The Nick Cave Top 75 Countdown (#70-66) & This Week's Statistics

Hello, my friends, old and new! I can tell that you liked our new countdown. Nick Cave may not be a star of the magnitude of Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin, but he's very much appreciated by music lovers all over the world.

I will be including songs from every period of his professional life, under many different names, except for the soundtracks, because - apples and oranges. However, it would be a pity not to introduce them to you, since they're obviously worth listening. What I will do is present them in the form of bonus tracks. I begin today with the soundtrack to The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, from 2007.

The first 3 songs in today's countdown are from Grinderman. It was formed by Cave as "a way to escape the weight of The Bad Seeds" and the band was originally known as Mini Seeds. The band's name was inspired by a Memphis Slim song, Grinder Man Blues, which Cave is noted to have started singing during one of the band's early rehearsal sessions. The band's eponymous debut studio album, Grinderman, was released in 2007 to extremely positive reviews and the band's second and final studio album, Grinderman 2, was released in 2010 to a similar reception.

Grinderman sounds like a wild, nasty, wooly rock & roll monolith who simply need to let it rip and then see what happens. Along with Warren Ellis, Martyn P. Casey and Jim Sclavunos (right, 3/7 of the Bad Seeds), Cave and company turn in a squalling, raucous, twist-and-turn garage band set that takes on all comers. The song at #70, called Honey Bee (Let's Fly to Mars), while being part of the album, is so freaking awesome it transcends the garage band thing altogether and sounds like some flipped-out cross between Suicide, the Stooges, Bo Diddley and the Scientists.

Man in the Moon, the song at #69, is found on the same album but is quite different: a quiet (as quiet as Grinderman could be) study of nostalgia and loss and more innocent times. The lyrics:

"My daddy was an astronaut
That's what I was often taught
My daddy went away too soon
Now he's living on the moon
Hang on to me people we're going down
Down among the fishes in an absence of sound
It's the presence of distance and it's floating in time
It's lack and it's longing and it's not very kind
Sitting here scratching in this rented room
Scratching and a-tapping to the man in the moon
About all the things that I've been taught
My daddy was an astronaut"

At #68 we find a song from Grinderman 2, called Mickey Mouse And The Goodbye Man. It's the song that comes closest to the songs on the previous album but feels like it comes by way of Patti Smith's Radio Ethiopia, Howlin' Wolf, and the Scientists. It's pure scummy, sleazy, in-the-red dissonant rock.

This raucous guitar number opens with a few light notes, only to lightly explode a few seconds later with intense drums, heavy bass, and Cave's gruntled voice. The song itself is like a rolling stone, gathering more and more power as it goes on. The first instrumental chorus fails to leave an immediate impression but second time around, Cave delivers the feral story of a man and his brother with a vocal thump. Warren Ellis' distorted sounds, at first, seem like the workings of a madman, but the sophisticated use of melody only supports the belief that the band are on top of their game.

We've heard from Grinderman now let's hear from the Birthday Party. At #67 is a single they released in August 1981 called Release the Bats. First conceived as a jokey filler, this went on to become an early live favorite. The tongue-in-cheek sentiment was largely lost on legions of Goths, who made it a dancefloor staple.

Tongue-in-cheek or not, the song is pure dynamite. From a sound that isn't quite punk, isn't quite rock, and simply isn't like anything else that was being done musically at the time to the absolutely insane lyrical tirade by the legendary Nick Cave (Sex horror sex bat sex horror sex vampire sex bat horror vampire sex cool machine horror bat. Bite! Cool Machine. Bite! Sex vampire. Bite!), Release The Bats stands as one of the most important songs of the post-punk era, and it fueled a generation of performers, setting the standard for aggressively dark music.

Let's listen to what Nick Launay (Birthday Party/Bad Seeds producer) has to say:

"This was one of the first songs I ever produced when I was 20 years old. I got a call from their record company, 4AD in London, and they asked if I wanted to work with The Birthday Party. The funny thing about that session was we went into the studio after midnight, because that was the only time we could get cheap studio time. It was done in a recording studio where, during the day, I was a studio assistant working with Phil Collins. It was very odd, it felt like at night I opened the door and all the bats flew in, it all got very dark and angry. We bashed out Release The Bats and [B-side] Blast Off! in one night and it felt like I was messing with the Devil. I was going to the dark side. They were all on heroin, I think, but I was very innocent of all that because I hadn't been around it. I just thought they all had attitude. It felt like I was working with vampires, and it has helped me get into gothic nightclubs ever since. That's another reason it's one of my favorites."

I've given you three feral songs and one moderately low-tone, I think I should close today's presentation with a song that shows Nick's evolution and maturity. Girl In Amber, the song at #66, comes from Skeleton Tree (2016). When singing about a "Girl in Amber," his voice noticeably quivers: he sings about lacing up the shoes of his "little blue-eyed boy" and "I used to think that when you died you kind of wandered the world / In a slumber 'til you crumbled ... Well, I don't think that anymore." In Cave's wounded voice, you hear him grapple in real-time with the incidental prophecies of his lyrics and his need to get the job done. In one of the album's most harrowing moments, he closes the bleak, grief-stricken ballad by repeating the words, "Don't touch me," as if a consoling hug would only exacerbate the pain.

(If you haven't read last week's countdown, please note that Cave's 15-year-old son, Arthur, died after falling from a Brighton cliff while the singer was halfway through writing this album.)

Now, let's continue with last week's statistics; it was a more amazing week than usual, with a 54% increase in the number of weekly visits. We have now reached again the dizzy heights that we have scaled at New Year. This is how the weekly visits for 2018 so far, look on a line graph that I prepared:

All of the week's stories did great, but the last story, the movies of 1989, really took off: in 24 hours, it's already the 4th story of the last 30 days.

As far as countries are concerned, France is still kicking ass, but this week they were joined by Turkey, which scored a really impressive week. Italy and South Africa also did well, Canada and the United Arab Emirates are steady-as-they-go, while the United Kingdom, Greece, Russia, Germany, and Cyprus experienced minor drops.

Don't let this week's second position fool you, the United States has suffered the biggest losses. If this trend continues, its position at the top of the all-time list may be threatened as soon as two weeks from now. This is the first time since this blog existed that the #1 position is open for grabs. Food for thought...

Here are this week's Top 10 countries.

1. France

2. the United States

3. Turkey

4. Greece

5. the United Kingdom

6. Italy

7. Russia

8. Canada

9. Germany

10. South Africa

Here are the other countries that graced us with their presence since our last statistics (alphabetically): Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Egypt, El Salvador, Finland, French Polynesia, Ghana, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mauritius, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Paraguay, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Republic of Congo, Réunion, Senegal, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, Trinidad & Tobago, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, US Virgin Islands, Venezuela, Vietnam, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Happy to have you all!

And here's the all-time Top 10:

1. the United States = 29.7%

2. France = 26.3%

3. the United Kingdom = 8.0%

4. Greece = 7.5%

5. Russia = 3.3%

6. Germany = 2.1%

7. Italy = 1.36%

8. Cyprus = 1.15%

9. Canada = 1.10%

10. the United Arab Emirates = 0.36%

That's all for today, folks. Till the next one!