The Nick Cave Top 75 Countdown (#10-07), a little Eurovision & This Week's Statistics

Hello, my friends, old and new! This is the Nick Cave countdown - and we have finally reached the top 10. I will want to begin with a few words about the Eurovision Song Contest Final, so, let's get on with it!

About the Eurovision Song Contest Final: the show was well-done without being too spectacular. My favorite point was the collaboration of last year's winner Salvador Sabral with Brazilian legend Caetano Veloso, performing last year's winning song (the particular song begins at the 4:30 mark):

As for the results? They were mostly OK, I guess. It would have been nice if Cyprus won for the first time ever, but a second place is not to be scoffed at. Israel's entry was original - and I appreciate originality. Some songs should have done better than they did, but these things always happen; we never get the exact results that we wish for...

For the record, these are my personal top 10 songs of this year's contest: Germany, Italy, France, Sweden, Ireland, Lithuania, Israel, Cyprus, Estonia, and Finland. I also liked the songs from the United Kingdom, Australia, Austria, and Bulgaria. Some did better than others, but I'm not complaining.

These are the final results:

To close the Eurovision story, let me just note that there was a great disparity between the televoters and the national juries. I have made three lists: one where the two voting bodies actually agreed on (less than 10% difference of the total votes between the voters and the juries), one that the juries favored the country in question, and one that the televoters did so.

The televoters and the national juries more or less agreed on: Moldova, Lithuania, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Finland, and Portugal.

The televoters favored these countries over the national juries: Israel, Cyprus, Italy, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Norway, Ukraine, Serbia, and Hungary.

The national juries favored these countries over the televoters: Austria, Germany, Sweden, Estonia, Albania, France, Bulgaria, the Netherlands, Australia, Slovenia, and Spain.

Back to Nick Cave: before the countdown continues, however, this is our bonus track, from one of the soundtracks that Cave wrote in his long and illustrious career. In 2017, Cave and his soundtrack-writing partner Warren Ellis scored three films and we'll hear them all. War Machine was a Netflix production, a wartime comedy/drama directed by David Michôd and starring Brad Pitt. Here's part of the soundtrack:

Now, let's get on with the top 10. At #10 on our countdown is a song from Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds' second studio album, The Firstborn Is Dead (1985). Tupelo, this sweeping and disturbing epic, is not just a riff on John Lee Hoooker's song of the same name, but also a reference to Elvis Presley's birthplace. Indeed, the parent album refers to Jesse Garon Presley, the stillborn identical twin of The King.

Many musicians have written tributes to Elvis, and this is by far the best of the bunch. Cave elevates the man's life to near-Biblical proportions by telling it via an apocalyptic blues - if you can imagine a post-punk Blind Willie Johnson, it would be this. Plus the song rides on a killer bass line and howling vocals, which definitely helps.

Cave has never been content with mere suffering or misery: he's a songwriter who wants to turn tragedy into something ghastlier and grander, a detective forever on the hunt for clues and signs that the end is nigh and Doomsday is upon us. Tupelo, then, takes the tale of Elvis Presley's birth - a strange night in which Mississippi was hit by a torrid flood and his older twin brother, Jesse Garon, was delivered stillborn 35 minutes before - and reimagines it as an apocalyptic warning. "A big black cloud come," snarls Cave as thunder crashes, lightning flashes and rain falls, but it's the otherworldly dread that makes Tupelo into something far more menacing than inclement weather. It's the idea that something monstrous is stirring; that someone - or something - is about to be born that's so terrible it's causing nature to protest and the elements to revolt. Just like WB Yeats' The Second Coming imagined the birth of a vengeful beast that would bring anarchy to the world, so baby Elvis becomes a terrible force making its presence known. "Why the hen won't lay no egg / Can't get that cock to crow / The nag is spooked and crazy," sings Cave over a vamping, biblical din, before hinting at a darker terror: the fate of Jesse Garon, the baby who never was - and an unwilling sacrifice because nothing could survive the arrival of Elvis. "Well, Saturday gives what Sunday steals / And a child is born on his brother's heels / Come Sunday morn the first-born is dead." The King is born, and nothing will be the same again.

The song is a favorite of Alan Vega of Suicide. These are his words:

"I love that song, because of John Lee Hooker's original Tupelo - there has to be a connection, I know Nick listens to the stuff. When I heard Nick did the song, I went, 'Holy shit!' It's about Mississippi in the time of the flood. There's that great line in the Hooker version, sitting in his porch 'watching his shoes going floating down the river.' That wasn't in there, but there were thunder, lightning, crazy vocals, and they had this great guitar player twanging shit. It's punk-something. I can't say it's country or blues, but it has all those things in it, and Nick the surrealist, doing his thing, writing about Elvis and his stillborn twin. [Mute Records founder] Daniel Miller introduced us in the late '90s. We're looking like punks, and he's in a white tuxedo, really spiffy. And I swear to God not a word passed between us! Next time, it was handshakes and hugs…"

This is the original studio version:

This is a shortened version for the official video:

This is live at the Paradiso Club, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 1992:

At #9 is The Weeping Song, found on Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds' album, The Good Son (1990). It sounds like a weirdly inverted, or at least twisted, nursery rhyme. It also grooves along in a way you wouldn't even think was possible from a band like the Bad Seeds.

