Nicktape 4, Lost and Searchingby Peter Webb |
***Cross-reference with: IV, Angels, Desire and the Vagabond
These tracks represent a place in time and space from the middle to the end of the 1980s, in Berlin and the UK. Even though one of the tracks, by Current 93 with Nick Cave on vocals, isn’t from this time zone, it resonates with the character, connections and the world of many of the fans, supporters and mavericks who inhabited this area of popular music. World Domination Enterprises played in Berlin at the SO36 club when I visited the city in 1986; they were as wild, ramshackle and beautiful in their highly distorted fury as the Birthday Party had been 6 years before. Einstürzende Neubauten were on my radar then, and the sound of industrial breakdown, schizophrenia and collapse that they generated stung my senses in those years with an intensity I’ll never forget. Blixa Bargeld, of course, became a key figure for Nick Cave, playing in his band and representing a German long-lost twin forged from the same destructive but thoughtful molecules. Foetus, alter-ego of Jim Thirwell, had conjured up some fantastic sound collages himself, and the track here conveyed the collision of punk, industrial and the avant-garde which I had begun to love. He also had been a Cave collaborator in the Immaculate Consumptive, thorny confidante and fellow traveller. Psychic TV seemed to fit into the same oeuvre as Cave, and the audience that he had in the 1980s: destructive, sexually experimental, linked to characters like Derek Jarman and William Burroughs. PTV’s quasi-cult could be said to have produced as many problematic themes as provocative ones, but they were excellent purveyors (at least with their first two albums) of some beautiful music. My band of the time, Idiot Sideshow, played gigs, made provocative posters and did little to seek a record deal. The two tracks here are representative of what we did and provide a window into the creative world of a group of people who were very much hard-wired into the milieu that Cave and these other artists inhabited, but who never broke out of a small scene in Bristol and London.
The rest of this mix reflects the taste culture of the period: Coil’s beautifully crafted, genre non-specific and heartfelt compositions. The Prunes gave us fantastic theatre, haunting melodies and gender-blending energy. The Birthday Party track that became the early Cave template of broken blues gave us unforgettable lyrical twists: “yeah I recognize that girl I took her from rags right through to stitches (pray for me now) oh baby, tonight we sleep in separate ditches.” Tuxedomoon were the San Franciscan band that gave us a different sense of style and a musical hybrid that was unique to them, but still seemed to fit into the experimental milieu that Cave et al were a part of. Mark Stewart took all that was dear to my Bristol hometown and mangled it through distortion and megaphones to give us a reminder of how fantastic hip-hop could become. The final track sums up a period when the fear of non-punk or experimental reference points had ceased, and the idea of “the song” and “the singer” could also be embraced. Nick kicked against the pricks and re-enchanted our appreciation of songwriting whilst also adding new dimensions to old classics. I still love these musical journeys even now, and hope that this playlist re-ignites this period for those who lived it, and provides a taste of it for those who didn’t, but who are intrigued by these artists and Cave’s milieu.
1. ‘Asbestos Lead Asbestos’
World Domination Enterprises, 1985
2. ‘Halber Mensch’
Einstürzende Neubauten, 1985
3. ‘I’ll Meet You in Poland Baby’
Scraping Foetus off the Wheel, 1984
4. ‘Saint Huck’
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, 1984
5. ‘Just Drifting’
Psychic TV, 1982
6. ‘Terminal’
Idiot Sideshow, 1986
7. ‘Windmills in the Distance’
Idiot Sideshow, 1986
Windmills in the Distance by Silkworms Ink
8. ‘All the Pretty Little Horses’
Current 93 (Cave on vocals), 1996
9. ‘All Tomorrows Parties’
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, 1986
10. ‘At the Heart of It All’
Coil, 1982
11. ‘Sweet Home (Under White Clouds)’
Virgin Prunes, 1981
12. ‘Deep in the Woods’
The Birthday Party, 1983
13. ‘What Use’
Tuxedomoon, 1980
14. ‘Schizophrenia’
Sonic Youth, 1987
15. ‘Passification Programme’
Mark Stewart and the Maffia, 1985
AND 16. ‘The Singer’
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, 1986