Nick Cave "The Secret Life of the Love Song" King Mob KMOB 7 1999 (65:23)
The Secret Life of the Love Song (48:29) spoken
excerpt 1 spoken
excerpt 2
West
Country Girl
People Ain't No Good
Sad Waters
Love Letter
Far From Me
The
Flesh Made Word (16:54)
Everything by Nick Cave. Songs performed by Nick Cave - piano & vocals, Warren Ellis - violin, Susan Stenger - bass and Jim White - drums & percussion.
This disc couples two spoken word lectures written by Cave: "The Secret Life of the Love Song" and "The Flesh Made Word", the former originally for the 1998 Vienna Poetry Festival and the latter for a 1996 BBC Radio broadcast. "The Secret Life.." is 48 and 1/2 minutes of Cave casually explaining the inspirations and minutiae of his proudest achievement: the love song. He deftly describes how the void left by the death of his father and the influence of the Bible drive him to write his love songs ... "my gloomy, violent, dark-eyed children. They sit grimly on their own and they do not play with the other songs." For Cave the love song is by definition sad, has a life of it's own and is ultimately a search for God ... "the love song exists to fill, with language, the silence between ourselves and God." To help illustrate his points, the brief new song "West Country Girl" and beautifully sparse (vocal/piano/violin/bass/light percussion) new recordings of "People Ain't No Good", "Sad Waters", "Love Letter" and "Far From Me" with Susan Stenger (Band of Susans), Warren Ellis and Jim White (both of Dirty Three) are interspersed with the spoken passages. The entire piece is indexed as 1 track. "The Flesh Made Word" is 17 minutes of just spoken word. Here Cave goes into great detail about his relationships with the Bible, his father and his growth as a writer and person. The disc comes packaged in a cd sized hardback book that contains 6 in studio b/w pictures and printed excerpts from the lectures. Altogether, this is a very interesting and insightful work that bears repeated listenings. It is absolutely essential for Cave fans and anyone else interested in passionate songwriting and the genius behind it. Nick Cave is a truly learned and brilliant artist. With these lectures he displays the knowledge and passion that makes him who he is and his art what it is ...
King Mob
Nick
Cave at Mute Records
Bad-Seed.org
The Cave Inn
Nick Cave
Collector's Hell
Where did I get this cd? - mail order via CD World.