Nick Cave — my SBP gig review

Nick Cave at Vicar Street, Dublin, on October 12

Rating: ***

It looked like a gig. Sometimes it even sounded like a gig. But mostly, what Nick Cave aimed to do in Vicar Street was to promote his first novel in 20 years, The Death of Bunny Munro: a bleak, occasionally witty and endlessly horny beast of a book, fairly reeking with the stench of sex, poverty and death.

Appropriately, shortly after Cave arrived on stage, the big screen behind him lit up with a close-up of a panty-and-vest-clad woman, running her hands over her nether regions. Wearing a sharp, tailored suit, Cave – in rhythmic, if occasionally slightly stumbling vocals – began to read his story of Bunny Munro, a door-to-door salesman who has brought his young son on the road with him in the wake of his wife’s suicide, and who can’t stop thinking about sex.

It was the first of four readings over the course of two hours. The book, an initially inspired but ultimately anaemic affair, improved in the live setting, benefiting from the atmospheric lighting and the minimalist backdrop created by Warren Ellis on violin and Martyn P Casey on bass guitar. Surprisingly, it was the songs proper that ended up letting the side down. It’s not easy to pair readings with live music: the hybrid form can mean that its power and intensity is often lost.

More problematically, as if to compensate his music fans for putting them through the readings, Cave allowed his audience to dictate his choice of songs. Admittedly, it was lovely to hear superb older tracks like Into My Arms, The Ship Song, The Mercy Seat and The Weeping Song (a nice, jazzy version of the latter). But there was no structure, pacing or momentum to the show, and the songs often felt criminally underperformed. Tracks like Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! and Red Right Hand veered between interestingly loose and sloppily detached.

‘‘Ask some questions if you want,” said Cave. The crowd were only too delighted. ‘‘To what extent do you endorse the misogyny of Bunny?” yelled one. ‘‘What’s your favourite colour?” asked another. ‘‘What does Kylie think of the book?” said another. Cave dispatched each comment with his customary cruel wit.

‘‘I am at your service,” he told them gravely. He would have served them better had he listened to them less, and dictated the proceedings of his own gig more.

Holiday reading

Just back from a fun, if very hectic holiday — over two weeks in Malaysia, we fitted in Taman Negara, KL, Penang, Langkawi and Tioman, amongst others, phew… I’ll write a travel piece about it soon, which I’ll post up. The pic on left was taken in the Perhentian islands, one of the most beautiful spots we found on our travels around the country. Great place to chill out and relax — and read a few books. Here’s what I took with me.

1. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski and published by Fourth Estate

Gloriously well-told story of a boy who cannot speak, but who nonetheless communicates brilliantly with animals. It’s about 600 pages long, but you’ll wish, by the end, that it was much, much longer. This is Wroblewski’s debut book — but there’s not the slightest whiff of the rookie about him. The slow start aside, I loved it.

2. The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perotta.

A very good holiday read. It’s a funny and revealing story of a sex ed. teacher, Ruth Ramsey, in America who is forced to start advising her students to practice abstinence rather than safe sex. There’s an extremely sharply painted and honest portrayal of a recovering addict in the book to boot — Tim Mason has kicked drink and drugs and bought into the church instead –but is it really the right decision? And what’ll happen when he encounters Ruth Ramsey? From the author of Little Children and Election, this book made me v curious to investigate his other books.

3. The Death of Bunny Munro by Nick Cave and published by Canongate

I’m not completely finished this one yet, so I’ll return to update this soon. For much of the black-humoured book, it’s all talk of vaginas, Kylie and Avril Lavigne alongside a plotline about a zany father, a fragile son and a death in the family. Cover art — featuring a giant, dodgy-looking bunny — is cute.

4. An Expensive Education by Nick McDonell and published by Atlantic

I was curious about this one, mainly because McDonell is a bit of a literary wunderkind — born in 1984, he wrote his first book at the age of 17. An Expensive Education does many things extremely competently — it’s an arch look at the American education system, the lives of the rich and privileged, and a searching account of a young CIA agent and a guerrilla leader in Africa. To be honest, though, there’s something important missing from this book — heart, I guess you’d say. My backpack was pretty heavy, so I’m afraid my copy now has a new home in Malaysia.

