Heart of a Punk Soul of a Rasta

GRINDERMAN 2
The Return of the Old Devils

Now before we start (and I mean this most sincerely folks) let's thank MUTE records and everyone involved with the GRINDERMAN 2 release for packaging up the product so wonderfully well (on VINYL) - and at the rrp of £15.99 - which was the price I paid for the first CD I bought back in 1985 - that's ok isn't it? - Well just about. The artwork of Ilinca Hopfner, the cover pic by Polly Borland, the thickness of vinyl and the free CD reproduction makes the whole package something well in excess of the usual tacit vinyl releases we get from most record companies nowadays. Well done MUTE RECORDS and et al!

But can you judge a record by its cover? Well with GRINDERMAN 2 you can. With that big bastard of a wolf on the front cover it doesn't take a genius to predict that soon Cave will be down on all fours and howling like a loony lupine - it actually only takes Cave 1 minute 46 seconds of the opener "Mickey Mouse & the Goodbye Man" to start his baying, quite restrained really.

So the old devils are back, growing old as fucking disgracefully as possible; even more disgracefully than Kingsley Amis's Old Devils or even Amis himself. But why Grinderman and not Bad Seeds? I don't know I'm asking you. And don't give me that cock about Cave writing songs on guitar, pah! Well anyway on Grinderman 2 the lines of demarcation between SEEDS & GRIND have become more apparent. Back to the masturbating monkey for a moment. On Grinderman 1 CAVE + 3 still had one foot still in the land of the Bad Seeds - a track like "(I Don't need you to) Set me Free" could easily have been lifted straight off "Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus". On Grinderman 2 everything is quintessentially Grinderman.

Grinderman 2 begins with "Mickey Mouse & the Goodbye Man" and the lines "I woke up this morning" and concludes with "Bellringer Blues" and the words "It's okay Joe its' time to go". What we get in between is a multitude of stories and anecdotes taken from a self contained CAVE book of Gothic blues as the distorted soundscapes of Warren Ellis slip out from beneath his dishevelled sleeves like a gamblers crooked deck. The preoccupations of CAVE seem to be organised around Deities and Monsters (in fact this could easily be the title of the record) - The Lock Ness Monster, Mickey Mouse, the Abdominal Snowman, the Wolfman are all in there hard up against Buddha, Allah, Mickey Mouse, Krishna, Romulus & Remus and Montezuma. Grinderman 2 is a perfect Album. Do you remember those? Perfect albums. This in one. It's definitely not a collection of nine unrelated tracks. It's a self contained piece. So you don't need to over analyse it; you don't need to say this song is strong and this song is not so; you don't need to mark it out of 5 or give it a set of stars or any of that kind of shit. All you need to do is ask yourself one question - Do you love it? I do.

And so ends Part 1

As we know, children of a duplicitous God, music has two sides one called RECORDED and the other called LIVE. And so it came to pass that The Grinderman did offer the back of a crisp two vented single breasted jacket to the whole of the West Midlands Masturbation (sorry Conurbation). So this disciple had a choice - Rock City Nottingham - where 28 years ago the bouncers did bounce me around the double doors and throw me down the stairs (hence their name "bouncers"). Or Manchester University Academy which holds for this disciple golden memories of cheap ale in the union bars. Manchester then.

The good Weather people of this nation told me that by the time I clocked off from work I'd be travelling to Manchester underneath a flashing electric blue image. They explained that this image is used to represent rain of "unpresidented" (dick speak) proportions. I drove to Manchester on roads as dry as the Gobi, with a letter box of blue sky before me and yellow autumnal sunlight slanting across the whole of the Cheshire plain. It must be truly awful being a Weather Jock spending each and every day mired in failure, but worse still being me who falls for the charlatans' same old story each 7 every day anew.

