Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' Murder Ballads

Author: Santi Elijah Holley
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501355163
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 152

Book Description
In a bar called The Bucket of Blood, a man shoots the bartender four times in the head. In the small town of Millhaven, a teenage girl secretly and gleefully murders her neighbors. A serial killer travels from home to home, quoting John Milton in his victims' blood. Murder Ballads, the ninth studio album from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, is a gruesome, blood-splattered reimagining of English ballads, American folk and blues music, and classic literature. Most of the stories told on Murder Ballads have been interpreted many times, but never before had they been so graphic or profane. Though earning the band their first Parental Advisory warning label, Murder Ballads, released in 1996, brought Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds their biggest critical and commercial success, thanks in part to the award-winning single, “Where the Wild Roses Grow,” an unlikely duet with Australian pop singer, Kylie Minogue. Closely examining each of the ten songs on the album, Santi Elijah Holley investigates the stories behind the songs, and the numerous ways these ballads have been interpreted through the years. Murder Ballads is a tour through the evolution of folk music, and a journey into the dark secrets of American history.

Unprepared To Die

Author: Paul Slade
Publisher: Soundcheck Books
ISBN: 099294807X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 151

Book Description
The Gory Stories Behind The Murder Ballads Cheerfully vulgar, revelling in gore, and always with an eye on the main chance, murder ballads are tabloid newspapers set to music, carrying word of the latest ‘orrible murders to an insatiable public. Victims are bludgeoned, stabbed or shot in every verse and killers often hanged, but the songs themselves never die. Instead, they mutate – morphing to suit local place names as they criss cross the Atlantic and continue to fascinate each generation’s biggest musical stars. Paul Slade traces this fascinating genre’s history through eight of its greatest songs. Stagger Lee’s “biographers” alone include Duke Ellington, James Brown, Bob Dylan, Dr John, The Clash and Nick Cave. No two tell his story in quite the same way. Covering eight classic murder ballads, including “Knoxville Girl”, “Tom Dooley” and “Frankie & Johnny”, Slade investigates the real-life murder which inspired each song and traces its musical development down the decades. Billy Bragg, The Bad Seeds’ Mick Harvey, Laura Cantrell, Rennie Sparks of The Handsome Family and a host of other leading musicians add their own insights.

In the Pines

Author: Erik Kriek
Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
ISBN: 1683960114
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 138

Book Description
The murder ballad holds a rock-solid position in US roots music and the Great American Songbook for decades. Telling the stories of sometimes true and often not-so-true-crimes and other horrific events, they are raw stories full of unrequited love, betrayal, life, and death. The song form stems from the Anglo-Saxon ballad tradition, where stories were orally passed on to a mostly illiterate population. Dutch cartoonist Erik Kriek was inspired by five old and new murder ballads — including songs by modern masters such as Nick Cave, Steve Earle, and Gillian Welch — and used them as a launching point for five special and ruthless graphic narratives that dig deep into the darkness of Americana, in which guns and religion maintain an uneasy balance.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' Murder Ballads

Author: Santi Elijah Holley
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501355155
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 145

Major Labels

Author: Kelefa Sanneh
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525559604
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 497

Book Description
One of Oprah Daily's 20 Favorite Books of 2021 • Selected as one of Pitchfork's Best Music Books of the Year “One of the best books of its kind in decades.” —The Wall Street Journal An epic achievement and a huge delight, the entire history of popular music over the past fifty years refracted through the big genres that have defined and dominated it: rock, R&B, country, punk, hip-hop, dance music, and pop Kelefa Sanneh, one of the essential voices of our time on music and culture, has made a deep study of how popular music unites and divides us, charting the way genres become communities. In Major Labels, Sanneh distills a career’s worth of knowledge about music and musicians into a brilliant and omnivorous reckoning with popular music—as an art form (actually, a bunch of art forms), as a cultural and economic force, and as a tool that we use to build our identities. He explains the history of slow jams, the genius of Shania Twain, and why rappers are always getting in trouble. Sanneh shows how these genres have been defined by the tension between mainstream and outsider, between authenticity and phoniness, between good and bad, right and wrong. Throughout, race is a powerful touchstone: just as there have always been Black audiences and white audiences, with more or less overlap depending on the moment, there has been Black music and white music, constantly mixing and separating. Sanneh debunks cherished myths, reappraises beloved heroes, and upends familiar ideas of musical greatness, arguing that sometimes, the best popular music isn’t transcendent. Songs express our grudges as well as our hopes, and they are motivated by greed as well as idealism; music is a powerful tool for human connection, but also for human antagonism. This is a book about the music everyone loves, the music everyone hates, and the decades-long argument over which is which. The opposite of a modest proposal, Major Labels pays in full.

Complete Lyrics

Author: Nick Cave
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141027142
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 385

Book Description
A collection of lyrics that spans the author's entire career, from his writing for "The Birthday Party" through the highly acclaimed "Murder Ballads" and "The Boatman's Call" to new albums "No More Shall We Part", "Nocturama", "Abattoir Blues" and "The Proposition".

And the Ass Saw the Angel

Author: Nick Cave
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780140294552
Category : Boys
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Book Description
Outcast, mute, a lone twin cut from a drunk mother in a shack full of junk, Euchrid Eucrow of Ukulore inhabits a nightmarish Southern valley of preachers and prophets, incest and ignorance. When the God-fearing folk of the town declare a foundling child to be chosen by the Almighty, Euchrid is disturbed. He sees her very differently, and his conviction, and increasing isolation and insanity, may have terrible consequences for them both. . . Compelling and astonishing in its baroque richness, Nick Cave's acclaimed first novel is a fantastic journey into the twisted world of Deep Southern Gothic tragedy.

Stranger Than Kindness

Author: Nick Cave
Publisher: Canongate Books
ISBN: 1838852255
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 316

Book Description
A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER Stranger Than Kindness is a journey in images and words into the creative world of musician, storyteller and cultural icon Nick Cave. This highly collectable book invites the reader into the innermost core of the creative process and paves the way for an entirely new and intimate meeting with the artist, presenting Cave’s life, work and inspiration and exploring his many real and imagined universes. It features full colour reproductions of original artwork, handwritten lyrics, photographs and collected personal artefacts along with commentary and meditations from Nick Cave, Janine Barrand and Darcey Steinke. Stranger Than Kindness asks what shapes our lives and makes us who we are, and celebrates the curiosity and power of the creative spirit. The book has been developed and curated by Nick Cave in collaboration with Christina Back. The images were selected from ‘Stranger Than Kindness: The Nick Cave Exhibition’, opening at the Royal Danish Library in Copenhagen in June 2020.

The Sick Bag Song

Author: Nick Cave
Publisher: Canongate Books
ISBN: 1782116699
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 187

Book Description
The Sick Bag Song chronicles Cave’s 22-city journey around North America in 2014. Racked by romantic longing and exhaustion, Cave teases out the significant moments – the people, the books and the music – that have influenced and inspired him, and drops them into his sick bag. The book began its life scribbled onto airline sick bags and later evolves into a restless contemporary epic, exploring love, loss, inspiration and memory.

King Ink

Author: Nick Cave
Publisher: 2.13.61 Publications
ISBN: 9781880985083
Category : Rock music
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description