5. The Female of the Species by Joyce Carol Oates and published by Fourth Estate

I brought this one by accident — confusing it with a JCO book I hadn’t read. Some of it, at least, was worth rereading, though. A collection of suspenseful, often gothic short stories, JCO may often not trouble herself overmuch with style — she’s often content to have her prose look quite raggedy — but she has a brilliant grasp of story and character.

Sept 6th SBP Artistic Licence: the Beatles

This month, readers of Rolling Stone magazine could have been forgiven for thinking they had somehow been transported in a DeLorean back to the late 1960s. When the magazine slid through the letterbox, I had trouble believing my eyes. ‘Why the Beatles broke up’ ran the cover headline, alongside a shot of the Fab Four in their prime. I rubbed my eyes blearily, checked my legs in case they were encased in flares, and stared at the magazine again.

Nope, no mistake. It’s 2009 — and we’re still talking about the Beatles. Frankly, what does that say about the creaky old state of 2009? To backtrack for a moment, before infuriated Beatles fans write me letters in cat’s blood, let me stress: I don’t dislike the Beatles, even if they are responsible for giving birth to Oasis, and the Gallagher brothers’ interminable rows. Like most people who love music, but weren’t around during the Beatles’ actual time, I’ve a healthy respect for them: I should do, I hear echoes of them on most contemporary albums.

And there are some reasons to discuss them in 2009. First off, there are the digitally remastered editions of all the Beatles studio albums which, after a nearly 22-year wait, are being released on September 9. There’s the simultaneous video game release of The Beatles: Rock Band, which is backed by Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison. Rumours are also growing that the Beatles back catalogue will soon be available on iTunes.

All these items are note-worthy. But does it mean the Beatles should be on the cover of the biggest music magazine in the world? No. That they made it smacks of desperation on the part of Rolling Stone. There’s a similar whiff of panic coming from EMI, which is promoting the Beatles remasters release. Industry gurus don’t know how to get people to buy records anymore — so they’re betting they might do it for nostalgia’s sake, both for the Beatles and for the time when they used to buy records.

Newspapers and magazines have a similar problem — with so many artists on the horizon, fame has become socialised: everyone’s getting a piece of it. The public are off chasing their Grizzly Bears, Animal Collectives and Frightened Rabbits — and that’s just the zoo section of the music market. Though they might not admit it, many of the punters going to Electric Picnic this weekend won’t be too sure of who about 90 per cent of the bands are. How could they be? Even those in the music industry these days have trouble keeping pace.

There are no music idols anymore, which means the media and the music industry are reduced to reselling and rehyping dead ones. Clinging to big names like the Beatles will win them a few more crumbs from the advertising table, for sure. But for readers already disillusioned by the endless Jonas Brothers covers (for which, in an unprecedented move, the editor apologised recently), such movements may work to their long-term disadvantage. In attempting to appeal to everyone, Rolling Stone may find they appeal to no one.

Vibe and Blender magazine have already gone to the wall. Like the bands it documents, Rolling Stone may have to accept that in a more diffuse, difficult market, it has to become smaller and more niche — if it is to survive.

JM Coetzee and William Trevor: new books review in SBP

Summer heating up for Booker hopefuls

Reviewed by Nadine O’Regan

Summertime by JM Coetzee (Harvill Secker, €20)

Love and Summer by William Trevor (Viking, €22)

The long-listing of William Trevor and JM Coetzee for the Booker Prize last month could hardly have come as a surprise to literary fiction fans. Though their novels hadn’t yet been published when the announcement was made, the authors’ pedigree is world-class – Cork-born Trevor has won the Whitbread Award three times; and in 2003, South African-born Coetzee took home the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Like their American rival Philip Roth, Trevor and Coetzee have moved into the late phase of their careers – Coetzee is 69,Trevor is 81 – with striking ease, continuing to write with uncommon insight, vitality and passion. There is great truth in their visions, and none can hide before the steady, piercing quality of their gaze. The darkness and thrum of menace in both men’s work is often striking – though Coetzee is the far more political of the two; the more troubled, rootless, questioning author.

