock musician of our time. Period. The End.
05.05.2017
11:37 am
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There’s a fairly compelling—I’ll go so far as to deem it “persuasive”—argument to be made that of any musician of the modern era who has sustained a long, long multi-decade career, that Nick Cave has—consistently—been the greatest “serious” rock musician of our time.

Woah, woah, woah! Wait just a minute there, buddy! Greater than Bob Dylan, the Beatles, or the Stones you say? Well, no, not necessarily, obviously that’s a pretty subjective opinion just to throw out there—although it does actually happen to be the one that I hold—but do consider that the Rolling Stones had (definitively) peaked by 1972, that the best of the Beatles’ solo work was in the rear view mirror by 1974 and that the last truly great album made by Bob Dylan was probably 1975’s Blood on the Tracks. Don’t get me wrong, I hate U2 and always have, but even I can give them credit for having had a remarkably good run of it, certainly maintaining quality in their output, some level of reinvention and a decent hit single every couple of years for four decades. Face it, the Rolling Stones couldn’t do that, so they turned themselves into the world’s greatest Rolling Stones cover band. David Bowie? He burns brightly for a good few years, that’s true, but then Let’s Dance happens. Joni Mitchell? Nope. What about Neil Young? How many Neil Young songs from the 80s, 90s, 00s or the current decade can you even name let alone hum? Prince’s post 80s output was always a mixed bag. Roger Waters hasn’t exactly embarrassed himself over the years, of course, but in terms of new music, unlike Prince, he’s not been all that prolific. The same could be said of Tom Waits.
 

 
Now, Nick Cave on the other hand, has released 16 studio albums, numerous film soundtracks, live albums and recorded many significant contributions to projects spearheaded by others. There’s also the matter of his work with the Birthday Party, novels, screenplays, films, lectures, acting and much more. He’s a prolific creator and most of his output—nearly all of it if you ask me—is really fucking good. There is simply no equivalent to Let’s Dance in Cave’s entire body of work. He’s never put out a shit album, just ones that were less good than others. Nick Cave might not sell out football stadiums or go platinum, but neither did Johnny Cash. How many middle-aged rock stars put out one of their very best songs (“Jubilee Street”) entering the fifth decade of their career? Have any? Did even Frank Sinatra do anything like that? I don’t think so.
 

Photo of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds by Sam Barker
 
What if I shifted my premise (ever so slightly) to “Nick Cave is the greatest serious rock artist of the past 30 years”? I suspect a few more of you might come on board with that revised assessment as nearly all of the competition drops off when you frame it that way. But don’t take my word for it, there’s a brand new compilation—the first in 19 years—out today via BMG, that covers 30 years of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ output. Handpicked by longtime collaborator Mick Harvey and Cave himself, there’s not a single bad track on any of the different versions of Lovely Creatures: The Best of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds (1984-2014) but having said that, as a longtime Nick Cave fanatic myself, going back to the first Birthday Party album, I’d have largely chosen a much different selection. Some overlap, but honestly not a lot. This is not to say that “my” version would be any “better” than theirs, naturally, only that it would be significantly different—how could they have left off “A Box for Black Paul” I wondered—but this is merely a mundane testament to the fact that Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ back catalog is both vast, and brilliant. My selection would need to be spread across many more discs, I guess. Like 20 CDs or so.
 

 
Order Lovely Creatures: The Best of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds (1984-2014) as a standard double CD, a triple vinyl LP, a deluxe 3CD with DVD and the “Super Deluxe Limited Edition” which comes with a full-color 256-page book and inserts in special packaging. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds will be touring North America soon.

The trailer for ‘Lovely Creatures’

Further evidence that Nick Cave is our greatest rock star, after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.05.2017
11:37 am
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Wear with Confidence: Nick Cave’s beautiful and empowering Soundsuits
02.06.2017
12:04 pm
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Nick Cave is an artist, performer, educator and “foremost a messenger” who works in a wide range of media including sculpture, installation, video, sound and performance.

