Music
.0”. Excellent 0... Good 0.. Average .0 Flawed 0 Poor ROCK NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS L is for the Love and all the heart’s Barrowland, Glasgow, Tue 1 May. perils
- Two years ago at the behest of the Poetry Academy of Vienna, Cave lectured on ‘the secret life of the love song’.
M is for Muse and the curse of MTV - In an open letter to MTV in 95 he wrote: ‘My muse is not a horse and I am in no horse race and if indeed she was, still I would not harness
A is for Australia from whence the man comes
- Cave was voted ‘Australian of the Century’ by Australia Style magazine.
8 is for Bukowski and all beatnick bums
- Kids should be reading the Bible and Lolita, not Charles Bukowski, he once told Rolling Stone.
C is for Cave. Nick, the subject of this list
D is for Dinosaurs long ago ceased to exist
- He claims to have met his wife under the tail of her to this turnbrel - this bloody
a brachiosaurus at the Natural History Museum. cart of severed heads and glittering E is for Elvis who died on the throne prizes.’
- Cave is definitively described as ‘the tapeworm N is for Novel and just wait and see that are Elvis’. - Cave has hinted that another
F is for Fits of which Cave used to be prone book (following 1990’s And The Ass — Circa 1992 backstage at a New York gig and the Saw The Angel) may be in the
Rock Star was not happy. ‘Ghastly!’ he offing.
screamed, throwing down a plate of offending O is for ‘Oh My Lord’ (track on the sandwiches. new LP) and other holy trips
G is for Glastonbury 1999 when Nick met Dylan P is for Patterson, Les, and all those - ‘It was as if God came out of heaven,’ he vulgar quips
recalls. — When Cave put together London’s H is for Hero but Cave prefers a villain Meltdown Festival two years ago
- Do you know how many murders are the programme included the Aussie committed on The Murder Ballads LP? Cultural Ambassador, Nina Simone I is for Iron Maiden who really are shite and Kylie Minogue.
- Cave’s son is in the same class as Bruce 0 is for Questions, Cave is rather interview shy Dickinson’s little boy. R is for ‘The Wild Rose’ which may have made
J is for Jesus who he thinks is all right you cry
- A day with Jesus or a day with the devil, which 8 is for Suede, Johnny, a film in which he starred would you prefer? ‘JC’, said Cave, ‘I wouldn’t with Brad Pitt
have a clue what to do with the devil’. T is for Tinseltown and what he thinks of it.
K is for Karaoke in which Cave revels - He has no plans for further film roles.
- ‘Blueberry Hill’ is his favourite tune. It’s also for Tori Amos and what Cave says she
Easy as A, B, Cave
does with her pubes. Just don’t ask...
U is for You Should Buy His New Record or I’ll take you to task
V is for Violence and eyeballs and brains
W is for his Wife and their two new little weans And XY and Z spell the end of this rhyme. Shoot me if you want but it’s hardly a crime. (Rodger Evans)
ALTCOUNTRY ROCK COSMIC ROUGH
RIDERS Garage, Glasgow, Fri 27 Apr.
Pop happy
Alan McGee knows a thing or two about signing great bands that will ultimately make him and his label a great deal of money. While Primal SCream and ()asis may have been the biggest success stories of his former label Creation. Glasgow's Cosmic ROugh Riders are set to be the big league contenders of his new label Poptones. As lead vocalist Daniel Wylie proudly tells it: ‘We are now. by far. the biggest selling act on Poptones. selling five or six times more than the nearest.‘ Wylie. of course. has every reason to be proud of the band's recent achievements. He and fellow singer/songwriter Stephen Fleming have been following
48 THE LIST 26 Apr—10 May 2001
il‘. the His guitar tradition (I )t zli wed by fellow (‘ilaswegians ’l‘eenage l‘anclubl since their early teens. Nearing their late twenties. they formed the (Zosrnic Rough Riders in 1998 armed with enough material to record and independer‘itly release two albums ~ Deliverance and Panorama — in a narrow nine month period. They then toured every festival, every backwater music venue known to man. until /-\|an IvlcC‘iee caught therr show. signed them up to Poptones and released their third album l-n/oi’ The i'yl'e/ot/ic Suns/line. 'lhe day I actually signed the contract. I had a little bit of a tear in my eye.’ says \i'v'ylie. ‘l was like "At last. I've done it after all this time". Of course you think "I've done it!" but what you're really saying is “l have now given myself the chance to do it" lrecause signing a contract is the start of the hard work and ilt?il(?“.'(‘. me this band really works hard.‘ And by his own admission. Wylie and co are ‘.‘.’(5li\ll‘.tl hard at making a well established form of music. ‘I'm not interested in pushing any barriers.‘ he says. ‘l'm JLISI one of these guy's who's happy writing classic pop songs.‘ And were quite happy listening to them. cheers. (Catherine Bromley)
HIP HOP SPOOKS Garage, Glasgow, Fri 4 May.
Spooks aren't like every other hip hop crew. For every 99 bad assed cliche pimpin' gangstas. there is one set up expressing themselves wrth a degree of originality and individuality. Spooks are that one in a 100. For those that haven't picked up on it yet. Spooks take their name from the Sam Greenlee novel The Spook Who Sat By The Door. Their somewhat optimistically entitled debut album S./.O.S.O.S Volume I also helps to affirm their status. translating as it does as. 'Spooks Is On Some Other Script'. ‘The character in the book infiltrates the CIA and it's only over time that he reveals who he really is. which is kinda where we are coming from.' reveals Water Water. one of the bands quartet of MCs. "Its not only a love of literature that brought us together it's the whole media thing. when we got talking we realised we all liked the same movres as well.’
That love of the movres was critical in getting the Spooks signed and also helps to reinforce the old adage that 'it's who you know that counts', as rapper. Hypno explains. 'Laurence Fishburne heard our demo when he was in the midst of his directorial debut. for Once /n A Life. From there a conversation started and we found out what the film was all about and we made a song for It. We didn't Just try to retell the stery of the film. we tried to capture what it made us think about.‘ That tune lust happened to be ‘Things I‘ve Seen'. their debut release. that saw them shoot straight in at number six in the UK charts.
Following on from that success. the Spooks are now out on the road to promote the album and new srngle ‘Karma Hotel'. ‘Our show is like getting to walk inSide the album,‘ says Hypno. “There's gonna be a lot of energy and any questions people have about us Will definitely get answered on the night.” (Stewart Dalleyl
Books not crooks for Spooks