Wednesday, January 20, 2010

15 Feet Of Pure White Snow

I think I’m going to start a bit of a series on some of the people I consider to be musical geniuses.

First up, Nick Cave.



I wasn’t sure which song to post, I was first going to use “Into My Arms,” but I have posted it before. And I was going to post something more in your face, like a song from “Murder Ballads,” but I think that may have put some people off on hearing how great this guy. And I was going to post a video of him with someone else I’ve professed admiration for – the guy I named my dog after - that was a duet of Nick Cave and Shane MacGowan doing “What a Wonderful World.”

Instead, I decided I was trying too hard and assuming you saw that old video - which is a beautiful love song and also an amazing piece of film - I'd posted before, and I realized that the original host had yanked it (we all know how I feel about that), so it's back again.

Nick Cave started with the Birthday party about 500 years ago, then went on to front Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (and later Grinderman). He is smooth, talented and a snappy dresser.

He’s also a great writer. The first book I read by him was And The Ass Saw The Angel. It’s an amazing piece of Southern Gothic prose that could only have been written by someone who is a biblical scholar (Cave is, albeit self-taught) and someone who is very dark and just a bit twisted.

Right now, I’m reading his latest, The Death of Bunny Munro. Bunny Munro is a dark, yet strangely touching and intimate story of a man and his relationship with his son. And the more I read it, the more I think that, with the title character, Nick is writing about himself – at least some aspect of himself.

But herein lies my problem – Bunny is not a likable character. At all. It was like when I first read The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield is a miserable bastard of a human being. Bunny is like this. He has a lot of issues and is undergoing a bunch of self-deception, so I hope that I’m off base in wondering if it’s a bit of a self-depiction. Really, my main idea for this is that Bunny and Nick Cave dress and seem to look the same, but I may be projecting.

Anyway.

I like Nick Cave.

The end.

Except for, oh yeah, he's an actor, too. And has played opposite Brad Pitt.




Anyway, that's all I got for now.

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