Not to be confused with the antipodean singer and screenwriter, this Nick Cave is best known for his beautiful Soundsuits—“sculptural forms based on the scale of his body” which “camouflage the body, masking and creating a second skin that conceals race, gender, and class, forcing the viewer to look without judgment” or prejudice.

The idea for Soundsuits came about as a response to thinkingthe brutal police beating of Rodney King in 1991. As cave recalls:

It was a very hard year for me because of everything that came out of the Rodney King beating. I started thinking about myself more and more as a black man—as someone who was discarded, devalued, viewed as less than.

And:

I started thinking about the role of identity, being racial profiled, feeling devalued, less than, dismissed. And then I happened to be in the park this one particular day, and looked down at the ground and there was a twig. And I just thought, well, that’s discarded, and it’s sort of insignificant. And so I just started then gathering the twigs, and before I knew it, I was, had built a sculpture.

Cave carried the twigs he had collected in Grant Park, Chicago, back to his studio where he drilled a small hole at the base of each one. He linked these together with a wire before attaching them to a large piece of material. From this he created his first wearable sculpture or Soundsuit:

When I was inside a suit, you couldn’t tell if I was a woman or man; if I was black, red, green or orange; from Haiti or South Africa. I was no longer Nick. I was a shaman of sorts.

Inspired by this incredible sense of freedom and empowerment, Cave began making more and more outrageous and fabulous creations from materials he found in flea markets and thrifts stores across country.

Cave admits he never knows exactly what he is looking for or how he will use it once found. When he does find some suitable object he will spend considerable time working out where best on the body this item can sit. When this is finally worked this out he then develops each design organically from this point. The finished sculptures are worn in performances devised by Cave. There is an obvious similarity between Cave’s Soundsuits and Leigh Bowery’s performance costumes from the eighties and early nineties. Both take traditional crafts (needlework, macramé  and crochet) and use them them to create powerful and beautiful works of (wearable) art. A selection of Cave’s Soundsuits are for sale at the SoundsuitShop.
 
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More of Nick Cave’s fabulous designs, after the jump….
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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02.06.2017
12:04 pm
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Kid posts hilarious tweets asking ‘Does anyone know who this is’?
01.18.2017
09:30 am
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Meet New Zealand-based James Malcolm. Yesterday on Twitter, James posted photos of himself with a certain celebrity in the background asking his followers, “Does anybody know who this is?”

It looks like James was in an airport when this was taken. Was James serious about not knowing who that certain person was or was he trolling his followers? That’s the million dollar question in the Twitterverse today.

One More Time With Feeling, Andrew Dominik’s acclaimed documentary about “this celeb” comes out on Blu-ray and DVD on March 3. Pre-order here.

 

Posted by Tara McGinley
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01.18.2017
09:30 am
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‘The Cat Piano,’ narrated by Nick Cave
01.04.2017
10:19 am
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The Cat Piano is an award-winning short animation directed by Eddie White and Ari Gibson and narrated by Nick Cave. For some odd reason the Wikipedia entry makes note not to confuse this with Keyboard Cat. So let’s not do that, okay?

A brief summary of the animation:

In a city of singing cats, a lonely beat poet falls for a beautiful siren. When a mysterious dark figure emerges, kidnapping the town’s singers for his twisted musical plans, the poet must save his muse and put an end to the nefarious tune that threatens to destroy the city.


 
Released in 2009, The Cat Piano won “Best Short Animation” at the Australian Film Institute Awards and “Best Music in a Short Film” at the APRA Screen Music Awards. The short’s bold animation style was achieved using Adobe Photoshop, with the artists drawing directly into the computer with Wacom tablets.

Watch it in its entirety, below:

 
h/t Coilhouse on Facebook

Posted by Tara McGinley
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01.04.2017
10:19 am
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