The Nick Cave Top 75 Countdown (#15-11) & This Week's Statistics

Hello, my friends, old and new! I've got a message for you all - right after the Nick Cave countdown. So, let's get on with it!

Before the Nick Cave countdown continues, however, let's begin with 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. Wind River was directed by Taylor Sheridan, the screenwriter of Hell or High Water, whose soundtrack we've heard last week. A well-reviewed crime drama that won the Un Certain Regard award at the Cannes Film Festival and also did well at the box-office, it stars Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen. Here's part of the soundtrack:

May I say that all top 15 songs are amazing? I may. At #15 on our countdown is the title track from the 1984 album From Her to Eternity, a Bad Seeds classic, played at shows up through the present, a tense piano/organ beginning then accompanied by the edgy build of the band, pounding drums, stabbing feedback and keyboard parts, and more.

A song co-written with his former partner Anita Lane, it has Cave's protagonist - "standin' like this with my ear to the ceiling" - listening to his dream girl in the room upstairs… But, "This desire to possess her is a wound / And it's naggin' at me like a shrew / But I know, that to possess her is, therefore, not to desire her / O o o then ya know / That lil girl would just have to go! / Go! Go! / From her to eternity!"

From Her to Eternity was chronologically the first great song that Nick Cave released with The Bad Seeds - and it was a clear indication that the Bad Seeds would be a few steps up from what The Birthday Party was, which was already a lot. The right combination of angst and dark humor that Cave embodies so well, the duality beginning with the song's title, a play on the title of the classic 1953 film, From Here to Eternity.

Warren Ellis, who later joined The Bad Seeds and became one of its most prominent members, speaks enthusiastically of the song:

"This blended rock'n'roll with the excitement of improvisation. On every level, the song is a masterpiece. Musically, lyrically and sonically it's extraordinary, a song you couldn't imagine anybody else bettering or even attempting to do."

"The song had that relentless, pumping beat. The drums seemed random, but they weren't at all, then Blixa would come in with that guitar sound. I mean, what the hell was it? It's just the most mysterious song in every aspect, one that keeps building and building. Then the pay-off at the end is unbelievable. When you hear that screaming, you're totally there with the guy, in the room, feeling him go out of his brain. You have this incredible guitar and what feels like an improvised line that gets into this trance-like state that builds up and up into a cathartic release."

"I first met Nick in several rather unsavory households, when we were all doing what we used to do back then. I'd played a little on [1994 Bad Seeds album] Let Love In, but he was too busy constructing wall-charts at the time. He had the whole wall plastered with his lyrics; he was certainly trying one on. Officially I met him at dinner in the mid-'90s, when he asked if I'd like to play on the Murder Ballads session. I just said: 'Fuck, yeah.'"

This is the original studio version:

This is a live version at Werchter, Belgium, 1989:

At #14 on our countdown, we find a song with a long history, which I will gladly tell you. It is Stagger Lee and is found on the album Murder Ballads (1996).

The song is based on a real-life person, "Stag" Lee Shelton, an African American born in 1865 in Texas. He gained a reputation as a pimp and gambler - and on Christmas night in 1895, he shot William "Billy" Lyons in a St. Louis saloon following a dispute. Shortly after the event, the murder became the subject of folk song tradition, known as "Stagolee", "Stagger Lee" and other variants. The earliest versions were likely field hollers and other work songs performed by African American laborers. The first evidence for it is a reference to "Stack-a-Lee" being performed by "Prof. Charlie Lee, the piano thumper" in the Kansas City Leavenworth Herald in 1897.

The song was first recorded by Waring's Pennsylvanians in 1923 and became a hit. This is it:

The version by Mississippi John Hurt, recorded in 1928, is regarded as definitive. Here it is:

Woody Guthrie recorded the song in 1941:

Lloyd Price recorded the song as Stagger Lee in 1958, and it rose to the top of both the R&B and US pop charts in early 1959. His version was ranked #456 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list. This is it:

Author and music critic Greil Marcus explicitly ties the Stagger Lee archetype to the Sly & The Family Stone song Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin), a #1 US hit in 1970 with a killer bass line:

In The Bad Seeds cover, though, Stagger Lee, becomes the most evil protagonist you could possibly find in a song. There's an irksome tendency to revere Cave as a pure misanthrope, a humorless high priest of gloom, but he's often at his best when he's actually having fun, and Stagger Lee is one of his guiltiest thrills: guitars slither and strike like coiled rattlesnakes while he purrs obscenity after obscenity, rolling around in nasty sex, rampant murder, and man-on-man fellatio and having a depraved ball. These are some of the lyrics:

"But there's something I have to say before you begin
You'll have to be gone before my man Billy Dilly comes in,
Mr. Stagger Lee."

