I ain't down here for your love or money, I'm down here for your POLL: The ILM Nick Cave Poll RESULTS Thread (#106 in a series)

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I thank you all very much for taking the time to vote.

We had 26 ballots in total, all of which (of course) specified 20 Bad Seeds tracks.

24 ballots included a list of albums, while 17 ballots included a selection of non-Bad Seeds tracks.

So, here we go!

Let's start with a Top 10 list of ALBUMS.

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10. The Boatman's Call
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
128 points (7 votes)

TOO HIGH

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9. Henry's Dream
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
134 points (6 votes, two number ones)

LOL @ thread title!

I believe I gave #9 a small number of points.

i also voted for Henry's Dream, my easily my favourite of his 90s albums

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8. Kicking Against the Pricks
139 points (7 votes)

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7. Murder Ballads
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
144 points (7 votes, one number one)

i'm definitely surprised that kicking against the pricks made the top 10

yes, me too really if you think about how many albums are vying for a spot!

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6. The Good Son
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
146 points (8 votes)

this is where i ranked the good son too, remarkably solid but doesn't quite have the same highs as some of his other work

The Good Son was the first album he released while I knew who he was. So that and Tender Prey will always be What Nick Cave Sounds Like to me, rightly or wrongly. I like and gave points to both.

Kinda wonder how The Birthday Party might fit in here now, if they do at all...

I recall being very taken by The Good Son in my younger years, but upon revisiting it for the purposes of this poll, not a huge amount of it seriously grabbed me. but yes, full of robust, evocative songs.

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5. From Her to Eternity
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
177 points (9 votes, one number one)

Had to check whether I voted for this one! 10th place apparently. I think I listen to it way less frequently anything else he did in the 80s. Such long track durations to commit to. :)

Yer da's looking well.

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4. Abattoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
225 points (11 votes, three number ones)

Healthy number of 1st-place votes! I can... appreciate this one, while not really loving it.

I didn't vote, so I'm not really entitled to an opinion, but I gravitate to the late 1980s and early 1990s - I would have had Henry's Dream and Good Son much higher.

This next one was my number one:

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3. Let Love In
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
252 points (10 votes, four number ones)

Ranked Abattoir Blues and Lyre separately - unlike Your Funeral and My Trial, they do feel persuasively like sibling records, rather than simply two physical chunks of the same material.

I've always thought Henry's Dream much better than Nick & Mick do, but it got edged out of my album ten in favour of loading the tracks ballot with individual Dreams.

From Her to Eternity has two fantastic, immense tracks in the title track and "Saint Huck" but the rest doesn't really do much for me

Abattoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus was my #1, it's kind of a culmination of everything he'd done in the 15 years prior, it's fantastic the whole way through, it has the band in absolute top form and it has really rich arrangements

Let Love In didn't quite make my ballot but it's very good the whole way through and I can certainly understand why some might have it at #1

YES! I enjoyed how eclectic your ballot was, particularly with respect to albums. x-post

and yeah Henry's Dream is very very good and I don't really understand why they disliked the production so much, it's one of their better sounding albums up to that point.

Let Love In is my favourite on the grounds of it being the first one I really sunk my teeth into. but it's more than that; it's a pure, emotional and damning record. it's sincere & nuanced in a way that say, Murder Ballads was not.

Nick's vocals on Henry's Dream are some of his all-time best imo.

Thinking of Henry -> Let Love In -> Murder Ballads as a single phase of the band, the weakness of Henry's Dream becomes apparent. If those songs had the immense sound of LLI, or the clarity of the varied arrangements on Ballads, they'd be much better served.

i agree that the production on Let Love In and Murder Ballads is much better than Henry's Dream, and if Henry's Dream had the immense sound of LLI it would be even better, but i'm mostly comparing it to production-wise what had come before and i think Tender Prey and Your Funeral My Trial were hurt much more by their production than Henry's Dream was, so for that point in their career Henry's Dream sounds very good to me. helps that the songs are so strong too

Yeah, listening in order it just sounds like a next transitional step from the ravaged 80s records and more sedate clarity of The Good Son. But presumably the band had the sound of LLI in mind already, and were frustrated to be forced into a Neil Young-shaped hole instead of realising it.