In Summertime, Coetzee has produced a fictionalised memoir – the completion of a trilogy that began with Boyhood – that is intellectually rigorous and challenging – and extremely rewarding to read, particularly if you’re already a Coetzee fan.

The structure of the book is simple, but subversively original. A young English biographer is gathering together material for a book about the deceased writer John Coetzee. Focusing on the years 1972-1977, when Coetzee was in his 30s, the biographer interviews a number of people who knew Coetzee: his favourite cousin Margot; a Brazilian dancer; a married woman with whom he had an affair; and some of his friends and colleagues.

They describe him variously as cold, awkward, occasionally funny, heartless, flat-footed, sexless, a man who ‘‘looked out of place, like one of those flightless birds’’. To a striking extent, Coetzee uses the voices of other characters in this book as a stick to beat himself with, and also as an opportunity to present himself – perhaps – as he really is: a diffident, awkward individual, a man who longs to be a romantic or an existentialist, but lacks the natural capacity to be either: ‘‘It was all just an idea in his head, not an urge rooted in his body.”

Towards the end of the book, the Brazilian dancer Adriana speaks frankly of her feelings about Coetzee. ‘‘Tell me, am I wrong about John Coetzee? Was he really a great writer? Because to my mind, a talent for words is not enough if you want to be a great writer. You have also to be a great man. And he was not a great man. He was a little man, an unimportant man.”

Her comments cut to the core of this book. Coetzee seems to question the validity of the towering reputation he has amassed, and the writing enterprise itself. Or could he be undermining himself to counteract the natural conceit involved in producing a memoir? Reclusive by nature and media-shy as Coetzee is, it’s impossible to know – and an internet search to acquire further detail turns up more questions than answers.

The degree of truth contained in this fictionalised memoir is also impossible to judge. Are any or all of these characters real?

Very possibly. Either way, the effects of the narrative decisions he has made are fascinating and haunting. In Coetzee’s fiction – I’d recommend in particular Life & Times of Michael K( 1983),Age of Iron (1990) and Disgrace (1999) – what comes through most strongly is his characters’ sense of anguish: they long to feel, to love, to be natural – but these ambitions are beyond them, flitting out of their grasp.

MJ Hyland interview (SBP, July 09)

A lesson learned 26 July 2009 By Nadine O’Regan ‘Whatever you say, say nothing.’ As interview philosophies go, it’s a troubling one – at least for the poor journalist involved. Unfortunately, right now, that journalist happens to be me. Frankly, Maria Hyland and I are at interview standoff point. Hunched forward in a Dublin hotel, Hyland is unbelievably wary of talking about anything other than her new novel, the powerful, restrained This is How. She doesn’t want to discuss her day-to-day life. She greets queries about whether she rents or owns her Manchester house with much the same expression as if she had just been asked whether she’s ever had an affair with a married man. And she definitely doesn’t want to talk about her childhood, riddled as it was with poverty, despair, violence and criminality. ‘‘I’m 41,” Hyland says flatly. ‘‘For someone aged 41 to be talking about their shitty childhood is ludicrous and embarrassing. The problem is that, no matter what I say, it comes off sounding like self-pity.” In ordinary circumstances, I’d probably agree. Yet these are not ordinary circumstances. For starters, there’s the problem that Hyland has written before – with an extraordinary degree of candour – about her childhood. Then there’s the fact that the last time we met, back in 2004,when she came to Dublin to promote her first novel, the compellingly well-written How the Light Gets In, Hyland was shockingly, unnervingly open about her background. She spoke intensely about her circumstances growing up in Ballymun, Tallaght, Melbourne and Sydney, her crippled mother and her criminal, alcoholic father. She told me about the day, aged 12,when she tried to kill her father. Having hatched several plans, one morning, when he was sitting drunk in his pyjamas at the kitchen table, Hyland seized her opportunity. ‘‘I went out to the shed and brought in a hammer,” she said. ‘‘I was about to put him out of his misery when my mum intervened.” Later in life, Hyland’s father showed her the scars on his body from where she had attacked him over the years. ‘‘It occurred to me,” Hyland wrote in an essay about her life, ‘‘that, although he has spent plenty of time in prison for violent crimes, I was the most violent member of the family, the one prepared to kill.”