The song, a magnificent duet between Cave and Bargeld, starts out sounding a bit like Gene Pitney's Something's Gotta Hold of My Heart, which the Seeds covered on Kicking Against The Pricks, before shading into its own powerful, blasted drama.

The Weeping Song, as is often the case with Cave's songs, appears comforting on the surface ("But I won't be weeping long") but there's menace underneath:

"Father, why are all the children weeping?
Oh they are merely crying, son
Oh, are they merely crying, father?
Yes, true weeping is yet to come."

This is the original studio version:

This is live in Athens, Greece, 2017:

At #8 is a song from the Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds' album, Murder Ballads (1996). It's the infamous O'Malley's Bar. Cave and the boys are having an absolute blast here, taking refuge in audacity and launching into one of the most thrilling shoot 'em up stories ever told.

It was the first song written for the album when the band was recording Henry's Dream. According to Cave, the idea for the Murder Ballads album came from this song: "We couldn't use O'Malley's Bar on any of our other records. So we had to make a record, an environment where the songs could exist." Recordings were done towards the end of the Let Love In sessions, and there was some thought that the early material could be made into a film with John Hillcoat. Cave said, "I was going around everywhere with letters of intent, pushing them at everyone I knew, saying 'Do you want to be in this film?'"

Cave's lyrics are famous for mixing images of absolute dread with moments of dark but often hilarious humor. They also have the unique quality of allowing us to enter into the headspace of the song's hero, in this case, an atrocious serial killer. We are introduced to his narcissism:

"I am tall and I am thin
Of an enviable height
And I've been known to be quite handsome
From a certain angle and a certain light."

The connection of murder to sexual gratification:

"Well the thunder from my steely fist
Made all the glasses jangle
When I shot him, I was so handsome
It was the light, it was the angle"

"'Neighbours!' I cried, 'Friends!' I screamed
I banged my fist upon the bar
'I bear no grudge against you!'
And my dick felt long and hard."

The religious illusions:

"I am the man for which no God waits
And for which the whole world yearns
I'm marked by darkness and by blood
And one thousand powder-burns"

..........................................

"And when I turned my gun on the bird-like Mr. Brookes
I thought of Saint Francis and his sparrows
And as I shot down the youthful Richardson
It was Sebastian I thought of and his arrows."

The outlandish and gruesome descriptions of the murders:

"Well, you know those fish with swollen lips
That clean the ocean floor?
When I looked at poor O'Malley's wife
That is exactly what I saw"

"I jammed the barrel under her chin
And her face looked raw and vicious
Her head it landed in the sink
With all the dirty dishes"

"Her little daughter Siobhan
Pulled beers from dusk till dawn
And amongst the townsfolk, she was a bit of a joke
But she pulled the best beers in town"

"I swooped magnificent upon her
As she sat shivering in her grief
Like the Madonna painted on the church-house wall
In whale's blood and banana leaf"

"Her throat it crumbled in my fist
And I spun heroically around
To see Caffrey rising from his seat
I shot that motherfucker down"

....................................

"Well Jerry Bellows, he hugged his stool
Closed his eyes and shrugged and laughed
And with an ashtray as big as a fucking big brick
I split his skull in half."

"His blood spilled across the bar
Like a streaming scarlet brook
And I knelt at its edge on the counter
Wiped the tears away and looked."

"Well, the light in there was blinding
Full of God and ghosts and truth
I smiled at Henry Davenport
Who made an attempt to move."

"Well, from the position I was standing
The strangest thing I ever saw
The bullet entered through the top of his chest
And blew his bowels out on the floor."

Blame Displacement:

"'I have no free will,' I sang
As I flew about the murder
Mrs. Richard Holmes, she screamed
You really should have heard her"

"I sang and I laughed, I howled and I wept
I panted like a pup

I blew a hole in Mrs. Richard Holmes
And her husband stupidly stood up"

"As he screamed, 'You are an evil man'
And I paused a while to wonder
'If I have no free will then how could I
Be morally culpable, I wonder'"

"I shot Richard Holmes in the stomach
Gingerly he sat down
And he whispered weirdly, 'No offense'
And lay upon the ground."

"'None taken,' I replied to him
To which he gave a little cough
With blazing wings, I neatly aimed
And blew his head completely off."

