Hall of fame

To me the highlight of the ARIA awards on Sunday night was Nick Cave’s induction into the ARIA Hall of Fame, and his speech accepting the recognition of his works, and particularly the way he took it upon himself to induct some of his colleagues in his bands The Bad Seeds and The Birthday Party.

Especially good was his tribute to Rowland S Howard and the late, great Tracy Pew, of the Birthday Party. I’m old enough, and fortunate enough to have seen them perform, one night at the UNSW Roundhouse. Fantastic band, always just on the edge of chaos.

Here’s some Birthday Party goodness for those who aren’t familiar with them.

Tracy Pew is the bass player, the one in the cowboy hat. Most of my favourite Birthday Party songs are driven by big basslines, like this (”Junkyard”), also “King Ink” and “Dead Joe”. Nick Cave, of course, is the singer, with the big hair.

BTW, I love one of the comments on the Youtube page for this clip:

“This is one of my new favorite songs. It’s like Bjork, it doesn’t matter what you think of it, nothing sounds like it. I could not afford the amount of drugs it would take for me to write something like this..”

Yes, and I’m sure plenty of drugs did go into writing it.