neonwilderness
What would Badgers do?
I've had a few albums for a while, but have been getting more recently. The Abattoir Blues Tour is a current favourite 
Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds
- Thread starter kyser_soze
- Start date
You do know what "the mercy seat" is in the Bible, yes?
As far as I can see (and admittedly I only started listening to him yesterday, but spent yesterday doing little else) his entire sensibility is Christian. Not to mention his imagery. I find it impossible to imagine that anyone but a Christian could make that music. But I'll listen to the songs you suggest and get back to you.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Ok, I just looked it up. Didn't know that. It doesn't surprise me – his songs are full of Christian allusions. The man himself may or may not call himself a Christian, but his songs are not 'Christian songs'.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
he doesnt believe in an interventionist god tho.
So, if he is a 'Christian' (as oppossed to a theist with a fascination with xian imagery and literature) he's a hypocritical arse of a one.
But, then again, arent they all?
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
He didn't believe in an interventionist god on the day he wrote Into My Arms. Maybe he does now. Maybe he does sometimes and not other times. Who cares?
I'm ducking out of this argument now. It doesn't matter.
OK, just did. First of all, another classic obv. But as far as I can see it describes a conversion. The initially atheist speaker is led to Christ by his love for the woman. An extremely common theme in Christian devotional literature--as John Donne put it: "here th'admiring her my mind did whet/ To seek thee God, so streams do show their head."
OK I'll check the other one now.
Best things he's done, imo, are the acoustic versions of Deanna, Mercy Seat and City of Refuge which I think you can get on that rarities CD. Seen him 3 or 4 times live but not for years. I get a bit bored of him and then go through phases of rediscovering old albums. Yeah, he is obsessed with Faulkner and the Southern Gothic.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
That's an interesting take on it. He appears to me to be man, a little like Gogol, who truly, desperately, wants to believe.
But as I said before, ultimately, I don't care whether he does or not.
Well it does make more sense of the songs.
Just listened to "Nobody's Baby," seems very Christian to me.
Does this mean I'd like PJ Harvey too?
.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
You don't know PJ Harvey either? You've got a lot of seriously good new music coming to you. I defy you not to like PJ Harvey.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
To me it is a man confronting the unknowability of death. Would you consider The Seventh Seal to be a 'Christian film'?
You don't know PJ Harvey either?
It's pathetic innit. I've basically only listened to roots reggae for the last five years or so. I thought rock was for kids. Still do really.
Again a rather Christian theme it seems to me. For the atheist, death is quite knowable.
Haven't seen it. Pop Culture ignoramus.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Is all cinema pop culture, then? I've never heard Bergman described with the word 'pop' before.
Nanker Phelge
Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.
Is that a dyslexic christian?
Anything produced after 1700 seems suspiciously poppy to me.
Nanker Phelge
Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
dualism doesnt equate to christianity, you know
Not yet. Another discovery to be made.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Bergman is awesomeness crossed with incredible IMV. Fanny and Alexander is one of my favourite films.
Nanker Phelge
Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.
One of Cave's lectures: http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=800055
Interesting stuff: Though the love song comes in many guises – songs of exultation and praise, songs of rage and of despair, erotic songs, songs of abandonment and loss – they all address God, for it is the haunted premises of longing that the true love song inhabits. It is a howl in the void, for Love and for comfort and it lives on the lips of the child crying for his mother. It is the song of the lover in need of her loved one, the raving of the lunatic supplicant petitioning his God. It is the cry of one chained to the earth, to the ordinary and to the mundane, craving flight; a flight into inspiration and imagination and divinity. The love song is the sound of our endeavours to become God-like, to rise up and above the earthbound and the mediocre.
The loss of my father, I found, created in my life a vacuum, a space in which my words began to float and collect and find their purpose. The great W.H. Auden said "The so-called traumatic experience is not an accident, but the opportunity for which the child has been patiently waiting – had it not occurred, it would have found another- in order that its life come a serious matter." The death of my father was the "traumatic experience" Auden talks about that left the hole for God to fill. How beautiful the notion that we create our own personal catastrophes and that it is the creative forces within us that are instrumental in doing this. We each have a need to create and sorrow is a creative act. The love song is a sad song, it is the sound of sorrow itself. We all experience within us what the Portugese call Suadade, which translates as an inexplicable sense of longing, an unnamed and enigmatic yearning of the soul and it is this feeling that lives in the realms of imagination and inspiration and is the breeding ground for the sad song, for the Love song is the light of God, deep down, blasting through our wounds.
Interesting stuff: Though the love song comes in many guises – songs of exultation and praise, songs of rage and of despair, erotic songs, songs of abandonment and loss – they all address God, for it is the haunted premises of longing that the true love song inhabits. It is a howl in the void, for Love and for comfort and it lives on the lips of the child crying for his mother. It is the song of the lover in need of her loved one, the raving of the lunatic supplicant petitioning his God. It is the cry of one chained to the earth, to the ordinary and to the mundane, craving flight; a flight into inspiration and imagination and divinity. The love song is the sound of our endeavours to become God-like, to rise up and above the earthbound and the mediocre.
The loss of my father, I found, created in my life a vacuum, a space in which my words began to float and collect and find their purpose. The great W.H. Auden said "The so-called traumatic experience is not an accident, but the opportunity for which the child has been patiently waiting – had it not occurred, it would have found another- in order that its life come a serious matter." The death of my father was the "traumatic experience" Auden talks about that left the hole for God to fill. How beautiful the notion that we create our own personal catastrophes and that it is the creative forces within us that are instrumental in doing this. We each have a need to create and sorrow is a creative act. The love song is a sad song, it is the sound of sorrow itself. We all experience within us what the Portugese call Suadade, which translates as an inexplicable sense of longing, an unnamed and enigmatic yearning of the soul and it is this feeling that lives in the realms of imagination and inspiration and is the breeding ground for the sad song, for the Love song is the light of God, deep down, blasting through our wounds.
The Groke
hot hail/Paging Dr. Beat
We went to see him deliver the above lecture at the Southbank. It was great!
He performed some solo versions of a bunch of classics as well.
The night was nearly ruined however, by some pissed-up true-blue Aussie repeatedly shouting "sing us a fucking song" during much of the lecture.
Nick was surprisingly..calm and even gracious about these wood-headed interruptions.
I was less pleased.
He performed some solo versions of a bunch of classics as well.
The night was nearly ruined however, by some pissed-up true-blue Aussie repeatedly shouting "sing us a fucking song" during much of the lecture.
Nick was surprisingly..calm and even gracious about these wood-headed interruptions.
I was less pleased.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
I probably miss quite a bit of the christian imagery in Nick Cave's songs through ignorance of Christianity. I may have made up my own meaning to the Mercy Seat, for instance. But in the end it doesn't matter to me because what I get from it is, as I said before, feeling not belief.
cesare
shady's dreams ♥
I would have liked to have gone to that. Did he sing the lyrics quoted there?
It is if you have to pay to go in. You can get Bergman's stuff in HMV - there's a sale on.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
This is one of his biggest themes, isn't it. His restless yearning reminds me of Fernando Pessoa in that way.
well Cave isn't any kind of proselytising (sp?) christian, and it doesn't matter to him I'm sure if you take away from his work ideas about Christianity. He's rarely explicit. I just wanted to be clear that he is a Christian even if he's not a "Christian musician" per se
No, you were right as far as you went, but you missed half of it.
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