On the Road with Grinderman: Spin Article

Spin magazine has, for once, a really great article up on its site. No, I mean, really good and entertaining. It's an article all about what it was like for a guy to go touring with Grinderman.

The very first picture of Nick scares me because he looks like Billy Bob Thornton, post-facelift. I think it's just a bad picture. The boa picture is amazing, and it's not the pink one!

Nick goes shopping for magic tricks, almost barfs over chicken gizzards, Warren keeps vomiting or having diarrhea...no, seriously, that's just the first couple pages. OH, and the thing about getting a dog = adorable and hilarious.

It's long, but DEFINITELY worth the read for such gems as:

"The three of them begin ordering for the table: skewers of chicken hearts and gizzards, beef tongue, quail eggs, and French fries with spicy cod roe and mayo sauce. Nick looks pale. "Do you have any, like, plain rice?" he asks the waitress."

"Warren, after four nights of gastrointestinal battle, improbably orders a side of chili. "He just likes the attention," Nick notes.

"Nick blows me away with his one-night stand years ago with a renowned and extremely temperamental diva. They went back to his hotel and got busy. Hungover the next morning, Nick drank the glass of water that was on the night table. Water that contained the diva's contact lens. "She never quite forgave me," he says.

Oh, and there's a disgusting joke Nick tells too...involving incest and, erm...well, anyway...haha.

CLICK HERE!

QUOTE OF THE YEAR: "The only things scarier than Nick Cave are Nick Cave fans."

Cave's Dark Secrets (NYPOST.com)

(Above photo by ? and not from following article.)

THIS INTERVIEW is short but amazing. It contains these and more:

Interviewer: Two words: “Johnny Suede.”

Nick: There you go — what a great role. It’s been downhill ever since. I launched Brad Pitt’s career. He owes me a lot, that boy.

Interviewer: Like your bands, that’s another all-male gang.

Nick: Yeah, it’s terrible for my poor long-suffering wife. All that testosterone and bad smells she has to put up with.

Read more: RIGHT HERE

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Everyone be hoping/wishing/praying for me to meet Mr. Cave this Saturday! I would love to thank him in person for everything.

Grinderman 2: Track by Track

Let me know if you're interested in THIS.

Pedestrian.tv has a GREAT little track-by-track interview with Grinderman.

"MICKEY MOUSE & THE GOODBYE MAN"
Nick Cave: Mickey Mouse & The Goodbye Man sets up a kind of narrative that is echoed throughout the songs on the record and it became the first song because it’s there for that reason and also because it’s very direct. It’s a rock n roll song in a strange kind of way and I think it drags people into the record pretty effectively.

"WORM TAMER"
NC: Well, Worm Tamer, for me, is one of the most extraordinary songs I’ve ever been involved in all the years of making music. I’ve never heard anything like it in my life. It’s got a wry kind of lyric to it, but sonically it’s really extraordinary and I can’t really describe it, you just have to kind of hear it. There’s something really mental about it, I think.
Warren Ellis: Worm Tamer is a very dense number. It’s one that’s going to be interesting to play live, I think. It’s the one song that really doesn’t sound like anything I’ve ever heard before. I think it’s very unique-sounding that song. I really love it; that one and Kitchenette, I think, are probably my favourite songs on the album.

"HEATHEN CHILD"
Jim Sclavunos: Heathen Child, which is the first single to be taken off Grinderman 2, is very groovy, infectiously groovy, deeply and profoundly groovy. You might say it’s a predatory groove; but you can bump and grind to it (even if you’re not a predator). You can belly dance to it, assuming you have the right physique. You can even do the huckabuck, if you are particularly agile. I believe it also lends itself to long private episodes in the bathtub… if the video is any evidence.

"EVIL"
JS: The song Evil, I believe, will endure to prove that it has a timeless appeal, very much like the appeal of its subject matter.

"KITCHENETTE"
NC: Well, Kitchenette is kind of a down home, dirty, stoner blues. It’s Warren’s favourite song on the record, I think.
WE: Well yeah, I really love Kitchenette ‘cause it just has such a wonderful loose feel to it and I think it actually feels… For me it’s one of the best vocals I’ve heard Nick do. It’s really so relaxed and the phrasing is fantastic and it just feels like you’re really in a moment with it. You feel like you’re listening to it as it unfolds, which is actually what it is. I really love that song. I could listen to that one song over and over.
JS: The track Kitchenette offers a sobering look at the sordid conditions of modern marriage and family life and the various temptations and disillusionment besetting this institution. And all of this has been set to a relentless, sinister and growling groove.