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2. Tender Prey
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
303 points (15 votes, two number ones)

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1. Your Funeral... My Trial
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
310 points (13 votes, five number ones)

Your Funeral My Trial was my number one but I’m very surprised it won

Also surprised by high placing of Murder Ballads which Id always thought of as a throwaway

When I voted I had pretty much forgotten the existence of Let Love In, despite listening to it a lot back in the 90s - it was pretty good I now recall!

:D

Seems TP was my #5. I don't really know if any of my top 4 will place now, but am also struggling to think of other contenders...

XP: Scratch that! Hahahaha. #1 is my own #1 after all. Phew. Nice work people.

tender prey is one of the weakest bad seeds albums imo, i'm not surprised to see it do so well as i know of its reputation, but i really don't get it. it's not bad or anything but just not particularly strong, not many of the songs have ever really stuck with me and the production is pretty bad, very muddy and cavernous - even "the mercy seat", which is a classic of course, isn't really done justice by the recording there. it took me a while to get into nick cave really as i'd often see tender prey cited as his best and didn't find that much to like there, so it ended up being push the sky away that was my entry point.

your funeral my trial is decent and has some pretty good moments ("sad waters", "stranger than kindness", and "hard on for love" especially), but it never really compares to their very best material and "the carny" is such a dirge and drags it down. to me it's fairly middle of the pack as far as bad seeds albums go

push the sky away that was my entry point

!

So was YFMT highly regarded amongst those in know in the '80s? It has no super-obvious hits to draw in the casual observer and frankly I don't think I'd heard a note of it anywhere before picking up a copy on a whim from a JB HiFi discount bin circa 1998. I did however immediately find the vibe captivating when I did hear it.

YF... MT has an atmosphere unlike any other Nick Cave album. it has a suspended, meditative sort of feel to it that renders it quite foreboding somehow.

I can never remember the final 3 tracks of Tender Prey when they're not playing, but everything else is good to great IMHO.

The complete absence of the Birthday Party from the top 10 is a disgrace though. Disgusting savages, etc, etc. :)

Anyway, thanks charlie rex for the first instalment of this jamboree!

Agree with ufo on the relative strengths/weaknesses of Henry's Dream and its production, it sounds fine to me. Let Love In was my #1 and I'd probably pick the first half of the '90s as Cave's strongest era.

I should say that I'm not a hardcore Nick Cave fan but another board I post on has recently been doing a project going through his albums week-by-week and it's been quite revelatory revisiting some of them - Your Funeral... My Trial was one I wasn't particularly keen on before but it's become one of my favourites (apart from 'The Carny', yeah).

RESULTS

10. The Boatman's Call 128 points (7 votes)
9. Henry's Dream 134 points (6 votes, two number ones)
8. Kicking Against the Pricks 139 points (7 votes)
7. Murder Ballads 144 points (7 votes, one number one)
6. The Good Son 146 points (8 votes)
5. From Her to Eternity 177 points (9 votes, one number one)
4. Abattoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus 225 points (11 votes, three number ones)
3. Let Love In 252 points (10 votes, four number ones)
2. Tender Prey 303 points (15 votes, two number ones)
1. Your Funeral... My Trial 310 points (13 votes, five number ones)

THEY COULDA BEEN CONTENDERS:

11. Skeleton Tree 108 points (6 votes)
12. Mutiny! (The Birthday Party) 104 points (5 votes)
13. Live Seeds 102 points (5 votes)
14. Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! 96 points (5 votes, one number one)
15. Junkyard (The Birthday Party) 79 points (4 votes, one number one)
16. Prayers on Fire (The Birthday Party) 73 points (3 votes, one number one)
17. The Firstborn is Dead 62 points (3 votes)
18. Push the Sky Away 52 points (3 votes)
19. No More Shall We Part 50 points (3 votes)
20. The Bad Seed (The Birthday Party) 46 points (2 votes)
21. Ghosteen 41 points (2 votes)
=22. Grinderman (Grinderman) 22 points (1 vote)
=22. Live @ KCRW 22 points (1 vote)
=24. The Birthday Party 18 points (1 vote)
=24. Acoustic Versions From "Tender Prey" 18 points (1 vote)
26. What A Wonderful World 16 points (1 vote)
27. The Proposition OST 13 points (1 vote)

No love for Nocturama. and the second Grinderman also copped a bagel.

