2. Nick Cave & the Bad SeedsHenry’s Dream
Nick Cave has not made a misstep his whole career, he’s one of those remarkable types so picking one record is tricky. In previous punk rock bands too, what are you supposed to pick with him? Each record is a bit of a dream, but Henry’s Dream is an excellent place to start.
Nick Cave with his lyrical content has such religious imagery. He made me believe it was possible to do it with class and give it a voice that didn’t have to be ridiculed. In America at the time if you were sympathetic to religious sentiment at all you were pigeonholed and people are super bigoted against that, unfairly so. And if you’re a young creative type, it’s pretty intimidating to try and be honest in your art.
If you’re coming from a Biblical conservative home like I did, we were poor, my mother raised my sister and I, we went to Church three days a week, and lived in a Godly home with no liquor in the house, and then you stumble upon Nick Cave with lines like "A fag in a whale-bone corset, draping his dick across my cheek" from ‘Papa Won’t Leave You Henry’, that’s pretty rough stuff.
I thought ‘oh my good God what is going on here’ and it just vibrated into something so threatening. And in a lyrical sense Nick Cave’s spent a lot of time with the King James Bible which I was brought up on. Not just fire and brimstone but the iambic metre of it, where every other syllable is stressed.
We considered covering ‘Straight To You’ for The Straight Hits! but there wasn’t a place for it at the time but we may do it live if I throw the right band together.
