Nick Cave's 30 Greatest Hits (Part 1)

When I was 13 years old, I asked my father to tape From Her To Eternity and Murder Ballads for me. I had heard Nick Cave from time to time through my childhood, since my father was a fan, and hearing From Her To Eternity on vinyl back then was a revelation. I had the tape in my walkman every day, my friends didn't understand it at all. From 13 and probably up until I was 18 I was, what can be referred to as, a metalhead. My first contact with metal was through a friend who listened to Manowar and Judas Priest, I had been listening to Queen since I was 10, so the step to heavy/power metal wasn't that big. When I was 14 I was introduced to Korn, Slipknot and Marilyn Manson, which were huge favorites through that year, until Black Metal made its entrace in my life. And between 15 and 18 I was really into that scene, for better or worse, with all its idiocy.
But through all those musical changes in my early musical life, I never let go of that tape with Nick Cave. I had it, kept it, played it until it was unplayable.
When I was 16 I got a vinyl player from my dad, and I started buying vinyl.
Some of the earliest albums I bought on vinyl that year was From Her To Eternity, The Firstborn Is Dead, Kicking Against the Pricks and Tender Prey, I found them all in a used records store one day in ninth grade.
From that momen I was lost in the world of Saint Nick. And I still am. He's the only god in my house.
Me and my wife (girlfriend at that time) went to Hamburg to see him live in 2004, then we saw him in Stockholm 2008, I saw Grinderman on Way Out West that same year and I saw him with the Bad Seeds last year on Where The Action Is in Stockholm.

So, of course, I had to buy the issue of Uncut with Nick Cave's selection of his 30 greatest hits and a Grinderman interview.
But after going through his selection, I felt that there were some songs left out from my favorites. Me and Nick have very different views on his music, of course. He has been writing all of them more or less, and I've just been amazed by them for 12 years.
After reading the selection I thought that I should do my own Nick Cave's 30 Greatest Hits, but realized during the selection of songs that I could never rank them. It was impossible to say that "... is my favorite Nick Cave song of all of them" or "this is number five because...".
But even though the ranking is impossible, I wanted to publish my own selection as a tribute, and to let you know where I come from and where I find my inspiration.
And by being a lyricist, author, poet, idiot, myself, it's hard to separate my impressions of both music, vocals and lyrics. Some songs might not be musical favorites, but lyrical favorites, or vocal favorites.
The Uncut issue had a lot written for each song, but it was written or said by a large number of contributors. I am just one person, so each entry regarding a certain song might not be as extensive as the parts written in the magazine, but sometimes a little is enough, and I'm not one for dissecting songs.

This task took a lot longer than I had imagined, so in order to update the blog pretty today (something I haven't done since July), I've decided to do this in two parts. The first part is the 15 first "greatest hits" according to me, all Birthday Party songs actually. And the second part is from his first "solo" album and forward.

This selection is compiled without placing them in any other order than cronologically, this is it:



Mr Clarinet
This was also one of my favorite tracks on the Three One G compilation of Birthday Party covers, given a french touch on that one.
The weirdness of this track is wonderful.

The Friend Catcher
The intro, the hissing and noise, before this evil little guitar melody, I think I read somewhere that they didn't even touch the guitars for the intro. They just plugged it all in, guitar, pedals and amp, and this was the sound that came out.



Zoo-Music Girl
"My body is a monster driven insane" and the use of brass on this track, do I need to say more?

Nick The Stripper
A self-loathing approach, hideous to the eye, the video, the lyrics, the guitars. Actually one song I've wanted to cover through out my own musical career.

King Ink
I just love the repetetive bass on this track. Rowland's and Mick's guitars are just so screechy and evil. Even if this song got that little melody that's really catchy, it's still feels pretty provoking.



Hamlet (Pow Pow Pow)
I love the bass line in this song, even though I think that Cave could have used the word Pow a little less in the lyrics. But this is really raw, just the intro of the song, when Nick spells out Hamlet over the bass line is really great.

Big-Jesus-Trash-Can
Another song that contains great lyrical lines.
"Fucking rotten business this", "Big-Jesus-Oil-King down in Texas"

Junkyard
From the start, the uttering of the words "I am the King" with that really heavy bass line, this an instant classic. "Honey-child's takin' over this place"

Release The Bats
I think this was the first BP song I heard. My father played it for me, and laughed about the fact that BP had released a collection called "Hits". What my father said was "I hardly think that they actually had any hits". I started to disagree with him pretty soon after hearing this. It was so raw, uncompromising and vicious that I instantly needed to get my hands on everything by the Birthday Party and as fast as I could.



Jennifer's Veil
Just like the "review" in Uncut said, this song might be so great because it's so different. But it's without a doubt a great song without considering the differences from "regular" BP-songs. The slow, dark, music and the mysterious lyrics are equally great.

Mutiny In Heaven
This is maybe not a top song musically for me, but the lyrics to this song is one of my favorite Cave writings of them all. It's filled with so many lines that it makes you think of stop writing yourself, because you could never compete with this.
I mean: "If this is Heaven ah'm bailin out", "perched on mah bed ah was... sticken a needle in mah arm", "Fucken wings burst out mah back" and "Mah threadbare soul teem with vermin and louse"



WildWorld
This is a song that is a vocal favorite, the way Nick uses his voice in this one. It's calming but upsetting at the same time, and he also manages to sing "la la-la-la-la la-la-la-la" without me wanting to kick his teeth out, since I hate that kind humming, wailing or whatever you should call it. But not by him, never by him.

Fears Of Gun
"Fingers down the throat of love". Another song that I've really wanted to cover with a band of my own. And, also, another song where I love the vocals and lyrics a lot more than the actual music. In the beginning of the song, when the vocals comes in:
"Gunn wears his alcoholism well
Finger in bottle and swingin' it still
From bed to sink and back again
Clock is crawlin' round the same"
The wailing in Nick's voice is like heroin to me.

Deep In The Woods
The haunting guitar work in this song is pure gold. Rowland Howards use of the MXR pedals and the reverb on his Fender Twin Reverb just creeps under your skin. And the lyrics, the lyrics:
"saying D-I-E into her skin,
saying DEAD into belly and DEATH into shoulder
Well last night she kissed me but than DEATH was upon her"



A Catholic Skin
I don't know when this song was recorded, but it's pretty early since the songs on this compilation is all more or less credited to the Boys Next Door. This song might have stuck since it got the word catholic in the title/lyrics or because of the great little melody this song is based around. Either way, both the song structure and the melody are parts of this song that I've been humming from time to time during the last 8 years or so.