OK, I'm going to post some non-Bad Seeds tracks !

here's how my (probably pretty controversial) ranking of the Bad Seeds albums ended up, sorted into tiers. the top 5 was my albums ballot of course

Abbatoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus
Ghosteen

Henry's Dream
Push the Sky Away
Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!
Let Love In
The Good Son
The Boatman's Call

Your Funeral... My Trial
Skeleton Tree
Murder Ballads
No More Shall We Part

From Her to Eternity
Tender Prey
Kicking Against the Pricks
Nocturama
The Firstborn is Dead

I admittedly found it quite hard to rank albums, but I did know that I wanted to find a pretty even spread across Bad Seeds & Birthday Party releases.

Phase 2! (this is a TOP 20 list)

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20. Swampland
The Birthday Party
Mutiny!
117 points (5 votes)

Ooooh. Cool. Possibly too low though!

17. Helpless
27 points, 3 votes
tribute album The Bridge, 1989

Neil Young, Massey Hall 1971
Bad Seeds, KCRW 1989

ugh so great!

16. Disco 2000
27 points, 2 votes
B-side to Bad Cover Version by Pulp, 2002

Pulp video, 1996
Pulp reunion, 2011
Nick Cave
Nick Cave (Pub Rock Version)

15. Lost In Music
28 points, 2 votes
Dirty Sings EP by Anita Lane, 1988

Sister Sledge / Chic, 1979/84
Anita Lane with four Bad Seeds

14. Hey Joe
30 points, 2 votes
Kicking Against The Pricks, 1986

Billy Roberts demo, 1961
Tim Rose, 1969
Billy Roberts & Grits, 1975
Nick Cave, Mick Harvey, Toots Thielemans, Charlie Haden, David Sanborn, Hiram Bullock, Philippe Saisse and Omar Hakim, 1990

I didnt vote for Hey Joe but I love how creepy it is

Better believe that last one was from a Hal Willner TV series. Here's Nick & Mick doing The Mercy Seat on the same episode with Don Alias, Tom Barney and Saisse.

And just in case anyone wants to see Paul Shaffer wailing on organ with Nick, Mick and the CBS Orchestra on another song about Joe

Somehow it only dawned on me RIGHT NOW that the Bad Seeds recorded a cover *and* an original composition both named "The Hammer Song." That'll learn me for not knowing "Pricks" all that well.

The worst part of it is that Nick renamed "Hammer Song" to "The Hammer Song" and then went and wrote his own "The Hammer Song."

That "Hey Joe" rendition is kinda amazing, no? I'm belatedly wishing I'd studied for this exam now, dammit.

It seems the collaborations on that Night Music program were frequently a bit bonkers. (Not *entirely* off-topic, given the title of the initial polling thread, lol.)

I haven't ever seen that Hey Joe performance. Fucking brilliant. He looked so cool around then.

The sound is bizarrely excellent for a 1990 TV appearance on YouTube as well.

Nick Cave & Charlie Haden. *head explodes*

13. Stagger Lee
31 points, 2 votes
Murder Ballads, 1995

Stack o' Lee Blues by Waring's Pennsylvanians, 1923
Skeeg-A-Lee-Blues by Lovie Austin, 1924
Stagolee by Mississippi John Hurt, 1928
Stagger Lee by Lloyd Price, #1 on US R&B and pop charts in 1959
Bad Seeds, Austin City Limits, c. 2014

12. Cosmic Dancer
31 points, 3 votes
tribute album AngelHeaded Hipster, 2020

T Rex, Wembley Arena, 1972
Nick Cave video

11. Wanted Man
39 points, 3 votes
The Firstborn Is Dead, 1984/85

(c.2019 remix of) 1969 demo by Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash at San Quentin, one week later
Johnny Cash on his own variety TV show, six months later
Bad Seeds in Marseilles 2008, Cave on guitar (audience video)

my no. 1.

Entering the top ten with a tie.

