Music: Gone to seed.

Regular visitors will recall that we've been tracking the music blog Aquarium Drunkard's series on the first four albums of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. The last of these posts ends the Cave-a-polooza with a bang. First, we get an excellent reassessment of Cave and Co.'s fourth long-player: Your Funeral . . . My Trial:

Any great artist, from the Beatles to Jean Cocteau, will tell you that the best art begins the moment the artist slackens his grip and allows his creation to breathe on its own—this great mystery of any human creation that Cocteau went so far as to call l’Ange Heurtebise, knowing that “angel” was the only word that could begin to capture the nature of the big indescribable. Some artists think that all art comes from suffering, and that’s exactly half true; what births our greatest sounds is the pains of an artist relinquishing control.

Don’t think Nick Cave didn’t know it in the summer of 1986. Though he humorously titled Kicking Against the Pricks as a finger-flip to rock journalists, it’s not much of a stretch to hear him thrashing about at his own windmills on those early records. Put simply, Your Funeral…My Trial is the sound of one man dropping his sword. It’s a chronicle of giving up—not in the sense of walking away, but the giving up that comes with seeing that he could never control himself, much less his art. And so he stands naked, skinny, head slightly down. But his lips still move. This is a record full of mystery, of unanswered questions, of gazes. This is Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ first genuinely Great Record.

But wait, there's more! The review comes with an mp3 of the title track: "Your Funeral . . . My Trial." Now how much would you expect to pay?

Don't answer yet, because there's even more!

Maybe you're new to the whole Cave and Bad Seeds phenom and these articles have got you stoked. Maybe you're and long-time fan of NC&tBS and you're looking for something you haven't already played to death. Whatever you Cave needs, AD has got you covered. Friends, the fine folks at AD also have mp3s of Nick Cave and the Bad Seed live. That's right, their entire October 9, 1986 show: 12 big tracks, including their cover of the Velvet Undergrounds "All Tomorrow's Parties!"

Now how much would expect to pay. For, special friends of ANTSS, we're giving it away. That's right: cheap as free.

Just leave the folks at AD a nice thank you note to let them know you appreciate their good work. It's the right thing to do, and the right way to do it.

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Link Proliferation: Cows, bunnies, Nazi apes, and other lesser breeds of vampire.

Mad Science's Who's Who.

Wired runs trading-cardish profiles of some of the finest names in contemporary mad science.

My favorite bit of research is described thusly:

Aiming a beam of light at a glass slide in 2006 and 2007, Moddel asked test subjects to use their brainpower to increase the amount of reflected light. Expected reflection: 8 percent. Measured reflection: 8.005 percent. This represents a tiny but significant demonstration of mind over matter, Moddel says. Asked to decrease the amount of reflected light, subjects had similar success.

Apparently, the human mind can increase or decrease the amount of light reflected off a surface, though only in amounts well below the human threshold to perceive it. This must surely rank as the crappiest superpower ever.

Alternate Vampire Species

If you have not yet read B-Sol's excellent Top 10 Least Frightening Vampires list yet, go ahead and do that first.

Back? Groovy.

So thinking on the vampires I would have added to the list, it occurred to me that all my not-so-scary vampires made the list because they weren't human. So, without further ado, here's some non-human vampires I think deserve a little Interwebs love.

Zoltan: Hound of Dracula

In the Russia, more than 200 years ago, Dracula, Lord of the Vampires, attacked a woman only to be foiled by the dog of a local innkeeper. Furious at the presumptuous pooch's intervention, Dracula turned his fury on the hound and sucked its blood instead. This turned the dog into Zoltan: the Hound of Dracula!

Perhaps the finest vampire-dog horror flick ever made, Zolton not only features the titular dogpire, but also is notable for the appearance in of Zolton's vampire off-spring. That's right: vampire puppies!

Bessie the Hellcow

In 1670, a starving Dracula was unable to find a human victim to sustain him and opted, to Bessie's eternal chagrin, for a beef dinner. The cow died and rose again three nights later as Bessie the Hellcow.

On a 300-year-old quest to destroy Dracula, Bessie the Hellcow tracked the Lord of Darkness to the outskirts of Cleveland. There she crossed paths with Marvel's mightest hero: Howard the Duck. Sadly, despite being perfect for the miniseries, Marvel decided not to work Bessie into the newly reconstituted Midnight Sons, the monster-hero team at the center of their fourth Marvel Zombies outing.

Along with Zoltan, Bessie's story leaves a foul taste in the mouth of those vampire fans who fancy the idea that vampires represent a dark and seductive aspect of human sexuality. Without exploring the subject too deeply, let's all just agree that it's hard to be sexy when you're giving a cow the ol' Transylvania hickey, as vampire fans call it.

Pryemaul

The former commander of the Third Reich's sinister Primate Patrol, Pryemaul (pictured at the far right, standing in front of the ghost of J.E.B. Stuart) began his comic book career as your garden-variety fascist ape soldier. After Germany lost the war, this simian stormtrooper hid out in the Amazon with the remains of his ape army.

Eventually an encounter with the DC's Anne-Rice-ripoff, Lord Andrew Bennett of I, Vampire fame, turned Pryemaul into DC's only talking Nazi vampire ape. Practically tailor-made for use by Grant Morrison, I have no idea why he did not feature in prominently in DC's Final Crisis "blockbuster."