"WHAT I KNOW"
NC: Once again, that was a piece that was a moment we captured, purely improvised, that was within this period, when we originally recorded stuff, and it was just this really beautiful quiet kind of moment that was had and we just chopped it out and kind of pasted it into the record.
JS: What I Know has a very different feel for Grinderman. It spotlights our more introspective side. I would liken it to a delicate, fragile bauble being caressed by a mesmerized Cro-Magnon.

"BELLRINGER BLUES"
JS: Bellringer Blues is a battlefield hallucination set to stoner funk. It was the sleeper track of the
album and I think it’s a perfect album closer, as it draws the curtains on the troubled affairs of the album with an air of triumphant rapture.

From THIS LINK

The Story of Deanna

A friend of mine (hi, Lori!) sent me a package a few years ago with this Cave comic taped to it. I totally forgot that I hadn't shared it with you all. I love it. :D

The top ripped off, but obviously the first frame would say, "When I was 12 years old..." This was from a feature in some magazine (SPIN, possibly) called "Real Life Rock Tales." Artists tell their tale, and someone draws it up as a comic. So these ARE Nick's own words, accompanied by artwork from Bryan Talbot. Enjoy! I find it highly amusing, and the frame with Nick and Deanna hiding behind the tree at the church cracks me up for some reason.

Click for full-size.

Puppet in the Hands of a Demented Puppeteer

Nick Cave Fixes has some very, very exciting news. :D

Again, do let me know if you are interested in doing another birthday project for Mr. Cave. The response seemed fairly...non-existent, which is fine if you don't want to. I'd just like to know either way.

I have ideas about things to post, but for now, I'm going to share these.

Scan from Laura, the Great and Glorious. :D This is great because it's an article about The Boys Next Door. Laura, you are amazing. Thank you so much for letting me share this! HUUUUUGE scan, so click and enjoy!



And here's a great portrait by Olaf Heine:

Bearded Magnet

Many of you have seen these, I'm assuming, but my current intoxicated state thought, "DEAR GOD! THE BEARD! MUST SCAN AND UPLOAD!"

I know the scans aren't as good as they could be. The last thing is, like, upside down or backwards or something. I'm drunk...what do you expect?

NOTE: THIS BLOG DOES NOT CONDONE DRINKING. BUT IT REALLY does.

From...some issue of Magnet magazine (Sept/Oct 2001). Enjoy the beard!

Rolling Stone to the Booyah

Okay, my lovelies, I got this Rolling Stone CD-Rom for $4.99 at Borders. These were the only noteworthy Nick Cave goodies on it I could share. ENJOY!!!!

Click for the big. He mentions Tom Waits in the second one. :DDD

Clippings - Nick Talks Dinosaurs and Aboriginal Girls

It's been hectic lately with school. Next week is finals, so over the holiday break, I should be able to resume Cave-tastic posting. I have a stupid/amusing idea for some random thing that I will make soon.

For now, here are some Cave photo goodies that the lovely Caroline sent my way. The interview about Boatman's Call is particularly amusing. Not sure where these articles are from, but anyway. I now share with you all. Thank you, Caroline!

CLICK FOR FULL-SIZE.








Caroline and I think the interview from Melody Maker he mentioned is most likely THIS ONE.

Thank you again, Caroline. <333

No Pussy Blues About a Cat // Jonas Brothers Who?

This little article (link below) about the Do You Love Me Like I Love You documentaries on the remastered collector's editions of the Bad Seeds stuff.

Includes these gems:

'What's immediately obvious is that Cave's stage persona is a bit misleading. Up close he's likeable, with a deadpan sense of humour and self-effacing charm which somehow coexist happily with his unmistakeable aura of rock. He's lost the 'tache too.

We learn Cave feels "physically sick" when he listens to his own music and that he reckons "the bar is pretty low" when it comes to writing lyrics. He gets a big laugh when he explains that his kids think No Pussy Blues is a song about a cat, and an even bigger one when he dismisses the Jonas Brothers in a single word: "Who?"'