9= Long Black Veil
40 points, 3 votes
Kicking Against The Pricks, 1986

Lefty Frizell, 1959 - plus sequel record by same writers, unissued until 1994
Johnny Cash & Joni Mitchell, 1969 (also on Cash's TV show)
Bad Seeds

9= Something’s Gotten Hold of My Heart
40 points, 3 votes
Kicking Against The Pricks, 1986

David & Jonathan, 1967
Gene Pitney, 1968
Olivia Colman, Ben Whishaw, John C. Reilly, Nick Cave & Garry Mountaine

I loooove Somethings Gotten Hold of My Heart so much!! so much drama, terrific cover

i love the Pitney/Marc Almond version too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZTX0RBlqnM

8. By The Time I Get To Phoenix
40 points, 4 votes
Kicking Against The Pricks, 1986

Johnny Rivers, 1967
Glen Campbell c. 1969 on The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour
songwriter Jimmy Webb, BBC 1971
Isaac Hayes live in Atlanta, 1973 (22 minute video)
Bad Seeds, Philadelphia 7//2/1989 (audience audio)

yesssss <3

7. Avalanche
41 points, 3 votes
From Her To Eternity, 1984

Leonard Coheh, 1971 (from his 1966 poem)
Bad Seeds
Nick Cave 2015 version for "Black Sails"

Seemed a tad peculiar to open your band's first LP with someone else's song. I may even underrate this as a result. (Peculiar post-punk, at least; obviously not at all peculiar if you're, say, Barbra Streisand.)

I think it’s a baller move & a great cover

6. The Singer
45 points, 3 votes
Kicking Against The Pricks, 1986

The Folk Singer by Johnny Cash, 1968
Bad Seeds, live on The Tube 1986

5. Black Betty
45 points, 4 votes
b-side to The Singer, 1986

Iron Head, 1933
Leadbelly,
Looky Yonder by Odetta, 1954
Bad Seeds at Pinkpop, 1990

4. Tower of Song
50 points, 4 votes
tribute album I'm Your Fan, 1991

Leonard Cohen, 1988
Laughing Len on Night Music, 1989 with David Sanborn, George Duke, and Robben Ford, plus his own backing singers Perla Batalla & Julie Christensen
Bad Seeds, 1991

The full episode of Sunday Night / Night Music includes perfs by Was (Not Was), Ken Nordine, and a Cohen / Sonny Rollins collab.

Seemed a tad peculiar to open your band's first LP with someone else's song.

what about your first solo single

3. In The Ghetto
54 points, 4 votes
single, 1984

Elvis Presley, April 1969
Bobbie Gentry, April 1970
Bad Seeds, April 1984 at the Electric Ballroom in Camden
Nick Cave video
The Blizzard King, 3am somewhere

Ha!

i have zero idea what the top 2 will be.

Bad Seeds in Amsterdam, 1992, from the Paradiso VHS, is also good.

I don't think anyone would have predicted the #1 tbh, though it's the only one with a big vote jump! Back in an hour or so for the reveal.

I just remembered a GREAT Nick Cave cover version, which is Don't Go Home With Your Hard On, the studio version unlikely ever to be released, but I had a tape of it in 2004-2005 so it definitely exists. Can't find any trace of it online.

Is it possible it was a napster-like misnamed copy of the David McComb & Adam Peters (plus Martyn Casey and Will Sergeant) version from I'm Your Fan?

(Or a bootleg from the Came So Far For Beauty concert, and Nick traded verses with Jarvis Cocker, Rufus Wainwright and Teddy Thompson? I'd love to hear either that or a real studio version, obv)

2. All Tomorrow's Parties
55 points, 5 votes
Kicking Against The Pricks, 1986

The Velvet Underground And Nico single, July 1966
Nico & The Invisible Girls at Preston Warehouse, November 1982 (inc Martin Hannett and future Primal Scream drummer Toby Tomanov)
Bad Seeds

Sleeping Annaleah?

Gee, that image in the "Tower of Song" vid is great/faintly unsettling.

Ben Smith is apparently the artist.

There are 12 covers on the Kicking Against The Pricks LP. All but the first two and last two placed in this poll.

1. Sleeping Annaleah
68 points, 5 votes
Kicking Against The Pricks, 1986

Weeping Annaleah by Mickey Newbury, 1968
Weeping Analeah by the Box Tops, 1968
Weeping Annaleah by Tom Jones, 1968
Bad Seeds

trophy goes to stirmonster!

woooo such a great one for the top spot

i shall display it with pride.

i thoroughly enjoyed this. a small turnout but perfectly formed. thanks veyy much sic for putting it together and for all the effort you put in.

yeah thanks sic - above & beyond!!

Sleeping Annaleah and Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart were covers that made me rethink and start to love 60 showbiz pop extravaganzas. Or maybe re-love, because that was the sound of TV variety shows like Bobby Vinton and Tony Orlando that are fixed in the dawn of my memory.

i should've voted for "get ready for love"