The Nick Cave Top 75 Countdown (#55-51) & This Week's Statistics

Hello, my friends, old and new! You're probably wondering where I've been (or not...) I think that this is the first time that I go from statistics to statistics without a new story in-between. You see, I'm on holiday, so my free time is definitely more limited. Next week will probably be similar, but after that, I promise to try and write more regularly.

Before the countdown continues, however, let's begin with our bonus track, from one of the soundtracks that Nick Cave wrote in his long and illustrious career. The Proposition (2005) was yet another collaboration of several between Cave and Australian film director John Hillcoat. It was probably their best. This is the opening track:

... And this is the beautiful The Rider Song:

At #55 is a song by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds called Far From Me. It is found on one of Nick's best album's, The Boatman's Call (1997). It's a song cycle equally inspired by Cave's failed romantic affairs and religious doubts, and it's the former that characterizes Far From Me.

Cave closes "The Secret Life of the Love Song" (a lecture written and performed by Cave himself at the 1998 Vienna Poetry Festival) with a discussion of this song. It took four months to write - the same duration as the relationship it describes. The first verse was written during the first week where, as always, pain is present alongside pleasure, but the two lovers are still together. We read them as separate from the "world where everybody fucks everybody else over", but of course it is not quite that simple, and the song goes on to describe the relationship's end. Where we might initially have read the title as a matter of geography, we now understand it to be a distance of the heart. Cave suggests that the song had "its own agenda" - in other words, it refused to let itself be finished until the traumatic moment when the breakup had occurred.

This is the studio version:

This is a live version, from KCRW:

At #54 is a song from the same album, called Brompton Oratory. One of the best songs to appear on the album, this finds Cave's narrator privileging human beauty over spiritual nourishment: "No God up in the sky… could do the job that you did, baby…" This is what Chris Bailey of The Saints has to say of the song:

"I relate to this because much as I wish I could be a man of faith, I'm a man of doubt. Nick encapsulates that quest from time to time. There are lines here that are funny, wrestling with spirituality and filthy. Nick's a randy old coot, even when he's at the altar. Nick is fairly cosmopolitan but has an Australian larrikin element - and not just because half his band looks like Ned Kelly. It's the notion of being on the outside. The first time I toured with him was very funny because I had this vision that I was traveling with a bunch of evangelical Presbyterians. The Bad Seeds were like this touring Protestant circus, and they're very dysfunctional as a unit - there are Bad Seeds, and there are Naughty Seeds! But it somehow works brilliantly. I remember getting on a tour bus one day and thinking, 'Ahah! I see the way that you rise in this organization is to look exceedingly dour and carry the biggest book.' When they travel en masse they've all got these heavy, impressive-looking tomes, and whoever had the biggest was the most popular for that day. It wasn't necessarily Nick, it was very democratic…"

This is the studio version:

This is live at MTV's Live 'n' Loud:

At #53 is a cover called The Singer: it is found on the Bad Seeds album, Kicking Against The Pricks (1986) and was written by Johnny Cash and Charlie Daniels. It was previously recorded by Tommy Roe, Johnny Cash, Glen Campbell, and Burl Ives. The Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds version is a darkly atmospheric cover based on the Johnny Cash version, with heavy twanging guitar: "Will they marvel at the miracles I did perform/And the heights I did aspire/Or will they tear out the pages of the book to light a fire…" This is Richard Hawley talking about it:

"I was looking through some singles one day in FON Records in Sheffield and saw this Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds record. It had a great cover, him with his big black guitar, looking pretty cool. I asked the guy in the shop to put it on and it was The Singer, the old Johnny Cash and Charlie Daniels song. It just blew my mind. The original version came out in 1968 I think [called The Folk Singer, it was the B-side to Folsom Prison Blues] and the guitar is fairly tame. And all the dark side of the song is very orchestrated. There's an undercurrent of darkness in the original, but Nick Cave's version seemed to encompass everything that I deeply loved – Johnny Cash, Lee Hazlewood, Sanford Clark, Duane Eddy's guitar playing. It wasn't like he was copying them. It was a bit like a car crash, but Nick Cave won. He confronted and encompassed all those things and moved it forward. I actually think Nick's version is better than Johnny Cash's."

