How would the Devil appear if he walked among us? How about male, tall, very pale skin, very black hair, in extremely snappy and slightly gothic clothes? How about ridiculously talented and unable to keep a low profile, seeking the adulation of humankind? In summary, he might appear something like Nick Cave.
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| Male, tall, pale, black hair, snappily dressed, ridiculously talented and receiving adulation |
1) He's called Nick and he's been around for a while. So the day is fast approaching when he'll be "Old Nick".
2) He's also called Cave, which is Latin for "Beware".
"Beware of the dog" = Cave canem.
"Beware of Old Nick" = Cave Nick.
So he has a much better moniker for Satan than "Louis Cyphre", and he's a much more convincing Lucifer than Robert de Niro, don't you think?
3) Sometimes he even lets his guard slip and fleetingly appears as Mephistopheles on stage.
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| Fleetingly appearing as The Devil on stage. Cave Nick. |
5) So Mr. Cave (as we'd now better call him) moves around the world, setting up home on one continent before moving on to another: Australia, Germany, Brazil, Britain.... This is what you'd expect of the Devil, who naturally needs to roam the entire world to perform his diabolical deeds. Obviously, being a touring musician of global renown would help the Devil enormously in this regard.
6) Mr. Cave has written very many Murder Ballads. Everyone thinks that Mr. Cave has either borrowed these stories or made them up. Yet they drip with such verisimilitude that they may well be autobiographical. Check out the sheer detail in the song O'Malley's Bar and you'll see what I mean about more than a ring of truth.
7) Mr. Cave's darkest incarnation to date is Grinderman, whose horrifically alluring music is seared with the blackest and most morbid of imagery. For example, who (in heaven's name) might say:
The spinal cord of JFK wrapped in Marilyn Monroe's négligée, I give to you... ?
The Devil, that's who. In fact, The Devil might find it easy to come up with such lines, as he may have the items in question in his possession. Think about that.
8) Mr. Cave is obsessed with God, religion and spirituality. His songs have titles such as Cannibal's Hymn, Heathen Child, God is in the House, Death is Not the End, Hallelujah, and Evil. I could go on.
9) Mr. Cave was already famous in his early 20s and very cool, fronting The Birthday Party. Thirty years later, he is even cooler. This is not achievable for mere mortals in the music industry. Paul McCartney was the coolest cat around once. So was Elvis, and look what happened to him. Even Neil Young and Bob Dylan have not managed to become even cooler with age, and Neil and Bob are very cool cucumbers indeed.
10) Mr. Cave has a band called "The Bad Seeds". They even look like guys Satan would happily hang out with.
11) The quality and consistency of Mr. Cave's musical oeuvre is suspicious. How can anyone constantly take the risks inherent in making such edgy, spellbinding music - steeped in tradition yet constantly pushing the boundaries of form and taste - and yet never make a bad record? Even Neil and Bob occasionally make bad records.
12) As Mr. Cave's Wikipedia entry says, he is a "musician, songwriter, author, screenwriter, and occasional film actor". It is not possible for a mere mortal to excel in all of these fields (and he does excel - for example, see the film The Proposition if you haven't already). Even Tom Waits cannot do all of these things (for Christ's sake), and Tom Waits can do almost everything.
So perhaps the towering, dark tour de force that is Grinderman 2 is so awe inspiring because it was, in fact, orchestrated by the Devil. Designed and directed by his Red Right Hand.
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| The orchestrator/ designer/ director of Grinderman 2 |