Tweets in store

Yep, I’ve started tweeting: see here.

And in other random social networking news, The Kiosk now has its own Facebook group. Which is nice. See here.

Alias Empire

Well, they brought about seven million pieces of equipment into the studio — and I nearly tripped over one of their bags to hit the microphone head first, but it was all worth it in the end. Alias Empire — previously known as Dry County — played a cool new track on the show the other week. Keep an eye out for these guys — they’re very talented…

Michael Jackson

It’s hard to believe it could be true, but according to the website TMZ.com, Michael Jackson has passed away at the age of 50. The singer suffered a cardiac arrest at his home and paramedics were unable to revive him.

Whatever I’ve thought or wondered about Michael Jackson in recent years, nothing can take away from the wonder and awe that he inspired in me in my younger years.

Like most everyone else of around my age (30), I grew up with Michael Jackson — Off the Wall was the first album I ever bought – I bought it proudly, shyly, in the tiny, one-room record shop in North St, Skibbereen, Co. Cork, called Sounds. I had actually wanted to get Thriller, but — surprise, surprise — it was sold out and all they had to offer me was the earlier album. I didn’t care. I took it home, treated it like it was gold. Which, of course, it was.

It was Michael Jackson, he was incredible, and my sisters and I couldn’t get enough of him. My sister’s side of the room that we shared was plastered in press pictures of the time he played Cork city. (I had been too young to go.) For months after the gig, she’d talk of nothing else. We spent a lot of spare time round the house trying to learn how to moonwalk and wearing one glove with a certain hopeful air of glamour.

The first time I got caught watching a film that was too old for me was when I was discovered behind the couch sneaking glimpses of the mini-film Thriller that my sisters had brought home. It was an unmissable showing, as far as I was concerned — I think that was probably the moment when my mum truly first saw my stubborn streak emerge…

But for me, the first time I really and truly got a shock wave of utter excitement watching the television came when I saw Michael Jackson at the Motown 25 gig. It was the 1980s and I was very, very young, but I remember being in the sitting-room while my family was chatting away and then suddenly this man came on the television and… honestly, it’s hard to even describe how taken, how utterly awestruck I was by that moment.

I had never (in my admittedly short life) seen anyone arrive on stage harnessing that level of commitment — his dedication to his craft was so total; the music seemed to have fused with the blood in his veins. Every move that he made was perfectly judged; his face shone with sweat and passion and joy. It was a performance that taught me what it meant to strive, to care, to be committed.

He went on stage alone, with nothing but his hat as a prop — and he delivered more than anyone else there that night.

As a reminder, I’m putting the video of his performance at the Motown 25 below. RIP Michael Jackson.

Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life…

It’s the 25th anniversary of the release of Prince’s Purple Rain album this week — and to mark the occasion, we have a Kiosk exclusive: brilliant Irish artists Joe Chester and Nick Kelly (ex Fat Lady Sings) have recorded their own versions of tracks from Purple Rain just for the Kiosk — and we’ll be premiering them on The Kiosk this Saturday. Frustratingly, it’s damn near impossible to get a Prince YouTube video with music on it — thanks to restrictions from Warner Bros, but to be honest, it’s almost as much fun watching When Doves Cry from Purple Rain without the music. Prince rising half-naked from a bathtub — yowsers, dig, if you will, the picture…

PS Personally, I dunno about you guys, but though I do love Purple Rain, Prince’s Sign o’ the Times is my favourite album from him. The Cross, the title track, Starfish and Coffee, Strange Relationship — genius, absolute genius…

Florence and the Machine

Believe the hype. The new album, Lungs, due July 3rd, really is as spell-bindingly good as everyone was promising it would be.

Rabbit Heart:

Cosmic Love: