When I go to concerts these days I often feel like I’m getting prematurely old. Today, at the Nick Cave show in West London, I thought back to the times when I was in high school and I would stand outside venues an hour before the doors opened. Now I can barely make it through half the opening act’s set without a couple of cold ones. That said, there are different types of crowds. Mostly, I like mild mannered, doe-eyed crowds. This is at least true when I go to a dedicated concert venue (your Hard Rock’s and HOB’s etc.), as opposed to a bar that has live music (where I actually tend to enjoy the music more and more).
When you’re standing in that pit before the stage, legs about to buckle all night long, the last thing you need is some mysterious farter really getting carried away with his anonymity. There’s also the “pusher.” You know who I’m talking about: that guy/girl who weasels his/her way up to the front row with a mouth half-open and eyes glazed. Definitely trample material. Drunks I’m usually okay with, but not if they’re going to flail arms and legs throughout the set, effectively rendering my $30 ticket the bill for a weekend self-defense class.
So. By now you’ve guessed that I had a gripe or two tonight as I stood waiting around for the Bad Seeds to play.
How were they? Well, pretty great. Was I surprised? No. Why’s that?
YouTube.
It saddens me to admit, but the accessibility of so many great performances on the net has somewhat taken away from my concert-going experiences of late. It’s the curse of our age, I guess. Computers have opened up this massive gateway to us. In this sense, YouTube and other online media sites are about as helpful as they are hurtful to today’s artists. People just aren’t content with the good, or even the great anymore. It’s got to be phenomenal. It’s got to defy expectations, and expectations continue to soar.
As I watched Nick Cave rant and rave across the stage like one of the many mad preachers and bowery shamans that populate his lyrics, I wondered why I wasn’t more impressed. The Bad Seeds were spot on, the lighting was great, sound was pretty good, and Cave is every bit the continuous font of blistering energy that he’s cracked up to be. Still, I couldn’t help feeling slightly underwhelmed.
Is it just me?
I saw a girl next to me texting a friend. She wrote something like “They are playing mostly new songs. It’s good but then I’ve just seen them so many times.” I almost felt the same way, even though this was my first time seeing the band live. Between DVDs like God is in the House and YouTube videos, I felt as though I already had a good idea of what the Seeds would be like. They met all of my expectations a little too precisely.
There was Dirty Three main-man Warren Ellis looking scraggly as ever: the dead-eyed mystic of the band. Up on the stage-left riser—Mick Harvey, powerhouse drummer of the Seeds, Grinderman, and the Birthday Party. Still, everyone’s locked on Mr. Cave. The man has serious charisma.
As I mentioned, Nick Cave seems to have become a character in one of his songs. Perhaps tonight’s show was successful—at least to me—because it served to reaffirm this fact in my mind. A lot of the time it seems as though he’s method acting. While there were several highlights tonight, the real showstoppers tended to be the character studies. Songs like “Red Right Hand,” “Dig, Lazarus, Dig,” and “Stagger Lee.” Cave literally becomes these characters when he performs their songs. It’s actually pretty incredible. “Stagger Lee,” which closed out the night, was positively demonic.
Staring out into a heaving sea of admirers (Cave’s cult resembles Morrissey’s on a slightly smaller scale), Cave’s delivery was pure pyromania. “So he walked through the rain and he walked through the mud, ‘til he came to a place called the bucket o’ blood! Stagger Lee.” The Seeds’ aerial assault bears down like fire and brimstone, and it’s hard to imagine Stagger Lee being anyone other than Nick’s alter ego.
In this sense I really was pretty impressed. Staggered, even. Still, when I think back to those early shows I attended as a teenager: the thrill of rock ‘n’ roll still raging through my veins, I can’t help but feel a little disheartened by the way my experience of concerts has changed. Maybe I’ve just seen too many bands. That said, I saw people at the show tonight who were clearly between 40 and 50. How do they keep it up? Are they just mid-life crises? I swear there were five to ten people up front who watched the entire show through their cell phones and digital cameras. What’s that all about? Are we really that bored?
I think about how great the band was tonight. How little it affected me. Should I still expect revelations out of rock music? What do I have to do to recapture that thrill?
P.S.
Other highlights from the show included “Papa Won’t Leave You Henry” from Henry’s Dream and “Hold On To Yourself,” from the new Dig, Lazarus, Dig LP. Some songs that were unfamiliar to me, such as “Tupelo” and “Nobody’s Baby Now,” were also good.
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