"I'll stay here till Billy comes in, till time comes to pass
And furthermore, I'll fuck Billy in his motherfucking ass."
Said Stagger Lee

"I'm a bad motherfucker, don't you know?
And I'll crawl over fifty good pussies just to get one fat boy's asshole,"
Said Stagger Lee

Just then Billy Dilly rolls in and he says, "You must be
That bad motherfucker called Stagger Lee."
Stagger Lee

"Yeah, I'm Stagger Lee, and you better get down on your knees
And suck my dick because if you don't, you're gonna be dead, "
Said Stagger Lee

Billy dropped down and slobbered on his head
And Stag filled him full of lead
Oh yeah"

The Australian film director, John Hillcoat, who has collaborated with Cave many a time, says:

"Nick is known for his lyrics. But to adapt a song and make it your own is a real art - like what Johnny Cash did with The Mercy Seat, where when you hear it you think that came from Cash, it's his. Nick's done the same with Stagger Lee. Musically it's a turning point. It's got real funk to it. And the detail of the violence, and the use of the sound effects, and the way it builds then explodes with screeching points forwards to the wildness of Grinderman. Lyrically, I recall talking to Nick about Murder Ballads. And what he managed to do is he really got inside these characters' heads. He makes the story his own by the perverse humor, making it really filthy and dark - like hardcore hip-hop, Nick Cave-style. He really gets inside the character so it's got this heightened drama that's very Nick. It's something he's perfected over the years. When he came out of rehab, I think that gave him more direct access to expressing his feelings. From the get-go, when we made Ghosts… Of The Civil Dead together, it's like he's a million different characters inside his head that express different elements of himself. You can track that through his career, how these characters would emerge. He's like a controlled schizophrenic."

This is the original studio version:

This is a crazy live version at Austin City Limits on PBS:

At #13 is another song from Murder Ballads, Henry Lee. There'll be two more songs from this album in the top 10. Henry Lee is based on a traditional folk song about a woman who kills her man for failing to love her. This is a dark traditional ballad which features PJ Harvey, sharing vocals with Cave. The blend of their voices on the choruses and alternating singing the verses are strong selling points in the recording's arrangement. One of the few hits in Nick's career and one can see why - the combination of a gorgeous melody and haunting lyrics make for something quite unforgettable indeed.

When you watch the video for Henry Lee, you can witness the first sparks of something special starting to catch light: a connection between a pair of reckless souls who put so much of themselves in their own art it's enough to make you squirm. PJ Harvey and Cave have shared an eerily similar career path - two artists who both clung to abrasive, aggressive noise to begin with, unsure how else to express themselves, before becoming more varied, more mellow and more experimental over time - and after this, they'd begin a doomed relationship that ended in messy heartbreak. And yet here they tread a nervy line between awkwardness and intimacy: Harvey looking like Cave's doppelganger with their matching ghoulish white skin and black swept-back hair, dressed in matching suits, twisting and winding themselves around one another. They could never have become romantically embroiled and their performance would still capture a dangerous kind of chemistry. The song itself is a revamped version of the folk song Young Hunting, and the alchemy is etched into the recording too: a gentle, gorgeous piano ballad that feels like it belongs to a dusty old saloon in old America, and two singers cooing at each other like the ghosts of Bonnie and Clyde. A dark duet of regret and recrimination between two kindred spirits.

Alison Mosshart (The Kills/Dead Weather) admires the song:

"It's a beautiful story, and I love the way Nick sang it with PJ Harvey. The storytelling is very visual - when he rejects her, she stabs him with a penknife and throws him down a well. It's a pretty normal story. It's about love that goes really wrong. And love that was always meant to go wrong, I guess. His lyrics are amazing, I don't know if anyone else could sing them. He never sounds fake. I've admired Nick for years. But when I did finally get to meet him, it was pretty weird. I went over at a party and he was screaming over my shoulder, as I was trying to shake his hand. I was heartbroken, and for two years I thought Nick Cave was a horrible person."

"Then the next time, the Bad Seeds were playing the same venue as us and we went to see them play, and afterwards I talked to Nick all night, about a million and one things. He swore he didn't believe me about our first meeting, he probably thought I was delusional. But I got him to recreate it, and took a photo of it, with him screaming in my face and getting ready to punch me…"

This is the original studio version:

This version is performed on Mark Radcliffe's "White Room" in 1996.

At #12 is a song from the album Your Funeral... My Trial (1986) called The Carny. The Carny is the definite highlight of the album, the cracked music-box/carnival accompaniment courtesy of Harvey utterly appropriate for Cave's tale of a circus gone horribly wrong in ways Edward Gorey would appreciate.

Nick's extended pieces tend to be fascinating, and this one is no exception. This tale, reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe, is an honestly terrifying piece of work, blending raw emotional intensity, morbid insanity, and a great eye for details and description in the lyrics. He does all this accompanied by what sounds like a carnival slowly decaying and falling apart. Oh yeah, and it's really, really jacked up.

