So I am basically still obsessing over "Tuesday Night with Nick Cave," and thought maybe I should write a little about it. As a gig, it is totally up there with my all-time favourites (FYI, the list so far includes: The Flaming Lips at BDO '04, Arcade Fire at the Enmore in Melbourne last yr and '06 PJ Harvey also in the lovely Belvoir!). NC was something truly special, though - never before have I seen an artist so completely command audience attention. He draws you in with charisma and banter and mature sexiness (a popular example: "are you touching my cock? ... jesus christ, i'm 51 years old!") and then he holds your attention through the sheer intensity of his performance. Personally, I felt as if every single song was being directed straight at me; there's a focus and a force there that is truly remarkable. I almost felt sorry for all the Bad Seeds behind him, they were completely overshadowed by his power as a frontman.
Caro has already detailed some of the advantages of performers "on the older side," but, additionally, something I personally love about this factor is just the wealth of repertoire that an older artist has at his disposal - particularly in the case of someone as diverse as NC. I'm so used to seeing "new" artists with only 1 or 2 or maybe, if you're lucky, up to 4 (!) albums, so the level of surprise is greatly decreased. With NC, though, every new song is something special, unpredictable or surprising - what a thrill! My personal highlight was when "Into My Arms" gave way to "Straight to You." "IMA" naturally weakened my emotion resolve (just imagine if he'd played the freaking SHIP SONG!), so, by the time that "STY" kicked in, basically all I could do was just fall, completely, into the joy of that song. All of it was amazing, though. The photo above is one of only 3 that I took, because I was far too absorbed in the performance to bother which such silly distractions. I wanted to watch it alllll.
To make matters even greater, the evening wrapped up beautifully! The bouncer was delightfully chipper ("cheers for coming, cheers for enjoying!"), and then we hung out in the floodlit oval carpark, playing makeshift cricket (with coke bottle bat) while we waited for the cars to clear. And, when I got home, I snuggled up on my bean bag to watch Barack Obama become the American President. Pretty much the best night ever.
x magda
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