Hello, my friends, old and new! I'm back... Which means that the stories will be coming at more regular intervals from now on. Unless the cold I'm currently suffering from takes a turn for the worse...
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. We have already shone a light on the long and fruitful collaboration between Nick Cave and Australian film director John Hillcoat. The Road (2009) was another chapter - and it was as good as they come. Cave scored the movie with the help of his writing partner of late, Warren Ellis. This is the opening track:
At #50 we find Nick The Stripper, a song from Nick's early days with The Birthday Party, from the album Prayers on Fire (1981) in particular. It was the album's lead single and contained a brass section, courtesy of members of the Melbourne jazz-rock band Equal Local.
The song begins with Nick, half-naked with the word "HELL" painted on his chest, singing "Insect/insect/insect/incest." The song is replete with images of murder, decay, blood, and Kafka-esque insects. Then, of course, there's Cave himself, the literate ghoul with an impressive vocal range who just stepped out of a B horror flick, trying to parry the intensity of the music like an Iggy Pop wasted on goth pills. Nick The Stripper offered us a pretty good insight into how weird things were about to get:
At #49 is Nature Boy, by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, from the album Abattoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus (2004). This song about love found at a flower show was given polished, poppy backing from the Bad Seeds, somehow reminiscent of Cockney Rebel's Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me).
The album's single, Nature Boy, finds itself on Scalvunos' big beat. Cave and his piano use love's irony in contrast with cheap innuendo as underlined by the choir in their best soul croon. Robert Forster of The Go-Betweens is fond of the song - and says:
"I like this song because it plays against type. There is some 'ordinary slaughter' and 'routine atrocity' in the first verse, but this is only to set up an ideal of beauty, which Nature Boy spies in the female form on his wanderings through a flower show in the following verse. Maybe because the melody suggested 'pop song', there is a lightness to the lyric, and some very funny and well-written self-mockery in the portrait the singer makes of himself in relation to his loved one. Some people have Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds as black; with murder, Victorian drama, and the Bible at the front. Nature Boy is another in a run of songs that go back through the band's catalog - including Breathless, Lime Tree Arbour, The Ship Song and Sad Waters - that show the band and its chief songwriter are also at their best when making music with a softer touch."
This is a live version of the song:
At #48 on our countdown is a song called Love Letter, by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, a beautiful reconciliation plea that comes with bewitching backing vocals from Kate and Anna McGarrigle (Rufus Wainwright's mother and aunt). Perhaps slightly underrated by virtue of its parent album, Love Letter is a clear highlight on 2001's No More Shall We Part, where Cave infuses the act of sending a love letter with intense feeling and risk. Redemption is what's at stake, but what is love if not a gamble? The lyrics are an even more successful (and perhaps self-conscious) distillation of what he ended up achieving on The Boatman's Call. Paring language down, finding poetry in a simple statement. "Said something I did not mean to say / It all came out the wrong way" - again, everyone has felt like this. It is part of being human, part of living. Tormenting ourselves with fantasies of "what-ifs?", of alternate timelines. And all set to the most aching, hopeful string arrangement.
Author Jonathan Lethem is a big fan of the song. Here's what he has to say about it:
"Nick is one of those 12 or 15 unmistakeable voices. You wouldn't want to hear him sing opera - and I'm not sure what a technical expert would make of his singing - but his voice just breaks time open. It's so singular and unmistakable that I'd put him right up there in that way with Dylan or Lucinda Williams or Lou Reed. To listen to him is to know someone unsinkable. I've never been a slavish collector of his music, the kind of person who never misses a record, so he's one of those guys who sneaks up on me again and again. I'll suddenly hear a Nick Cave song and think, 'Oh shit, that's great.' He's always a dark horse for me. I adore Love Letter, it's so verbal. He's a great writer as well as a singer. The shattering simplicity of the key phrase is worthy of Shakespeare. And I don't mean that in a bathetic, if-you're-looking-to-praise-a-writer-then-reach-for-Shakespeare way, but in addressing the love letter itself as an emissary: 'Go tell her/Go tell her'. Also worthy of Shakespeare is the verbal trick of using 'letter' (l-e-t) and 'tell her' (t-e-l). That has a power that any writer would die to harness."
This is a from a live performance in 2001:
At #47 and #46 are two songs from the same album, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds' Henry's Dream (1992). Christina the Astonishing, at #47, is one of the album's quieter songs, whose lyrics are based on the life of Christina Mirabilis, a 12th-century woman generally regarded as a Christian saint. Her notoriety began when she was 21 years old. About to be buried and already in the church resting in an open coffin, according to the custom of the time, during the Agnus Dei of her funeral Mass she arose, stupefying with amazement the whole city of St. Trond, in Belgium, which had witnessed this wonder. She died at the age of seventy-four.
This is from a "secret" live performance at Mylos Club at Thessaloniki, Greece, in 1995:
At #46 is the near-apocalyptic Papa Won't Leave You Henry. A great way to open up a mostly great album - with a loud, surging, straightforward rocker. Here, his images are some of the strongest he's yet delivered, as the narrator lurches through a landscape of storms, brothels and urban decay. Probably the most traditionally "post-punk" thing the band ever cut, and the band acquaints themselves with the formula quite well. And listen to Cave snarling the chorus!
Of Papa Won't Leave You, Henry, Cave said in 2005, "I like that song a lot. That was another one written in Brazil. It's this sprawling, lyrical thing. We were playing that [in 2000] as a very slow ballad on a different chordal structure altogether, which then became Darker with the Day [from the 2001 album No More Shall We Part]. It had a different melody, but very slow and it made for a haunting thing. That song was composed over a long period of time and something that I would sing to my little son, Luke. It was kind of a nasty fucked-up lullaby."
This is live at the Paradiso, Amsterdam:
Now, let's continue with last week's statistics; there were still no new stories, yet amazingly the weekly number of visits remained stable. Naturally, last week's Nick Cave countdown (the only new story) was the week's winner. The rest of the top 10 included movie stories, Disco, and Zelim Bakaev.
As far as countries are concerned, the United Kingdom is still the weekly champ for a third week in a row, but it's France that makes history: even though its overall percentage dropped, it dropped much less than that of the United States, propelling it to the all-time #1 position. It is the first time since this blog began that the United States relinquishes the top position at the all-time top 10. The way it is going, the United Kingdom is the only other country at the moment that can penetrate the top 2, but not quite yet.
Canada is also making progress, replacing Italy at #7 on the all-time list. Turkey is also doing great, being just a breath away from replacing Cyprus at #9 on the all-time list. Otherwise, South Africa had another good week and Brazil had its best week in ages.
Here are this week's Top 10 countries. Notice that the top 7 are exactly the same as last week.
1. the United Kingdom
2. France
3. the United States
4. Turkey
5. Canada
6. South Africa
7. Greece
8. Germany
9. Russia
10. Brazil
Here are the other countries that graced us with their presence since our last statistics (alphabetically): Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Cayman Islands, Chile, China, Colombia, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Djibouti, Ecuador, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, FYR Of Macedonia, Gambia, Ghana, Honduras, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar (Burma), the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Saint Lucia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad & Tobago, Uganda, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates, Vietnam, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Happy to have you all!
And here's the all-time Top 10:
1. France = 26.4%
2. the United States = 26.3%
3. the United Kingdom = 12.1%
4. Greece = 6.6%
5. Russia = 2.8%
6. Germany = 1.8%
7. Canada = 1.34%
8. Italy = 1.31%
9. Cyprus = 1.00%
10. Turkey = 0.97%
That's all for today, folks. Till the next one!
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