A Prelude: Humor and Rock and Roll. (Nick Cave)

Before we can get to “The Mercy Seat”, some things have to be said:

It was with four albums under his belt that Nick Cave (along with loads of help from The Bad Seeds), recorded what would be a breakthrough album for him, 1988’s Tender Prey. On four previous Bad Seed records, as well as on numerous goth-punk Birthday Party (band) records and EP’s, Nick Cave struggled to find his funny bone. But, as is often the case, youth mistakes bitter cynicism for humor, emphasizing the hypocrisy of adults and advocating a malevolent anarchy as a way to invite retribution upon those who are the perpetrators of our suffering (generally our parents and their system of government, but also that popular jock who won’t stop messing with us, or the affection of the disinterested). Youthful narcissism historically collides with an ambivalence about things worldly, otherwise how does one go about explaining the ingrained bitterness and depression of teenagers and young adults? Sure, one might claim that the Birthday Party song “Big-Jesus-Trash-Can” is an example of Cave finding the funny, but only in the title. Cave himself has talked extensively about his desire to find a kind of bliss through music—expressed in his desire to write the perfect love song (he even taught a class on it in Italy). But humor requires a certain amount of resignation, a sense that things are the way they are and what can you do but hang on to the bitterness and shrug and laugh. Richard Pryor’s comedy relied on the fact that he had, begrudgingly, accepted of the fact that he was black man in a white man’s world (seriously, watch The Toy), and, to top it off, he was also an addict (hilarious!). John Stewart (and, to an extent, the legacy of Jewish humor in general) of The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report are our best contemporary examples. Stewart’s hilarity comes fast and furious from his existential desire to get through another day in a system he can’t help but resign himself to being completely fucked, while Colbert has so ingrained his sense of humor with the monster in the machine, that he’s created a character, who believes so unflinchingly in the big lie, that he has to be making fun. Humor rarely results from activism since there is nothing funny about failure and misery, which seems, more and more, to be the purview of the activist. If anything, a comedian is an activist who’s decided to stop wasting their time and has embraced the depression the activist so vigorously fights to change. In short: a comedian is an activist who makes sure you can still read his protest sign in the trash can. A comedian can only access their funny bone once they’ve given up things in a way that allows them to participate in society and seek to eek out their small, insignificant, place in the world. It is to this end that the comedian will relentlessly direct their efforts (hello, Larry David). Musically, it is the resignation to suffering (as opposed to an obligation to rage), a belief that things are the way they are and that life is just getting through each day, a view of purpose ingrained on the foundations of early Rock and Roll, which itself can be traced back to the Blues, and then back to slavery itself. It is amid these slave narratives and southern gospel gothic roots that Nick Cave found his inspiration, an Australian who believes devoutly in God, but isn’t above comparing our time on earth and its narrative in the service of an, at times, “punitive, jealous, bloodthirsty, angry, mean-spirited, small-minded God”. Sounds a bit like a slave master to me, or, better yet, the beginnings of a good joke. Oddly, Rock and Roll’s path to popularity was inverted. It was only later, when white parents started hearing these songs in their homes, that Rock and Roll music reacted their attention and became activist. Still, any rocker who is interested in the humor of life must eventually come to terms with the same things a comedian does and hereby returning to those early sonic roots.

If there is one thing Cave maintains, it is that he is, above all else, a comedian. However, while with the Birthday Party, Cave was more anarchist than activist—too young to give up (what, exactly? who knows)—and it took several albums to move beyond those Birthday Party impulses (as well as those fans—something he’s still striving to do, read here), and although Tender Prey is no way Cave and the Bad Seed’s best album, it is the first that produced a handful of songs that Cave still explores to this day, most notably, “The Mercy Seat”, a song that has evolved from its initial creation, and, in all likelihood, is Cave’s best.

There, we can now begin.