Nick Cave interview, Tupelo
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For Pitchfork.tv, I've done a brief interview with Nick Cave (part 1, part 2). If I looked uncomfortable, I was. Try sitting for half an hour under blindingly bright lights on a loveseat with your body facing a camera but your head twisted towards a rock star for whom any time is too early. That sated my rock star appetite for a while.
Tupelo (Nick Cave)
Tupelo (Sikth)
As far as I know, metal bands have covered Nick Cave twice. On Garage Inc., Metallica attempted "Loverman" from 1994's Let Love In. We will speak no more of that. Better is Sikth's faithful take on "Tupelo," from 1985's The Firstborn Is Dead, my favorite Nick Cave record. He revisited its haunted, rain-soaked atmosphere (and the record's title concept) in his 1989 novel And the Ass Saw the Angel. The book is good, often great, but overlong. As Cave explains in the interview, it went to print completely unedited. Evidently, an edited version is due out sometime. I'll recommend that highly in advance.
Labels: clee, features, interviews
10 Comments:
Great cover, thanks for posting. I wonder if Sikth knew that it was written about the birth of Elvis and his twin brother...
Metallica's Nick Cave cover is just depressing--my all-time favorite metal band covering one of my all-time favorite artists and totally sucking at it. Now we know why Hetfield hasn't sung blatantly about sex before or since.
I hope you caught Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds on tour this year--it's as great a live show as you'll ever see.
Metallica...
Why?
That was one of those where you had to wonder who was in their ear saying, 'Guys...Do you like platinum? Because you better get ready for some!'
ben - I actually missed the current tour. I've heard mixed things about it, mainly that Cave's newfound looseness is either good or bad.
nooge - My guess is that the band's personal and professional judgment got mixed up. Garage Inc. could have been a killer single disc instead of a filler-plagued double set.
a hand cream salesman? I wonder if his books are any good.
Great interview, Cosmo. Interviewing on camera is harder than it looks.
Well, his lyrics are often good, and they've been published in various books (King Ink I and II, Complete Lyrics). King Ink evidently has some plays of his, which I haven't read. And the Ass Saw the Angel is his only novel to date, and in its current unedited form is worth a library rental but not necessarily a purchase. He's also written an introduction, which I haven't read, to a Biblical book.
He's articulate, smart, and literate (his vocabulary is astonishingly large), so one would probably gain from reading anything by him. His writing certainly adds another dimension to the "world" that is Nick Cave.
Nice work, dude. I shudder to think how badly I would suck at interviewing someone of that stature on camera. It would be embarrassing.
BTW, I've been getting a lot of people hopping over to my site from yours. Thanks for the link action. Every time I'm over here, which isn't often enough, I'm impressed by just how smart and interesting your posts are. Makes what I'm doing seem far more frivolous than it already is...
Thanks for the kind words, Adem. It means a lot coming from you. Your blog project is completely valid and worthwhile. There's that old saw about people who don't remember the past are doomed to repeat its mistakes.
I watched both parts--well done! You get the sense that maybe him finding out that London wasn't what it was supposed to be, had shaped some of his work.
You did look a bit uncomfortable, but I think that's sort of a given in that he's Nick Cave, and at the start of the interview, they do a closeup of him where he looks like he has a really icy cold stare, like you interrupted him at 11 o clock at night and that he's gonna like, kill you. I noticed that he didn't laugh once! He's a pretty intense guy, and i'd imagine, slightly intimidating. But he seemed to be really forthcoming with information, which is always a good thing, because he'd felt comfortable with you.
The Grinderman album last year was amazing. It was what the new Stooges' album should have been. All the dark tortured soul/ crooning, protopunk, psychedelics, minimalism....
Have you seen this excerpt? It's Nick doing the vocals to "Swampland"....what intensity!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXfcLpOAazc
!
Were you nervous?
Ryan - that video was amazing. Thanks for sharing.
roxy - I was extremely nervous, if it wasn't obvious from the video. I think most people would be.
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