The producer of that album, Flood, remembers:

"It was the first track we recorded for the Your Funeral… My Trial sessions. I remember Mick Harvey arrived in the studio with the guts of an old grand piano, that was the basis of the sound. It was just the strings, attached to a metal frame. He tuned certain notes and used a guitar plectrum to pick the notes. I was like, 'Whoah, what is this?' It then ended up as The Carny. It was done bit by bit. It was a question of getting a few oblique sounds that seemed to fit the whole mood."

"That was the first day of recording Your Funeral… My Trial, and that kind of set the tone for the whole record. In some respects, it encapsulated everything about that album on one track. This was in Hansa, Berlin, so it seemed perfectly suited to the location. Berlin was part of The Carny, without a shadow of a doubt. I abhor opera, and I abhor musicals even more, but it's theatre. The whole Kurt Weill thing, that is much more what Nick feels at home with. With Nick, you're never complacent and you always end up with some absolutely fantastic piece of music. He's given me some very bizarre requests, but you give it back as best you can. The most bizarre request I ever had from Nick? 'I want to sound as if I'm singing in a concrete box…'"

This is the original studio version:

Wim Wenders had Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds performing The Carny and From Her to Eternity in one of his finest films, Wings Of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin), in 1987. It's this scene:

This version was filmed for Live and Loud on MTV on May 1997:

Finally for today, at #11, is the song Distant Sky, from Nick's latest album, Skeleton Tree (2016). This album honors the dead by making sense of the pain of the survivors, and the harrowing and beautiful Distant Sky (a duet with Else Torp) finds a point where these two sides meet and find peace.

Distant Sky may initially come on like a simple invitation to escape ("Let us go now, my one true love / Call the gasman, cut the power off!"), but once the divine Danish vocalist Else Torp emerges, the song elevates to a form of secular last rites. Musically, Distant Sky is all soothing organ tones and celestial orchestration, but the song's weightlessness is utterly crushing, as Cave crystallizes the mood of Skeleton Tree in one trembling, devastating line: "They told us our gods would outlive us / But they lied."

This is the original studio version:

This version is live at the Greek Theater, Los Angeles, June 2017:

Now, it's time for my message. As I woke up today, I switched on my desktop and checked for comments on GayCultureLand. There was one homophobic comment. I immediately erased it, as I did with a few homophobic comments that have been dirtying up our blog recently. I do this to protect you from the negative vibes. I want this to be a safe space. But then again, nobody is protecting me from the negative vibes...

Then I thought if all these homophobes take the time to leave hateful comments, why don't the people who enjoy what I'm doing take the time to say something nice?

This is what I want to ask of you. I'm experiencing a bit of a burnout and I want some incentive to keep going. I only want two minutes of your time, to write something nice on this page. It can just be a greeting or a smiley face, I don't care. Just write something. Here, not on Facebook. I admit that if I don't receive any comments, there may not be another story, not for a long, long time. It's up to you.

Because this blog always has a song for every occasion, to those who will decide to leave a comment in order to lift up my spirits, I dedicate Thank You For Being A Friend by Andrew Gold:

... And to those who will ignore my request, I dedicate Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell. Remember how the song goes, "Don't it always seem to go / That you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone"...

Also, I dedicate a song to me: The Who's I've Had Enough:

What will you miss if you don't comment? The Nick Cave top 10, our annual visit to the Eurovision Song Contest, which will take place during the following week, the Oscar Songs countdown, the Motown countdown, as well as other countdowns that I have in mind, the LGBT or LGBT-related artists of the 80s, 90s, 00s, and 10s, and possibly much more.

Speaking of the Motown countdown, I have received lists from Joanna, Alan, I have prepared my own list, and that's about it... This is the last week for voting. Surely, you can come up with at least 20 songs to vote for. Come on, now...

Now, let's continue with last week's statistics; this has been the week that the United States and Russia shone most brightly. Also, Canada did well. The United Kingdom had a minor percentage drop, France had a slightly bigger one, while the other major players kept their percentages more or less stable.

Here are this week's Top 10 countries:

1. the United States

2. Russia

3. the United Kingdom

4. Greece

5. Canada

6. France

7. Australia

8. Italy

9. Germany

10. Brazil

Here are the other countries that graced us with their presence since our last statistics (alphabetically): Algeria, Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Aruba, Austria, the Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belgium, Botswana, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Ecuador, Fiji, Finland, French Guiana, Gabon, Guadeloupe, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Jamaica, Japan, Jersey, Kenya, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, Montenegro, the Netherlands, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Palestine, Panama, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad & Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Turks & Caicos Islands, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Vietnam. Happy to have you all!

And here's the all-time Top 10:

1. the United States = 27.0%

2. France = 24.3%

3. the United Kingdom = 13.3%

4. Greece = 6.5%

5. Russia = 2.6%

6. Germany = 1.7%

7. Canada = 1.48%

8. Italy = 1.21%

9. Turkey = 1.03%

10. Cyprus = 0.88%

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