ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN SINGLES : #066

aka The Vinyl Villain incorporating Sexy Loser

#066: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds– ‘In The Ghetto’ (Mute Records ’84)

Good morning friends,

 I am rather ashamed to say that I never really had too much time for Nick Cave. I mean, these days he is considered as one of the great artists of our time, and rightly so, I suppose. But I am probably the last person on earth who should write a detailed essay about him, I would get it hopelessly wrong because I missed so much of his output – and also everything has already been written before, much better than I could ever do it.

 Therefore let’s keep it short and sweet, shall we? My favorite album by Mr. Cave (did you know that’s his real name? Astonishing, I always thought he had chosen it by himself in order to sound cooler …) in its entirety is ‘Kicking Against The Pricks’, although my favorite songs are ‘Watching Alice’ and ‘Slowly Goes The Night’ from ‘Tender Prey’. None of those two ever appeared on 7” though, therefore they out ruled themselves, obviously.

 So I had to choose a different 7”, and in order not having to end this post here and now, I will tell you why it is that I like this song so much:

I started my apprenticeship in 1987, the workplace was some 35 kilometers away from my village. So I was lucky that some chap I vaguely knew from school had also been recruited as an apprentice boy there: Burkhard aka the mighty Fatman (we’re still in touch today, mainly drinking a bit in our old bar two or three times a year, but believe me: I am the fat man these days, no longer him – but in 1987 it was the other way round, hence his nickname). Now, obviously the Fatman would pick me up in the morning and we’d drive together to work, either in my shabby Renault 5 or in his car, an even more shabby Citroen 2CV. And of course we would listen to music on our way to and back from work, 2 x 40 minutes or so per day.

 When it was my turn to drive, I would put in cassettes from recent Peel shows on BFBS, much to the dismay of the Fatman, because he listened to NOTHING else but Elvis (Presley, not Costello) back then: so you can imagine how much I disliked work when it was his turn to drive – Elvis on heavy (cassette) rotation in the bloody 2CV! I learned that Elvis, apart from two (unsuccessful) numbers never wrote a song by himself, being a decent singer was fair enough for him to gain fame, apparently.

Obviously I couldn’t cope with this as a true indie kid, still the Fatman constantly tried to convince me of Elvis’ greatness. Elvis being God or being just useless certainly was the biggest musical dispute arising between the two us within the years, but not the only one, to be sure. All of this was pre-internet, of course, so occasionally a British authority, no longer with us alas, had to be contacted by post in order to settle our disputes:

There was one song though that never ended in a dispute whatsoever, one that as well The Fatman as me could easily identify with … this one:

mp3:  Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – In The Ghetto

Enjoy, and take good care,

Dirk