Hallelujah for Cave

Went to a Nick Cave concert yesterday in a sold-out Music Hall in Amsterdam. What a great energetic performer is that man! Nice moves and passionate vocals… The Bad Seeds were powerful too, despite the absence of Blixa Bargeld, to which Nick referred a couple of times at the beginning of the show. But two drummers, two keyboard/organ players, a violinist and two guitar players (incl. Mick Harvey) set up a solid show. The concert opened with the intimate ‘Wonderful life’ of the new ‘Nocturama’ album, and ended with the long and ecstatic ‘Baby, I’m on fire’ from the same album. In between both new and older songs were played, and a few surprises. Special guest Chris Bailey (from legendary punk act The Saints, and now living in Amsterdam) was also invited to sing a song. Quite a few ballads were on the menu. Some of the highlights for me were ‘The mercy seat’, ‘The ship song’, Christina The Astonishing’, ‘Nobody’s baby now’ and ‘Do you love me’. Unfortunately no ‘Weeping song’ or ‘Fifteen feet of pure white snow’. But various other classics were on the menu, like ‘From here to eternity’,’Henry Lee’, ‘Red right hand’ and ‘Deanna’ (‘I fucked it up’, was the comment of Nick about his rendition of that song). Hallelujah!