Nick Cave & Other Animals

Complaints have been received about the fact that I was present at the Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds show in Dublin castle a week or two back and that no report had been forthcoming. Let me put this to rights. First off, Mr. Cave is always good value for money but things were taken to a bit of an extreme here, my two companions for the night had paid €140 a piece for tickets with a cover price of €50, and just when I thought things were settling down a bit what with everything not selling out in seconds this summer, in Dublin at least. Not to worry, two stout fellows they were and are in the form of Neil Doherty and Jim Roche. We met out the back of Brogan's which has easily the worst beer "Garden" in Dublin but I didn't storm Leinster House when they passed the smoking laws so I only have myself to blame. At about 7.30, Jim proposed we head over to the Castle to see the support band. This prompted a raised eyebrow from myself as I'm more in the habit of loading up on grog first but away we went and benefited greatly by being on the receiving end of magic armbands that allowed us into the front section, it seems the rest of Dublin was getting tanked first. There was good reason for this, pints of Heineken (I say Heineken but they had the consistency of fairy liquid (the washing up liquid not some sort of alternative lifestyle soft drink)) at €6 a go. I muttered several curses under my breath as I took delivery of three.

The Bad Seeds are a fantastic rock n' roll band and it was a great show, despite the fact that the new record is not the greatest thing I've ever heard. Highlights for me were "Into My Arms" and "Red Right Hand" and, without doubt, Mr. Cave's fantastic trousers, blue pin stripe flairs over black Chelsea boots - top marks, great 'tache as well. I heard that Shane McGowan came on as a guest but I missed this as I was outside having a drink, something I'm sure the wasted genius of McGowan would appreciate if he still had the faculty for linear thought. The night finished well in The Mezz, a good old school rock n' roll bar although it must be said that my friends and I are now very old and some people just can't drink for shit no more.

Here's some rareish Nick, from the soundtrack of "Until The End Of The World"