... And eventually, cowardice and cynicism:

"And then there were the police sirens wailing
And a bull-horn squelched and blared
'Drop your weapons and come out
With your hands held in the air'"

"Well, I checked the chambers of my gun
Saw I had one final bullet left
My hand, it looked almost human
As I held it to my head."

"'Drop your weapon and come out!
Keep your hands above your head!'
Well, I had one long hard think about dying
And did exactly what they said."

"There must have been fifty cops out there
In a circle around O'Malley's bar
'Don't shoot', I cried 'I'm a man unarmed!'
So they put me in their car."

"And they sped me away from that terrible scene
And I glanced out of the window
Saw O'Malley's bar, saw the cops and the cars
And started counting on my fingers."

During O'Malley's Bar, Cave and the Bad Seeds are at the height of their powers and the performances rank among the best they have ever recorded. The jazz-from-hell arrangement makes it utterly irresistible. You won't even notice its length.

This is the original studio version:

This version appeared on the 2005 collection B-Sides & Rarities. It originated on the Mark Radcliffe Radio 1 session, 1996:

Finally, for today, we have Straight to You, a song from Henry's Dream (1992), at #7. The album's lead single, a powerful if slow and calm song, it delivers a forceful declaration of love. It was one of the Bad Seeds' most commercially successful releases, and with good reason. It's less of an acquired taste than some of their more dramatic work, following a more linear structure than, say, Tupelo or Nick The Stripper… but it rolls and swells in a way that keeps it burrowed deep in your brain long after you hear it.

Straight To You combined the accessibility of something like Deanna with the kind of high stakes writing Cave excels at. And you can't get a more intense backdrop than the end of the world. Here he paints the most incredible apocalyptic scene, full of crumbling towers, lost saints and thunderous skies. I'm sure we've all thought at one point or another what we would do if told we had but moments to live - Cave is compelled to spend his last moments on earth rushing to his lover. His big warm-hearted vocal hook and Harvey's Dylanesque organ give the song a certain anthemic quality which further distinguishes it from the rest of the Bad Seeds catalog. While they haven't played this song live since 2009 - its original piss-take video might provide a clue as to the uneasy relationship they have with such a relatively straightforward pop song - it surely ranks as one of their finest moments.

Marc Riley, music DJ and former Fall member, says:

"I remember the first time I saw Nick with The Birthday Party, at Rafters in Manchester in November 1981. He'd said in an interview that Fun House by The Stooges and Slates by The Fall - the band I was in at the time - had kept him sane in Australia, so a few of us went to see them. It was a pretty wild set, which culminated with Nick unscrewing a presumably red-hot lamp from above the stage and throwing it into the crowd. It whizzed past my ear and shattered on [Fall bassist] Steve Hanley's shoulder. We played with them quite a few times and they were always eventful."

"One of the great things about Nick is how he's managed to age with dignity. He grew up loving Iggy and Leonard Cohen - and as time passed he was less the former and more the latter, writing some of the most beautiful songs of the last 20 years. At his best, his songwriting is equal to Cohen. And Straight To You is a brilliant example of that. It sounds like a classic Cohen song."

"I once introduced Nick and the Bad Seeds at a bash to celebrate John Peel's 40 years in broadcasting with the words '… and if he does Into My Arms, prepare to see a grown man cry.' Now he has Grinderman as an outlet for his reckless side, I suppose Nick proves you can have your cake and eat it. I also think he's currently the world's best frontman…"

This is the original studio version:

This is live at the Palace Theatre, Melbourne, Australia, 2009:

Now, let's continue with last week's statistics; it was a good week, with a 33.6% rise from last week's visits. The week's winner has been the United States, which again rose, widening the gap with France, which has once more suffered the most losses. Greece, Russia, Australia, and Spain also had percentage gains. The United Kingdom had a minor percentage drop and so did Turkey, while the other major players kept their percentages more or less stable. After all this time, I should mention that the most stable country as far as weekly visits are concerned is Germany.

Here are this week's Top 10 countries:

1. the United States

2. the United Kingdom

3. Russia

4. Greece

5. France

6. Australia

7. Canada

8. Spain

9. Germany

10. Brazil

Here are the other countries that graced us with their presence since our last statistics (alphabetically): Albania, Algeria, Argentina, Armenia, Aruba, Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Côte d'Ivoire, Croatia, Curaçao, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Estonia, French Guiana, FYR Of Macedonia, Georgia, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Mexico, Moldova, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar (Burma), the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Paraguay, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Réunion, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, Trinidad & Tobago, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Zambia. Happy to have you all!

And here's the all-time Top 10:

1. the United States = 27.3%

2. France = 23.9%

3. the United Kingdom = 13.2%

4. Greece = 6.6%

5. Russia = 2.7%

6. Germany = 1.7%

7. Canada = 1.49%

8. Italy = 1.21%

9. Turkey = 1.01%

10. Cyprus = 0.88%

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