NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS - The singer (LIVE London 1986)

Nick Cave and the bad seeds

The tube
Channel 4 studios, London
04/08/1986

The singer (Johnny Cash cover)

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds are an Australian rock band formed in Melbourne in 1983 by vocalist Nick Cave, multi-instrumentalist Mick Harvey and guitarist-vocalist Blixa Bargeld. The band has featured international personnel throughout its career and presently consists of Cave, violinist and multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis, bassist Martyn P. Casey (all from Australia), guitarist George Vjestica (United Kingdom), keyboardist/percussionist Toby Dammit (United States) and drummers Thomas Wydler (Switzerland) and Jim Sclavunos (United States). With their "brutal blues and gothic nightmares" songs, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds have been considered "one of the most original and celebrated bands of the post-punk and alternative rock eras in the '80s and onward". They have released seventeen studio albums and completed numerous international tours.

The band was founded in 1983 following the demise of Cave and Harvey's former group the Birthday Party, the members of which met at a boarding school in Victoria. By the release of their fifth studio album Tender Prey in 1988, they shifted from post-punk towards an experimental alternative rock sound,[citation needed] later incorporating various influences throughout their career. 2008's Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! and the side-project Grinderman were influenced by garage rock. Synthesizers and minimal guitar work feature prominently on Push the Sky Away (2013), recorded after Harvey's departure from the band in 2009.

A very special performance from Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds in promotion of their then-new album Kicking Against The Pricks. Cave takes to the youth TV show’s stage to perform a quite astounding rendition of ‘The Singer’ that has rarely been unearthed.

It’s fair to say that media has changed a fair bit since The Tube, Channel 4’s youth and music television show, first aired. In the eighties, the show became essential viewing for any well-respected adolescent as it persevered to bring you the cutting edge of new music.

In an age when you’re far more likely to watch a film on your phone while sitting on the lavatory then get in position for a scheduled TV programme, shows like The Tube have fallen by the wayside. The magazine format dedicated to bringing you the ins and outs of the music world is largely redundant when you can conduct your own investigation using social media and the internet.

Luckily, what the internet also provides, is an avenue to rediscover these gems and love them all over again. One such gem is this 1986 performance of ‘The Singer’ from Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds on the fifth series of The Tube. Restored with fantastic audio by Rosa Mannen, the clip sees Cave and his band on searing form.

The group were promoting their recently released covers album, Kicking Against The Pricks — an album we’d consider to be one of the best covers albums of all time. The arrived to the Tyneside studios with a version of Johnny Cash and Charlie Daniels’ song ‘The Singer’ in their hands and thunder in their eyes.

After a slightly nonsensical introduction that offered up information on a former altercation with the NYPD that Cave had endured and included a reference to “goths rolling their graves”, the host soon gets out of the way and lets the band deliver a quite astounding performance. With Cave playing the undeniably watchable protagonist to a tee, you can get a sense of how the band quickly asserted their cult following.

Of course, the group were on their third album and Cave had already found some fame with his band The Birthday Party, so their following were already well aware of the band’s power. But for many, this was their first mainstream introduction to Nick Cave and we don’t think you’ll find a better one.

What better way to accurately sum up the vastness of the band’s talent than to revisit this simply smouldering performance. So sit back and get reacquainted with Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds with their immaculate performance of Johnny Cash’s ‘The Singer’ on The Tube back in 1986.