What percent of the time is Nick Cave kidding?

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Like, the "Tower of Song" cover is 100%, the "Death is Not the End" cover is 50%, "God is in the House" is somehow 125%, and those mopey piano ballads of late are like 5%, overall, what percentage of the time would you say Nick Cave is totally taking the piss?

― Eppy (Eppy), Sunday, 15 January 2006 07:25 (twenty years ago)

there's no such thing as a bad Nick Cave song- some are just better than others

― jsoulja, Sunday, 15 January 2006 11:11 (twenty years ago)

Nick Cave, didn't he use to be in the Birthday Party?

― Momus (Momus), Sunday, 15 January 2006 15:27 (twenty years ago)

Nick Cave, why won't he fuck off and die?

― ESTEBAN BUTTEZ~!!! (ESTEBAN BUTTEZ~!!!), Sunday, 15 January 2006 15:28 (twenty years ago)

37.8908%

― kyle (akmonday), Sunday, 15 January 2006 15:48 (twenty years ago)

Following Eppy's numbers Nick is kidding 70% of the time which sounds reasonable and proves the answer alredy lies in a question well asked ?

― ,.:; (blunt), Sunday, 15 January 2006 16:40 (twenty years ago)

Oh please, like I in any way have a conception of his whole discography. We need to be more scientific here people.

Like, what would be the comedic percentage of each song on The Boatman's Call:

1. Into My Arms
2. Lime-Tree Arbour
3. People Ain't No Good
4. Brompton Oratory
5. There Is A Kingdom
6. (Are You) The One I've Been Waiting For?
7. Where Do We Go Now But Nowherer?
8. West Country Girl
9. Black Hair
10. Idiot Prayer
11. Far From Me
12. Green Eyes

― Eppy (Eppy), Sunday, 15 January 2006 17:12 (twenty years ago)

Judging by his video comp he could stand to kid more.

― Zwan (miccio), Sunday, 15 January 2006 18:02 (twenty years ago)

cave, like all great writers, is possessed of a dialogic sensibility, which he conveys through his art. he is both kidding and completely serious at once all the time, the comic and the tragic in perpetual dialogue in his art

― northrop frye, Sunday, 15 January 2006 18:15 (twenty years ago)

Yeah, but what percent, poindexter? This ain't no liberal arts here, this is objective, dawg.

― Eppy (Eppy), Sunday, 15 January 2006 18:18 (twenty years ago)

as he is always kidding, but never merely kidding, the percentage, eppington, is zero.

― northrop frye, Sunday, 15 January 2006 18:22 (twenty years ago)

Judging by his video comp he could stand to kid more.

hmm, when i have time, i shall sit through them and calculate the "kidding" percentage. off the top of my head, the videos for "stagger lee" and "the weeping song" are definitely over 80%.

― alex in montreal (alex in montreal), Sunday, 15 January 2006 18:27 (twenty years ago)

i don't understand nick cave, but i love tom waits and they're both quite similar. i always feel like there's something stunningly ungenuine about cave somehow.

― Wogan Lenin (dog latin), Sunday, 15 January 2006 18:43 (twenty years ago)

They're not really that similiar, apart from they both do theatrical and mopey piano ballads.

I think if you're trading in murder ballads it's best to be ungenuine. :)

― Daniel_Rf (Daniel_Rf), Sunday, 15 January 2006 18:47 (twenty years ago)

They also both do Jesus songs with wildly varying degrees of sincerity.

― Jordan (Jordan), Sunday, 15 January 2006 19:50 (twenty years ago)

they have sort of taken opposite career paths. at their most randynewmanish they're honestly not all that different.

nick cave and warren ellis's new one = sort of interesting someone start a thread about it please

― tom west (thomp), Sunday, 15 January 2006 19:59 (twenty years ago)

Momus OTM, unfortunately

― Mr Straight Toxic (ghostface), Sunday, 15 January 2006 20:09 (twenty years ago)

nick cave and warren ellis's new one = sort of interesting someone start a thread about it please

What are you referring to?

(I ask for Maddie's sake)

― Jordan (Jordan), Sunday, 15 January 2006 20:58 (twenty years ago)

> there's no such thing as a bad Nick Cave song- some are just better than others

There's no such thing as a Nick Cave song

― fr, Sunday, 15 January 2006 21:00 (twenty years ago)

What are you referring to?