This is the studio version:

This is a live version from a TV performance:

At #52 is Shivers, a song by the Boys Next Door, who would later become the Birthday Party. It is the tenth and final track from the band's debut studio album Door, Door, released in 1979. It is the album's best track and only single. Written by the band's guitarist, Rowland S. Howard, when he was only 16, the track was Nick Cave's first big break outside of the underground music scene. It now holds an important place in his back catalog as an earlier indicator of what that incredibly unique voice and delivery would go on to achieve. It is still regarded as one of the best Australian songs of all time and has been covered by the likes of Laura Jane Grace (of Against Me!), Courtney Barnett and the Screaming Jets.

The post-punk ballad featuring lyrics regarding teenage relationships and suicide was originally intended as humorous by Howard, but Nick Cave transformed it into an unashamedly melodramatic example of post-adolescent anguish. This is the studio version:

This is a live version (21st December 1978):

This is the composer's own version. Here's Rowland S. Howard (1959-2009):

Finally for today, at #51, is a song called Saint Huck, found on From Her to Eternity, the debut studio album by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, released on 18 June 1984 on Mute.

The Birthday Party were an unholy force of evil noise, but by 1983 Nick Cave had grown tired of their mess and muck. Exhausted from the drug-related bickering and strangled by his relationship with guitarist Rowland S. Howard, he and drummer Mick Harvey fled to start anew and formed the Bad Seeds' first fixed lineup with ex-Magazine bassist Barry Adamson, guitarist Hugo Race, and Einstürzende Neubauten's Blixa Bargeld. It was Bargeld who held the key to Cave's liberation: a divine savior disguised as a haughty oddball with a fondness for making music with ear-splitting electronic drills, and responsible for a bleaker sound than the Birthday Party's abrasive racket. It's his shrieking, discordant clang that underpins Saint Huck, the first song the Bad Seeds recorded together, as Cave hams it up like a crazed preacher in the throes of zealous rapture. Mark Twain's much-loved Huckleberry Finn is transformed from innocent do-gooder into devilish ne'er-do-well, a lost soul who abandons the path of righteousness and finds himself wading through the stinking, sinful swamp of the "dirty ol' man latrine" instead until a bullet is lodged in his brain.

This the group's second guitarist between 1983 and 1984, Hugo Race, talking about the song:

"Nick has a lot of presence. And a great sense of humor. People don't tend to see that, but it's there. He can tell a joke, but he's more about picking up on a conversation and steering it somewhere else, which often reveals something about the people who are talking. The first time I played with Nick was learning the songs from the Mutiny! EP when we were touring Australia.

The Bad Seeds' brief was to come up with a new take on everything; Nick was really looking for originality and authenticity. With Saint Huck, the bass work was already there when I joined the band, then we added things. The lyrics were rewritten a lot, too. That process of elimination was key to the way we worked. For Nick, From Her To Eternity was an important record. He had to make a break with the past, as well as do something that didn't reflect The Birthday Party but had the same energy."

This is the studio version:

This is live at Knopf's Music Hall, Hamburg, Germany, August 15th, 1987:

Now, let's continue with last week's statistics; since there were no new stories, one would expect a drop in the number of visits. Instead, there was a 12% increase for the week, with all the stories from 2018 benefitting from the lack of new material.

As far as countries are concerned, for a second week in a row, it was the United Kingdom's turn to shine; it easily sits at the top of the weekly chart. Turkey is still going strong - and so are Canada, South Africa, Spain, Ukraine and Australia. The other major players experienced drops - the United States most of all. Our friends from the US are actually feeling the French breathing down their neck.

Here are this week's Top 10 countries.

1. the United Kingdom

2. France

3. the United States

4. Turkey

5. Canada

6. South Africa

7. Greece

8. Spain

9. Ukraine

10. Australia

Here are the other countries that graced us with their presence since our last statistics (alphabetically): Albania, Algeria, Argentina, Armenia, Austria, the Bahamas, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Brunei, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Cayman Islands, Chile, China, Colombia, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Estonia, Ethiopia, Finland, Georgia, Germany, Grenada, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Lebanon, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Namibia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Réunion, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Singapore, Somalia, South Korea, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, Trinidad & Tobago, the United Arab Emirates, US Virgin Islands, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe. Happy to have you all!

And here's the all-time Top 10:

1. the United States = 27.2%

2. France = 26.9%

3. the United Kingdom = 10.9%

4. Greece = 6.9%

5. Russia = 2.9%

6. Germany = 1.9%

7. Italy = 1.37%

8. Canada = 1.25%

9. Cyprus = 1.04%

10. Turkey = 0.81%

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