Bunnicula

This horrific hare appears on both B-Sol's original flavor list and the shameless ripoff you're reading now. The long-running vegetarian vampire bunny villain-turned-uneasy-hero of a popular children's book series, Bunnicula made his first appearance in 1979. He's appeared in seven books and one film – which is really a heck of a career for any horror character (he's two novels ahead of Lestat).

Count Duckula

A spin-off of the spy-spoof toon DangerMouse, Count Duckula's origins are handily covered by the show's intro.



He is, like Bunnicula, a vegetarian. He's also a bit of a doofus.

Okay, who'd I miss?

You know, looking over this list, I have to say that I think vampire fans protest too much about the Twilight phenom. I mean, really, are sparkly vampires somehow less canon than a cape-sporting bloodthirsty bovine? Is it really possible to desecrate a image of a monster that already boasts a talking ape proponent of National Socialism among its numbers?

Cave Diving

Regular readers may recall that we've been following along with Aquarium Drunkard's on-going series revisiting the first four albums of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. After the well-received From Her to Eternity, the Brit rock press savaged Cave and Company's sophomore effort, Firstborn is Dead. NCBS's next platter, the even more Americana-soaked Kicking Against the Pricks was the group's rejoinder. From the AD post:

“In the biblical sense, Kicking Against the Pricks means something like fighting windmills. This meaning is most important to me,” Nick Cave told Dutch rock writer Tom Engelshoven, explaining the title of his 1986 covers album. “But,” he went on, “if you ask me if the word ‘Pricks’ refers to certain people in a non-biblical way, then I answer: Yes. And I mean journalists.”

Following the release of 1984’s From Her to Eternity, Nick Cave was lauded as some sort of upside-down Return of Christ by the British music press. And of course, those same journalists would, one year later, trample all over the far superior The Firstborn is Dead. Kicking Against the Pricks came as part of Cave’s reaction to the letdown, a direct fuck-you to the journalists who, in their fervor to find a savior in rock ‘n’ roll, ended up crucifying anything that lets them down. It’s an ugly game, one that we Americans learned pretty well, and Cave’s reaction is admirable. And, rather than give the long-form writers something to muse over and get smug about, Cave played the trump in the ’94 interview: “There is no concept behind it,” he stressed to Engelshoven, “except maybe that we need not be ashamed of showing our influences.”

The post includes free downloads of the thematically consistent "I'm Going to Kill That Woman" and "Hey Joe."

UPDATE BONUS:

Regina's Spector's new video for "Laughing With," is packed with allusions to classic surrealists masterpieces. And it's got Regina Spector in it. She's easy on the eyes. Like a softer Tori Amos with all the "call me Titania, dear mortal rumpling" preciousness scraped off. And the curls. Those are nice. Um.

What was I . . .

Oh, yeah. A video. Here you go.

Laughing With

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Music: I was a teenage caveman.

For the Mute Records release of remasters of the entire Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds discography, the music-mad minds at the Aquarium Drunkard blog at looking at Nick and the Seeds' first four records. They've just posted their thoughts on Firstborn is Dead, the second platter from the boys.

From the post by m garner:

To understand what happened with Nick Cave between From Her to Eternity and The Firstborn is Dead, it’s important to hear Cave’s cover of "In the Ghetto." The song, written by Mac Davis and made famous by Elvis Presley (and, for later generations, Eric Cartman), was left off of the original Eternity LP but found 7" release between the two records. As covers–and particularly Nick Cave covers, as we shall see next week–go, it’s a straightforward affair. Cave’s baritone is rich here, a tone more befitting the smooth, heartbroken tone of the song than the strangle he'd been applying to the rest of the Eternity material. The Bad Seeds show early signs of the tender noise they'd perfect over time, with Blixa Bargeld's guitar feeding back in a sort-of moan while Mick Harvey snaps out a martial dirge. It's a moving performance, one completely devoid of irony, and Cave’s first naked moment as a solo artist.

And, later:

But the real knot in the noose comes at the very beginning, with "Tupelo." Firstborn’s opening track—named for Elvis Presley's stillborn twin brother, Jesse Garon Presley—commences with washes of thunder and gunshot and rain, all of which quickly yield to Barry Adamson’s peg-legged bass while Mick Harvey drums out a Bo Diddley beat till the skin starts to come off. This is an apocalypse you can nod your head to. But the track belongs to the Worst Seed and to the images he repeats like funeral rites. Cave barrels through "Tupelo" with paddlewheel rhythm, growling and shuddering at times, but never breaking into self-parody. There’s nothing remotely funny about the scene down south as Cave describes it, wrapping together floods and tornadoes with the Second Coming of Christ and the birth of Elvis and America and who knows how many other things in the tiny town of Tupelo, Mississippi. "The King gonna walk on Tupelo," he wails repeatedly, referring to Elvis and to Christ in a narrative where the death of the day swallows the birth. The scratch of Bargeld's slide guitar is haunting, a sort-of vomiting upside-down John Lee Hooker, whose 'Tupelo Blues" served as an inspiration for the song. As with From Her to Eternity, Flannery O’Connor looms large all over the place, her crutches striking the levees and sending the river scattering into the homes like a pack of wolves looking for anything alive. And the Bad Seeds coo the title out together—"Tupelo"—like combs dripping with honey. And you can hear the waver in Nick Cave's voice as he shakes his head. "Oh God help Tupelo," he says. And the rain begins to pour once again.

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