Soundtrack to The Proposition.

Judging by his video comp he could stand to kid more.

Half the videos since are top-to-bottom laff-fests*! Check out Bring It On, Fifteen Feet Of Pure White Snow and especially all fifteen minutes of Babe, I'm On Fire. (Breathless also goes for quiet gags with the fluffy cartoon bunnies and fox.)

― kit brash (kit brash), Sunday, 15 January 2006 21:19 (twenty years ago)

jordan there's a some-of-it instrumental, some recital, some singing soundtrack to the proposition, with warren ellis the bad seed / member of the dirty three; i think some other people are on it, unless they have previously untapped instrumental talents and much overdubbing. given from the ten minutes i spent before dinner fast skipping through it it's the least classic-rockish cave has been in a decade or so. (it might sound like the dirty three, but i barely remember what they sound like.)

s'out in australia, american release in march or something. i think. presumably when the movie is out.

― tom west (thomp), Sunday, 15 January 2006 23:38 (twenty years ago)

and i'm sure you appreciate his genius really, jazz boy

― tom west (thomp), Sunday, 15 January 2006 23:44 (twenty years ago)

If Nick Cave is not your thing, that's fine.

If you honestly try to say his music is not legit and/or has no merit, you're wasting air (not on this thread- on the planet). Please do something about that.

― jsoulja, Sunday, 15 January 2006 23:48 (twenty years ago)

You can get the soundtrack in the US as an import. I picked it up about a month ago and it's fantastic.

― jsoulja, Sunday, 15 January 2006 23:50 (twenty years ago)

i remember when ilm was open to discussion! boy! i shoulda POSTED!

― tom west (thomp), Monday, 16 January 2006 00:14 (twenty years ago)

It's just really lame when some BIG FUCKING ASSHOLE jumps into a thread with the whole "this band sucks, you are losers" and doesn't even back it up with a single decent reason

and I suppose the mature thing to do is ignore it, but I'm a nastier sort and it makes me feel better to tell people like that to go kill themselves in some fashion

and since the earth's natural resources are finite....

― jsoulja, Monday, 16 January 2006 00:20 (twenty years ago)

that's kind of the same problem at root, i must admit.

― tom west (thomp), Monday, 16 January 2006 00:27 (twenty years ago)

i got that soundtrack in the mail recently. the accomanying promo material was somewhat irritating to me with ambiguous in tone quotes. i ended up giving it away without listening to it.

― Susan Douglas (Susan Douglas), Monday, 16 January 2006 00:34 (twenty years ago)

*of course the rest are for old-man-at-piano snoozeathons and so I haven't watched them, maybe they're packed with comedy too and I'll never know

― kit brash (kit brash), Monday, 16 January 2006 07:32 (twenty years ago)

About 7,4% : he really is a sad old man.

― snowballing (snowballing), Monday, 16 January 2006 07:58 (twenty years ago)

About 64pc and that's far too much. I only like him when he's grinding his teeth in rage.

― Baaderonixx, born again in Xixax (baaderonixx), Monday, 16 January 2006 14:37 (twenty years ago)

nick cave rules.

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Monday, 16 January 2006 15:15 (twenty years ago)

I'm not sure that anyone wants this discussion to be earnest, but I think the term "kidding" is un-complicating what's really at work. "God Is in the House," for one, doesn't sound like kidding to me nearly as much as bitter and cutting. If by "kidding" you mean "not straightforward" than, yeah, your math looks pretty good, but there are levels of jocularity and sarcasm in Cave that don't always intersect.

― JC-L (JC-L), Monday, 16 January 2006 15:20 (twenty years ago)

three years pass...

Via Metafilter:

Nick Cave wrote a screenplay for Gladiator II

― bendy, Monday, 4 May 2009 14:09 (seventeen years ago)

He was probably kidding when he sent his picture to Allmusic for their Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds discography page. (That's not him, or is it?)

― StanM, Tuesday, 5 May 2009 08:22 (seventeen years ago)

Martyn P. Casey

― willem, Tuesday, 5 May 2009 08:51 (seventeen years ago)

Thx, but I'm not sure about him either...

― StanM, Tuesday, 5 May 2009 09:00 (seventeen years ago)

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