Nick Cave
Nick Cave is a singer/songwriter with the band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. His brooding and menacing onstage presence has launched thousands of Goth/Emo youths on the twin paths to Claire’s Accessories and almost universal contempt.
Cave started out as a humble farmer's son in the Australian Outback. As a young farmhand, Cave was responsible for sowing the fields. In 1928, after years of fruitless harvests, Cave asked his father, "Daddy, why isn't there food in the fields? Am I doing it wrong?" "No," his father replied, "these, son, are bad seeds." From that day forward, Cave developed an obsession with the phrase, not only naming his band 'The Bad Seeds', but also his testicles.
In the early eighties Cave found himself and his disturbing love songs not being taken seriously enough in his native Australia so he moved to London, England. He soon became disenchanted with the scene when he found there were many other brooding and menacing men writing disturbing love songs so he moved to West Berlin in an effort to be more pretentious than the rest. He succeeded.
In the early nineties he moved back to England because he believed the air to be more rarefied there, however to his displeasure he found it was, in fact, merely tinged with the aroma of diesel and relentless disappointment. In order to save face he successfully concealed his distress and he remains there to this day.
Despite Cave’s inborn melancholy looks and his innate ability to write disturbing love songs, he is in fact known as music’s Mr Nice Guy and his nickname on the Bad Seeds tour bus is the Sunshine Kid. When not touring with the band, writing novels, screenplays and infamously disturbing love songs Cave often volunteers his time for local hospital radio and the Cats Protection League.[1]
When asked about his moustache, he denies that it contains magical powers. However, it is widely believed stroking the Cavetache will grant the fondler wishes. This is yet to be proven. Scientifically or ethically.
Early Years[edit]
Nick Cave was born in 1875 in a hospital, Australia. His father Mr. Cave was an bushranger and his mother Mrs. Cave worked as a Whore. He has two brothers and one sister, astonishingly all are named Nick.
It is commonly believed that Nick Cave's gloomy live persona is a direct result of singing in an boy’s choir fronted by Pope John Paul, who later fronted the much more famous band Josie and the Pussycats. Tricky Dick also attended the infamous Castle Wolfenstein boarding school, where he was violated with a rubber dildo by fellow student Elton John and force fed his own feces for the amusement of small children and senile elders.
His despondency is due to nothing more than being a heterosexual instead of life long dream of homosexuality. A fact which grieves him, even now. His childhood was so troubled that he often got picked up by the local authorities for being found in a public toilet with George Micheal, and he once was caught smoking cock by his mother.
Cave’s father was hanged when he was 1 day old, it was after this event that Cave admits his song writing became more coherent[2] and he developed his overweening, almost morbid passion for cheese.
Musical Career[edit]
The Birthday Party[edit]
Nick Cave met the fellow members of his first band whilst still in school. The Boys Next Door, started out covering the melodic and uplifting work of Lou Reed, David Bowie, and Alice Cooper. They later changed their name to The Birthday Party when the boys next door threatened to sue. They started using their own material when Lou Reed, David Bowie and Alice Cooper also threatened to sue. The Birthday Party enjoyed moderate success (and avoided all lawsuits) in the post-punk music scene in Melbourne before moving to London (then West Berlin) in the early eighties. The band broke up after Cave found his girlfriend Anita Lane was in fact fellow band member, guitarist Rowland S. Howard. Other members included Mick Harvey, Tracey Phew! and Phil Calvert.
For a time Cave took a break from music in order to publish several self help books.[3] The books were reasonably successful and gained a loyal following. Sadly he neglected to follow his own counsel and he succumbed to his misery with an indulgent heroin addiction that failed to kill him. Realising (perhaps wisely) that no-one wants to take advice from an affected junkie Cave turned his hand to novels and gained widespread recognition with his book ‘Bridget Jones Diary’ which he wrote under the pseudonym Helen Fielding.
The Bad Seeds[edit]
Feeling refreshed after nearly conquering his addictions, Cave hooked back up with Mick Harvey and formed the Bad Seeds, his current band.The Bad Seeds are renowned for their albums full of intense and disturbing love songs. The Bad Seeds have a fluid line up that has included the likes of Blixa Bargeld, Barry Adamson, Kylie Minogue and Peter Andre. The only constants are Cave and Harvey. Their debut album 'Now That’s what I call Music' was released in 1984 and their latest 'Dig Gravedigger Dig' was released in March 2008.
In the early nineties the Bad Seeds collectively discarded their various addictions for good in a carrier bag which they left on a bench at Nuremberg HauptBahnoff. No-one who knows what became of the bag remembers, but the band are healthier (if not a little more dull) for taking this course of action. In the late nineties as the general zeitgeist changed, Cave was, suddenly, no longer merely the lead singer in a jobbing Goth band but was now considered one of the most relevant songwriters of his generation. Wallowing in the new found reverence, Cave not only grew his magical moustache, he also began to converse with his audience at live shows, a group of people he had, until then, diligently ignored.
The future looks bright for the SS Bad Seeds with Captain Cave at their helm as their work is now almost consistently held in critical acclaim and it may not be just down to the enchanted moustache.
"Other" work[edit]
In 2007 Cave and some of the Bad Seeds released a record under the name of Grinderman. Despite containing Bad Seed members, sounding like a Bad Seeds record and with songs written by the main Bad Seeds songwriter, it is in fact, unconnected to the Bad Seeds. Several conspiracy theories have been suggested that Cave did not tour with Grinderman, but that the obvious anagram that it is of "Damn Ringer" gives away his absence from the project except by name. The mustache was alleged to have been sent on tour on the face of a look-alike named Gram Dinner (another clue sewn into the master deception) with only Cave's name ever leaving the comfort of his home. The proponents of these theories were subsequently denied access to the shows. No proof exists.
Footnotes[edit]
- ↑ In 1986 Cave was one of the first celebrities to appear in the CPLs ill advised advertising campaign "I’d rather go naked than wear a dead cat."
- ↑ One of the first songs he recorded was called Wax your Nose and contained the lyrics //it’s the silk that frottee/m’under to your whim/when all that paves/c’mon wax your nose//. Cave has never explained these mysterious words.
- ↑ His titles included: 'Sorrows Child (Invoking the inner Goth)' and 'Funday Mourning, How to find Pleasure in Grief'.