1,689.) Sun Jul. 18, 2021

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Snub Week

The Song of the Day is:

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – “From Her to Eternity”

From the album From Her to Eternity (1984)

I read her diary on her sheets
Scrutinizin’ every lil’ bit of dirt
Tore out a page n’ stufft it inside my shirt
I fled outa the window
And shinning it down the vine
Outa her nightmare, and back into mine
Mine, O mine

From her to eternity
From her to eternity
Cry, cry, cry
Cry, cry, cry

Barry Adamson – Blixa Bargeld – Nick Cave – Mick Harvey – Anita Lane – Hugo Race

I’ve hesitated to include Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds on my list of Rock & Roll Hall of Fame snubs because they are my favorite active group, so I’m obviously biased, but they do deserve the honor. Also, while I want them to be as successful as possible, I appreciate that they aren’t a mainstream act, a Hall induction might raise their profile too much. At the level that they are at, they’ve got the freedom to lurk in the shadows. That freedom is a big deal for a group like the Bad Seeds, because any one of their albums rarely sounds like the previous album. They don’t have to bow to public demands in a way that a group like Coldplay might have to. Nick Cave is ridiculously prolific (novels, acting, spoken word albums, screenplays, librettos, film scores – all that typical rock star behavior…) and one band alone couldn’t contain all his energy. There were the pre-Bad Seed groups The Boys Next Door and The Birthday Party, and Grinderman (which is a smaller ensemble of Bad Seed members, and Cave acts as a guitarist rather than a pianist) and Cave’s work with just himself and his writing partner Warren Ellis. Cave even finds time to write material for artists such as Marianne Faithful and Kylie Minogue. The Bad Seeds really are Cave’s day job though, and if he were to get inducted to the Hall it would be as the leader of this band, no question. Though Nick Cave and his bands are best known for their gothic darkness, some of their other great shades include beauty, sadness, panic, theatrical weirdness and even shiny pop (though this final style is rare). The Bad Seeds have released 17 albums since their debut From Her To Eternity in 1984 (the first Cave release was in 1979 with The Boys Next Door). Today we’re playing the early effort “From Her To Eternity”, cacophonously chaotic title track to that debut album. It wasn’t released as a single, but it would likely be the earliest track on any of their compilation albums (counterintuitively, their debut single was a cover of the Mac Davis classic “In the Ghetto”, which was made famous by Elvis Presley). The early Bad Seeds were known for unnerving, fever dream-like epics, and “Eternity” was just the first of these goth-punk workouts (“Tupelo” is another fine example; this is the sound that grew out of the earlier group The Birthday Party). The group’s evolution came after Cave’s rehabilitation from heroin addiction and was reflected in their sixth album, 1990’s The Good Son (unsurprisingly, sobriety drastically improved Cave’s focus, and some of the wild sprawl of his first albums were tightened as a result). Since that point their songs could range from their frenzied large scale punk rockers to piano ballads to long-form poetry over minimalist tape loops. While they don’t have any songs that would be considered hits (certainly not in America, but they’ve had some chart success in their native Australia, and adopted homes of Germany and England), “Red Right Hand” is easily their most famous song, and it has been further popularized as the theme to the British television show Peaky Blinders. Though I do feel that they are a truly unique band, their influences of Johnny Cash, Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, Scott Walker, Iggy & The Stooges and Howlin’ Wolf are often well on display, and in turn they’ve influenced Mark Lanegan, PJ Harvey, the Arctic Monkeys and Iggy Pop’s own solo career. Acts who’ve covered the Bad Seeds are as varied as Metallica, Roger Daltey, Josh Groban and Cave’s own idol, Johnny Cash. Over their nearly-forty year history they’ve had numerous lineups, though some of their key members that should be included in a possible induction are Cave, Ellis, Mick Harvey, Blixa Bargeld, Martyn P. Casey, Jim Sclavunos, and the late Conway Savage. Since I do feel that Cave and the Seeds are their own special thing that don’t need the outside world interfering with their vibe, I don’t really mind that the Hall might not acknowledge them, but if I had heard that the band members wanted an induction, then I would be very pleased for them if they did get the honor. So far though, there’s been no indication that the Hall has any interest in Nick Cave – and that feeling is probably mutual.

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