No Ordinary Fool

A handy fringe benefit of going to see Doves was the subsequent chance to watch how the roadies do the huge set-up for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds from scratch in half-an-hour. The highlight (literally) had to be the three impressive batteries of lighting cans that were strapped onto the rigging and hoisted up into the air. Whilst resting on the ground, they looked like something out of a Terminator movie.

At the same time, hi-tech, hi-schmeck! After all, were we not really there for some Old Testament-style fire and brimstone, brothers and sisters?

And, with little ceremony, out bounced auld Nick and the rest of the band as soon as the stage was good to go. Shorn of moustaches since the last time that I saw him and dressed this time in a khaki three-piece suit with drainpipe trousers and a lime green shirt, Cave is as sleek and as dapper as ever. However, with his frenetic onstage energy, it is no surprise to see the jacket and waistcoat being discarded after a few songs. Tough work being the harbinger of rain – or so he was threatening the water-weary audience with, the infernal Antipodean devil.

Opening with Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry, the set list goes on to feature songs from at least a half-dozen of their albums, with numbers from The Good Son and Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! featuring most prominently.

It is an intense affair, with most of the attention focused on Cave, as he prowls up and down the edge of the stage, eyeballing individual members of the audience and demanding that they have a good time. Few resist. Beside him, the barefoot and wild-haired Warren Ellis is either rolling around on the ground or facing the speakers and playing the violin like a mad man. The image in my head is of him standing astride a grave, trying to get some Larry Lazarus to rise up by dint of his music alone.

As was the case in Dublin Castle last year, Shane MacGowan emerges at the end to perform Lucy with the band. However, it is nigh on impossible to disentangle the voyeurism from the musicianship these days, especially as his voice is now little more than a barely coherent slur. With some idea for how Cave and some of the Bad Seeds cleaned up their act, it is difficult also not to think about the road not taken.

On the whole, though, it was a thoroughly rocking set to close out what had been a relentless 11 hours of music that day.