Aussie Rolling Stone mag 50 Greatest Australian Artists of All Time #5: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

by Fergus Linacre of Kingswood:
I have a difficult relationship with Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. Don’t be misled, the group, and all of Nick’s work has had a profound impact on my career, and even shaped in a way the person I am today. I could go on about my first experiences hearing and seeing them, how their music, and Nick’s onstage persona stunned me. But I think that’s a story you have heard before, and are perhaps familiar with yourself.

In this moment, as I sit to write about the band, I want to talk about grief. I was on a plane when I watched [2016 documentary] One More Time With Feeling. I had to stop halfway through and watch an episode of Family Guy to stop me from falling so deep into heartache that it would take a little too long to climb back out. I was on a plane when I listened to Ghosteen, I was weeping in my seat, as my bandmates slept around me. I lost my older brother some time ago, and when Nick shares his grief with us through his music, we share grief together.

As a listener, you mourn together with Nick. He says the words that you can not: “A star is just a memory of a star, we are fireflies pulsing dimly in the dark, we are here and you are where you are“. He takes his life, and the world that surrounds him and gives it to us as art. It must be so burdensome, but it is the reason he has such adoring fans.

Because his work is real, he is not trying to make hits, he does not fear critiques, he just makes music that is the truest reflection of his soul at that time, and we should all be so grateful to have an artist that believes so much in the worth of art, and gives themself to us for the purpose of art.

In the main big pic you can NC sitting on the far right with 3 Bad Seeds’ members Mick Harvey, Marty Casey and Jim Sclavunos who’s really an American (l-r) in the 90’s plus little tiny pic of Kingswood.

Outro to the closing act of my own edited down re-posting of Aussie RS 50 Greatest Australian Artists of All Time is off course, NC&TBS! Was it going to be anyone else? Nope! The full Ghosteen album is embedded far above. Here’s Kingswood, the band not the car with Cigarettes In Bed because I do also miss smoking cigarettes in bed too:

I’ve seem to re-posted 15 of the 50 artists over last couple of weeks as selected by this rag, cutting this time almost all of their top 10 which was #9 Flume, #8 Silverchair, #7 Tame Impala, #6 Midnight Oil, #4 INXS, #3 Kylie Minogue, #2 Sia and #1 AC/DC. Linking again their tag with all of their top 50 completed articles, if you do want more and to full the gaps I’ve missed? Sorry to anyone who’s upset or something by my own selection but here’s one song each per act to kind-of make-up for it:

Flume with Trust featuring Isabella Manfredi

Cemetery by Silverchair

Tame Impala’s Apocalypse Dreams

US Forces by Midnight Oil

Just Keep Walking by INXS

Someday by Kylie Minogue

You’ve Changed by Sia

Night Prowler by AC/DC

BTW coming tomorrow a very, very special massive blog post, what could it be?

Cheers! 🙂