Monday, April 6, 2015

the good son









Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds found healing waters for ancient wounds in the supplication of these strange and sorrowful songs of romance, regret, and redemption.   The group had formed in 1983 from the ashes of The Birthday Party with Nick Cave and Mick Harvey and a revolving cast of musicians that included   Blixa Bargeld,  Hugo Race,  Barry Adamson, Dawn Cave,  Rowland S. Howard,  Tracy Pew,  Thomas Wydler,  Roland Wolf,  and Kid Congo Powers over five albums   (From Her to Eternity in 1984,  The Firstborn Is Dead in 1985,  Kicking Against the Pricks and Your Funeral... My Trial in 1986,  and  Tender Prey in 1988) of dark brooding blues rock.  


In 1989, Cave went into rehab and then relocated to Brazil, where he became involved with Viviane Carneiro.  He then brought the Bad Seeds to Brazil to record 'The Good Son'  with engineer Victor Van Vugt at Cardan Studios in Sao Paulo.   The album features  Nick Cave on vocals, piano, hammond, and harmonica;    Mick Harvey on bass, acoustic guitar, vibraphone, percussion, and backing vocals;    Blixa Bargeld on guitar and backing vocals;      Kid Congo Powers on guitar;     and  Thomas Wydler on drums and percussion;     with the string section arranged by Mick Harvey and Bill McGee:    violins by Alexandre Ramirez, Altamir Tea Bueno Salinas, Helena Akiku Imasoto, and Lea Kalil Sadi;    violas by Akira Terazaki and Glauco Masahiru Imasoto;    and   cellos by Braulio Marques Lima and Cristina Manescu.  


 Powers remembers:   “We went from Berlin to Brazil to play and it was about this time Nick met a girl who was to be the mother of his child. He was really taken with Brazil – as we all were. So we decided – Nick decided – that it would actually turn out to be cheaper to get a studio in Brazil, and fly us all out there and stay there to record an album. So we went to Sao Paulo and stayed for three weeks making The Good Son – tracking it all. And that was a great time. A great experience. I was sober and I was excited about making a record again...The music was changing. He was getting more songwriter-y – they were more song-like. Although there was still an experimental edge, the songs were a little more formed – I think because he wrote them all on piano. He was going through a big change at the time as well. And so that was really a great experience being in Sao Paulo and being in Brazil. It was such a completely different atmosphere than Berlin or London which was a kind of cold and hard reality. And Brazil was beautiful and sunny and the people were really nice. Even though there was a lot of poverty and crime there, it still was OK with us. It was a good good good time.”



Cave reveals:   "[Brazil] has had a big influence over me. Not necessarily their music. I mean, if you live in Brazil, you live with their music. It's everywhere, they're constantly playing their music. They love it, all that Samba and all that sort of stuff, and you hear it everywhere. That's not really what I'm influenced by in Brazil, but as a country itself, atmospherically, and the people... the amount of time I actually spent on my own. I spent a lot of time there by myself. That's been a big influence on me...I think Brazil is a remarkable country in the kind of corruption and the brutality of the government and the social situation there and what it does to people is so evident and so in your face and so inescapable that it can’t just be pocketed away. In that respect, it’s far more brutal than say some place like New York. At the same time it’s much more bearable for me somehow — it’s more honest in a way. I mean even when you get robbed there. I’ve been robbed two or three times, and I don’t feel any kind of bitterness. They’re not going to blow your head off for kicks. They’re not going to drive by your schoolyard and shoot a shotgun into it like it seems to happen more and more regularly in America. It’s awful to see what’s happening to the people there. I didn’t live under a palm tree when I was there; I lived in Sao Paulo, which is the third largest city in the world. It’s just this huge, massive business center in Brazil...I don’t want to have to run away and hide from the world. I mean, I don’t want to have to disassociate myself from the world simply because I have no control over it. What I do on occasion, and the prime reason I lived in Brazil for three years, even though Brazil is a terrifying place in itself, is sort of escape — escape from what I just couldn’t tolerate in the modern world. I don’t really want to do that [anymore]. I mean, I have a child, and I don’t want to gather up my family and sort of escape somewhere because of what the world is becoming, but sometimes it seems like it’s the only thing you can do ... I do kind of consider myself a storyteller in a lot of ways, although that's not to say I don't write about myself and that I only write about other people. I'm finding that increasingly I'm writing about things that concern myself and entering into an area that I'm finding increasingly interesting to write about -- which is the effects and mysteries of a long term relationship. It's something that I could write about as I got older, the mysteries of domesticity. I'm actually becoming more and more concerned about writing about myself and writing a far more personal kind of lyrics, but still very often putting it into a narrative form as if I'm telling some kind of story. I often times use characters to tell these kinds of stories instead of an I, I, I kind of story, but it shouldn't be assumed that these things aren't a part of my life." 

'The Good Son' went to number ninety-three in Australia, forty-seven in the UK, forty-five in the Netherlands, thirty-eight in Norway, and nineteen in New Zealand.  






http://nickcave.com/







"The Weeping Song"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqhOVY58zIo






"The Ship Song" charted at number eighty-four in the UK.
https://youtu.be/T0spQCw35D4


Come sail your ships around me
And burn your bridges down
We make a little history, baby
Every time you come around
Come loose your dogs upon me
And let your hair hang down
You are a little mystery to me
Every time you come around
We talk about it all night long
We define our moral ground
But when I crawl into your arms
Everything comes tumbling down
Come sail your ships around me
And burn your bridges down
We make a little history, baby
Every time you come around
Your face has fallen sad now
For you know the time is nigh
When I must remove your wings
And you, you must try to fly
Come sail your ships around me
And burn your bridges down
We make a little history, baby
Every time you come around
Come loose your dogs upon me
And let your hair hang down
You are a little mystery to me
Every time you come around

https://youtu.be/vUqt-74CYTs







"Foi Na Cruz"

Foi na cruz, foi na cruz
Que um dia
Meus pecados castigados em Jesus
Foi na cruz
Que um dia
Foi na cruz

It was on the cross, was on the cross
That one day
My sins punished in Jesus
It was on the cross
That one day
It was on the cross

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3qzv2uGBgA










'The Good Son' 
full album:

https://myspace.com/nickcaveandthebadseeds/music/album/the-good-son-19542860


https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL999D4C0ECEE1E456




All songs written by Cave unless otherwise stated.

"Foi Na Cruz" – 5:39
"The Good Son" – 6:01
"Sorrow's Child" – 4:36
"The Weeping Song" – 4:21
"The Ship Song" – 5:14
"The Hammer Song" – 4:16
"Lament" – 4:51
"The Witness Song" – 5:57
"Lucy" – 4:17 (words: Cave. Music: Cave, Bargeld, Roland Wolf)






pinkpop festival 1990
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL577BA4A0BB12350A




"The Witness Song"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-xpJ-XAQyg



"The Weeping Song"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riiIV06Qm7Y



"The Ship Song"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLqrvlYDMRA








interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdXEPvsn8J8





The Road to God Knows Where

directed by Uli M Schueppel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdqHptzBHx4








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