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Nick Morgan and crew
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Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
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NICK
CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS
Alexandra Palace, London, 25th August 2005 by
Nick Morgan |
| Having
only recently bought myself a television I’ve
been surprised that I’ve been watching it
quite a lot over the past few weeks as we’re
all gripped in the excitement of the Ashes Test
Match Series (it’s cricket Serge, when England
and Australia pit their greatest athletes against
each other for the prize of, errr… a pile
of ashes). I mention that for two reasons. |
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| Firstly,
as Raymond Chandler demonstrated, a great sporting
event can provide both a backdrop for both narrative
development and act as a metaphor for the spirit
of the age. Secondly, and more to the point, it’s
because tonight we’re at Alexandra
Palace, the birthplace of television broadcasting
in Britain. Built in 1873 ‘Ally Pally’
has gone through numerous fires and financial difficulties,
but it now trying to reposition itself as a premier
rock venue – with a capacity of 8,000 in it’s
Victorian Great Hall a bridge between venues such
as Brixton Academy (c. 5000 and fantastic, but also
big enough in my view) and Wembley Arena (c. huge
and soulless). Well my advice is think again. It’s
difficult to get to unless you drive (expect to
wait nearly an hour to get out of the car park after
the gig). The ‘facilities’ are woefully
inadequate. The sound is indifferent. And the Great
Hall may have some particular ambience as a result
of its restored high-Victorian decoration, but it’s
really just a barn, and with no apparent banking
on the floor (as you would get at old theatre or
cinema venues such as Brixton, Shepherd’s
Bush etc.) sight-lines are appalling for almost
anyone except those wedged in front of the stage
– and even then I suspect you get a crick
in your neck as you strain to look up over the on-stage
monitors. As you may have guessed I don’t
think I’ll be going again. |
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And
then there’s the audience. Well, as we’re
here to see Nick
Cave and the Bad Seeds it’s as
eclectic a bunch as you might expect. Goths of all
ages, sinewy and sinister black shirted hipsters
(that’s me), black spectacled and shoulder-bagged
Agency and creative types, a smattering of the chattering
classes from Hampstead and Camden, and – thanks
partly to the location of the venue (and the probability
that this is Cave’s only UK gig this year)
a huge number of ‘out-of-towners’, who
to be frank just don’t seem to know how to
behave at gigs. |
| I
guess they’re all used to sitting down at
some dreadful place like the Milton Keynes Bowl.
Or maybe someone had chalked ‘Push past me
again you ignorant prat’ on the back of my
designer shirt. Or maybe it was just everyone’s
frustration at not being able to see. Or maybe too
much beer and too many North London ‘geezers’
who thought they were being ‘a larrf’
– like the two who seemed to spend the whole
evening pushing through the crowd carrying the same
six plastic glasses of obnoxious fizzy beer. Or
maybe I was cross because (apparently) it was me
who’d forgotten the camera (oops!). Or maybe
it was because just as everyone at last seemed to
have got settled into their sardine like position
the provincial ones started to leave to catch their
trains and buses home. Whatever. It wasn’t
good. |
| And
the band? Well, as regular Whiskyfun rocksters may
recall, last year these bad-mouthed boys from the
colonies got my coveted ‘Gig of the Year’
award for their show at Brixton which was simply
sensational. Luckily I hadn’t expected a repeat
of that – because we didn’t get it.
Despite blasting into ‘Get ready for love’
it took them a good few songs before they really
got up to full speed (tired perhaps after a long
year on the road around the world), and before the
sound-desk got the mix tolerably right. |
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| Not
to say that Mr Cave wasn’t giving one hundred
per cent from the start. He shouted and spat his
lyrics, Kung-fu kicked in Elvis style, cajoled both
his band and the audience, gyrated like a dervish,
danced like a Spanish waiter (I know – I used
that one before, but it’s good) and thanks
to the excellent lighting cast a manic shadow on
the side walls (lucky for those then who didn’t
catch a glimpse of him on stage all night) like
Julian Bleach’s spine-chilling narrator in
Shockheaded Peter. |
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And
once the band hit full speed they were as impressive
as before. By the third song – the awesome
‘Hiding all away’ from Abattoir Blues
they had signalled their intentions, and from what
followed ‘Supernaturally’, ‘The
weeping song’, ‘The mercy seat’,
‘There she goes’ , ‘Lyre of Orpheus’
and ‘Abattoir blues’ all demonstrated
their uncanny talent to mix the delicate and sensitive
with power and aggression bar none. |
But the set was shorter than Brixton, where they
cracked through almost all of Abattoir Blues/The
lyre of Orpheus before returning for an extensive
encore from Cave’s back catalogue. Here there
were fewer songs, greater gaps between them (partly
as feedback problems were being addressed) and a
shorter encore.
But for all of this by the time they finished with
‘Stagger Lee’ these mean motherfuckers
from the Antipodes had again shown that, like Cave’s
much vaunted lyrics, they can straddle the profound
to the profane with the ease of giants. And for
all my carping about the venue and the crowd we’d
had a good time, and I shouldn’t forget that
the tickets were a birthday present. Thanks Amy!
However I was left wondering, particularly after
I listened again to last year’s simply brilliant
Cave and the Bad Seeds album, “what next?”
It’s hard to see where they can go without
simply recycling the same musical ideas. But then
maybe that’s for them to surprise us all in
the future. In the meantime here’s an idea
that would grasp the imagination of gigsters across
the world. An on-stage smoke-out between Cave and
the Bad Seeds, and the Alabama 3. Who would win
this nicotine drenched duel? Who is brave enough
to take up the challenge? Another major sporting
event that could act as a metaphor for an almost
lost world … - Nick Morgan (concert photos
by Nick's Nokia) |
Check
the index of all reviews:
Nick's Concert Reviews
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