I took my gullible loneliness to Manchester and sat in an Italianate coffee house; I gazed at the sun hanging in the stunted leafy trees of Whitmore Park and mused on Nick Cave gigs past. He has his fanatical followers does Mr Cave. A few years ago (can't say how many) I was at a Bad Seeds gig (can't say where) and from the start of the proceedings the guy behind me started pre-empting Cave's every lyric. He did it in a tuneless monotone a millisecond before the man himself. This went on for the first three tracks; I decided not to turn round and glare at the geezer or shush him like I was at the Opera or something. I did the English thing and moved a couple of yards forward. It didn't help I could still hear his deadpan delivery pre-quoting Cave's every word. I moved off another couple of yards and then another; no change, the bloke was obviously tailing me. Come track six I was so pissed off I decided to do something I hadn't done for many a year - I decided to go for piss mid gig just to get away from the fucker. I didn't need a piss so I sat on the shitter and listened to the Bad Seeds booming out a discordant rumble from afar; but bugger me there he was again, the voice, the tuneless inane drawl, the bloke was obviously having a piss and still fucking jabbering. I threw open the cubicle door and shouted "Can't you fucking shut up for a fucking minute mate, we haven't fucking paid to hear you we've fucking paid to hear Cave you fucking wanker!" Of course when I looked about me there was no one there but the Polish girl behind the counter in the Manchester coffee house staring at me with a withering intensity. I stumbled out and across the road and into Whitmore Park, when I finally got to the far end of the park I realised two things; one, I wasn't on Shepherds Bush Green and two, I wasn't on my way to the Shepherds Bush Empire - I'd need to speak to the Doc again about my medication.

Talking of increasing ones medication; The Hunter Gracchus (the support) are "apparently" a free form experimental trio. Course they are. One minute into their free form experimental…. err thing?….one of the Manchester roadies, a Rastaman of similar age to myself lent over and said "Something different eh?" "Yeah something different" I replied. But were they? If you heard The Hunter Gracchus on the Grinderman tour listen to this clip and tell me it's not rather similar. You can impress me by letting me know who it is. Here's a clue it's the first track on a debut album. Anyway I can say without fear of contradiction that these hoaxers' Hunter Gracchus were definitely not Burning Spear! They were very contagious though. Well when I say contagious, you do know what the most contagious thing know to man is, don't you? Bird Flu? Nah! E coli? Wrong again! The most contagious thing known to man is THE YAWN! Nuff said, night night Gracchus.

9.15 cometh and so did Grinderman bursting forth with "Mickey Mouse and the Goodbye Man". For just over an hour Nick Cave gyrated his mid riff at, and into the sweet faces on the front row, attempted a mistimed leap on to the drum riser and ended up disassembling most of the kit; kicked over his mic stand, kicked his lyric lectern off the stage, leapt pell mell into the crowd and copulated in the roughest possible manner with his Korg CX-3. Warren Ellis, his face contorted like one pressed against a window but without the window, flailed around on the floor on his back shouting "Evil! Evil!" and pummelled a completely innocent high hat into a comatose state. Jim Sclavunos meted out his own bruising punishment upon the drum kit from a sitting and from a standing position, raining down blow after blow with metal shakers, plastic shakers, beaters, sticks in fact anything that came to hand. Finally he rang a hand bell louder than the clappers; loud enough in fact to wake the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. Oh yeah, and Martin Casey the bass player, nearly forgot about him, he took off his jacket a couple of tracks before the end, apparently he was a bit warm. Dig the contrast people!

If I was forced to pick out only one thing from the unrelenting and hateful cacophony that rained down onto our heads I guess I'd have to go for "Kitchenette", Cave held sway in front of the monitors impregnating woman, girls and small animals with a glance; ridiculing the men with an accusatory index finger as the Grinder Machine ground down to metal on metal. Encore's followed: "Love Bomb" "When my love comes Down" and finally "Grinderman" to close things down fully.

On leaving a truly great gig you only have one question in your mind; where are the band playing next? So........where are Grinderman playing next?


NB:
Pic way at the top sees Ilinca Hopfner's GRINDERMEN entering the evil bearded world of Edward Gorey - this is where most oft you'll find me.