From HERE

Old Waves Interview

Okay, so I have no idea how I never went to click on this when it came up during image searches. There is a lovely interview with Nick from '85 '86 that Mick Geyer did for WAVES magazine. Just scroll down to where it says "Nick Cave..." There is a Mick Harvey interview as well.

INTERVIEW IS HERE

Nick Cave in Brazil (R.S. '93)

Due to the request from Laura over at Nick Cave Fixes, I've taken it upon myself to scan all the articles from the clippings set I bought awhile ago. This is the first of those scans; these are from a 1993 issue of Australian Rolling Stone, though I am unsure about which month these are from.

I already uploaded the first photo from the article, but am featuring it again in case you missed it. The article also includes a lovely little Mick Harvey mini-article, and the infamous Nick-dons-a-bra photo. Anyway, enjoy! Click each scan to view in a (hopefully) legible, full-size way.

The OTHER Nick Cave // 2007 Magnet Q&A

This is the funniest thing I have read in for-freaking-ever.

I'm sure many of you, while googling, have come across this OTHER Nick Cave (how dare he have the same name?!) that makes soundsuits. Whatever soundsuits are; I really don't know and frankly couldn't care. To the best of my knowledge, they're suits made out of popcans and hair (maybe Euchrid made them...?) Whatever they are, they'd be much more amusing and strange if our Nick Cave made them. As they are, they're just...really fucking strange.

Anyway, this guy thought that the soundsuit Nick Cave was Mr. Black Crow King, went to the event, and was bouncing off the walls in excitement at having a front row seat.

Then he realized his mistake. It is documented HERE for our amusement. I am SO glad this didn't happen to me. But it's a very well-written, very hilarious play-by-play of the mishap. Bwahahaha. I laughed so hard that my balls dropped. And I don't even have balls, so there ya go.

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"I just couldn't bring myself to write a song called 'No Dick Blues'":
Magnet interview from 2007 HERE.

Playground Dad // '99 L.A. Record Interview

After deeply skimming through THIS ARTICLE from 1999, I came to the end and thought, "that is adorable". So here it is.

At the end of our lunch - during which Cave eats heartily - he asks me for the time and jumps up, stricken, when I tell him. “Oh God, if I don’t go now I’ll be late for Luke,” he says, looking like the 12-year-old I first saw. “You know what it’s like in the playground; I’m terrified of getting into trouble with the teachers.” His father, I think, would be proud of him.

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I was looking for more old interviews...WHY had I never read this interview before? [ LINK ] This is not the entire interview, just a taste. Read the whole thing if you've never done so - it's quite good.

How serious were the deliberations when you were a judge the World Beard And Mustache Championships?

To be completely honest I was at sea—completely at sea. I wouldn’t know one fucking mustache from another one.

How did you decide?

I just said what the guy next to me said. All I know is I felt humbled because I had this kind of pathetic sort of thing growing on my face, and I know there were some extraordinary mustaches and partial beards, particularly. You know—‘A man without a mustache is like woman with one.’

What kind of things do you write in your office that will never see the light of day?

Oh, the hardcore porn that I get into?

Would you be opposed to a posthumous collection of all your pornography?

Not at all. I’m just saving it for a rainy day.

What book have you given away the most copies of?

One book I tended to give away quite a lot which I think is extraordinary is The Informers by Bret Easton Ellis. I think it’s great book. I’m actually a huge fan of his. That particular book—The Informers—line for line is just extraordinary. It has this effect—you feel you like you need to read him fast, and if you don’t and you just check out one line followed by the next line, what he’s writing to me is just extraordinary. He’s definitely a contemporary writer that I’ve sort of turned people on to—that particular book of his.

What films? The Dark Knight?

I saw that—fucking wild! I saw that with my kids. They’re like eight and it blew their fucking heads off. They kind of walked out with the blood drained from their faces.

What’s something practical you can tell people to help them make daily life a little bit better for themselves?

Right now I’m hearing the most beautiful violin I’ve ever heard in my life being played by Warren Ellis.

You’re breaking my heart by proxy.

He’s unbelievable. I don’t know. Who wants to hear what I got to say? You have to try a bit harder than that to wrap up the interview. You want me to do all the fucking work.

—Chris Ziegler