Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds live review at The Brighton Centre 2008
A review of the Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds gig at The Brighton Centre on November 23rd 2008. When we reviewed Nick Cave in London earlier this year it was because the Hove resident never plays Brighton. Tonight that changed…
(Nick Cave, The Bad Seeds, many cameras)
the music
Unlike the tour earlier this year, tonight’s gig was not all about recent album Dig, Lazarus Dig. Although highlights from that album were played, tracks were played from various albums including The Mercy Seat from 1988’s Tender Prey, People Ain’t No Good and Into My Arms from 1997’s The Boatsman’s Call, The Weeping Song from 1990’s The Good Son, you get the idea – this was a greatest hits set. Most tracks were rocking, there were a couple of piano ballads thrown in the middle to allow “50 somethings to catch their breath” as Nick put it. Being at the front, it was quite nice for me to catch my breath too. Faultless crowd pleasing stuff.
5/5
onstage banter and the crowd
As usual Nick was a real showman, but with a distinct local flavour. He seemed much more relaxed than when I saw him perform in London, and came across as a really nice guy, even giving local Bagel shop Bagelman a mention at one point. The most accusing he was of a very excitable individual, a very friendly heckler you might say, simply suggesting he was from Albania. Perhaps the knowledge he might very well see these people in the street kept him from being too scathing.
Up front the crowd was very excitable in general, with a number of people pushing forward and attempting to start a little light moshing. Problem was, the average age of the people there was around 35, excepting the young goths at the very front. Instead of moshing, outrage occured and at one point this escalated into a full scale fight. This happened just at the end of The Weeping Song, which resulted in Nick belowing and spitting the last words of the song into a seething circle of angry 30 something men and their girlfriends all about to kick off into a mini Nick Cave enthused riot. Fortunately for Nick, the song ended just in time for him to break it up with some light hearted humour and a threat of expulsion. Agitator and pacifier, all in one minute. Fantastic!
5/5
overall
All in all for me, a great night with some tracks I never thought I’d hear live, plenty of excitement onstage and in the crowd, and some superb showmanship.
5/5
Mark Kirby
second opinion
Rousing ourselves from a sleepy Sunday afternoon stupor, that followed rather large weekends for us all, my brother, myself and our respective ladies hopped in the taxi with its exciting electric sliding doors for the short ride to the Brighton Centre.
Stepping out onto the cold, glistening November streets, the sign on the venue read ‘Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Tonight!’ (http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3155/3058912542_d713b78d45_b.jpg) and I began to feel goosebumps, not just from the English channel breeze blowing straight into my face. I slapped my brother around the face a bit to help with the waking up process, and we were in. We’d already rung up to check there was a support band we wouldn’t want to sit through (sorry support band), so we got there just in time for Mr Cave and his band of furry men to take the stage.
Sitting on the East Side balcony (as I always seem to do at the Brighton Centre), my brother and I shared silent fears that the sound this side would be as rubbish as it was during Franz Ferdinand two years ago, but our fears were allayed as soon as the band took to the stage and ripped into the opening number, ‘Hold On To Yourself’. The sound was wonderful; Cave it would seem has seen a number of acts here himself, and so knew what would work, and what wouldn’t. I was delighted to be able to hear every single word he was singing, as the sound was not turned up so loud that everything was distorted to become just a pointless wall of noise (shame on you, Franz Ferdinand).
After the opener, Nick shouted, “Hello, you beautiful people of Brighton!” and I was expecting a pause, and the addition of “…and Hove”, as that’s where he lives, but it didn’t come. A number of times he thanked “the people of Brighton” throughout the show, and at one point even name-checked ”the lovely people at Bagelman”, a popular local eatery in the North Laine.
The band were ripping through the songs, and Cave prowled around the stage looking ominous and deadly, strutting his stuff, kicking his legs, and generally behaving like an undead Mick Jagger might, but with a better suit, and finer moustache, obviously. ‘Dig, Lazarus, Dig’ was a blinder (http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3057/3055600605_793c3eb3b8_b.jpg), Warren Ellis ripping into his electric violin like a man possessed, indeed looking like a homeless man possessed, with his humungous beard and shock of hair.
It was great to see Nick geeing up the band at the very start of the show, though they seemed to need little encouragement, especially the electric Warren Ellis, who literally seemed to be digging his electric violin into the ground with the force he was strumming it. The two drummers also worked together beautifully, without ever sounding over-dominant in the mix.
Cave often directly spoke to individual members of the crowd, responding to what I assumed to be a heckler, by saying, “Where are you from? Albania?”, which became a running joke throughout the gig. At the start of ‘Weeping Song’, he pointed at one young man in the front row, and said, “This is a weeping song, son, a song in which to weep, and we’ll rock ourselves to sleep”, before launching into a powerful version.
He announced ‘Nature Boy’ as “a song we haven’t done in a long while, and I can already feel it bubbling in my bowels, that this is destined for disaster…”. Of course, it was not. The band really was on fire, and Cave seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself back on stage, in this, the first date of the tour.
After a storming ‘Red Right Hand’ came the moment my brother and I had been hoping for, though we dared not even mention it, lest to tempt fate that he wouldn’t play it. Nick sat down at the piano, and played the opening chord of ‘God Is In The House’, with just Warren accompanying him on the electric violin. My brother and I looked at each other and smiled; this is the song that really got us both into Nick Cave, having seen the version he performed on Jools Holland some years ago, and we’ve often bashed it out on the piano on many a drunken night, so we were thrilled to be hearing it live together. Though his voice sounded a little croaky, not surprising given the rocking, screaming start to the show, it was a beautiful version, even though Nick got the words mixed up in the middle, which drew smiles from my brother and I, and ironic cheers from the mosh pit, though he recovered well enough for most people not to notice, and did so with humour, and without losing his thread, as he built to the climactic whisper at the end of the song.
‘Get Ready For Love’ and ‘The Lyre of Orpheus’ were highlights from the latter part of the show, and Nick announced ‘Hard On For Love’ as “mid-period, classic Cave genius that probably none of you will know”, although the opening chords did draw cheers from the hardcore fans in the moshpit, and he ended with a raucous version of ‘Stagger Lee’, which the older folks up in the balconies had been calling for all night.
This was a triumphant hometown gig from Cave and the Bad Seeds, well-received by the appreciative crowd, who created a great atmosphere in the venue, which is always more initimate than I remember it being whenever I go back. Nick’s continuous interaction with the crowd certainly helped that feeling of intimacy, as well as the “continuing general theme of destruction and unhappiness”, as Cave put it at one point tonight, of his music and words. A general feeling of ease and appreciation for his home crowd was demonstrated as he came back on for the encore, and asked us, “So what do you wanna hear?”
A wonderful time was had by all, smiles abounded as we left the venue back into the freezing November night. Go see them on this tour, they are in fantastic form and playing a varied set-list, you will not be disappointed!
Nick Kos
You are the most talented human being I have ever seen.
I am sooooooooo proud of you.
xx