Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds | Lisbon | October 27, 2024
He acts like a Messiah and his fans think he is…
We love live music and try to get out to see as many live gigs as possible. It’s been tricky recently as we have been busy and had four concerts on the agenda. Here is the original article where I wrote about them all. But today is all about the new Messiah.
When visiting Lisboa we usually drive to Vila Franca de Xira and take the train. The streets and parking are a nightmare in the Van Of Rock and it’s just €2.20 return each.
The MEO Arena is adjacent to the river and a stone’s throw from Lisbon’s Gare do Oriente (Oriente railway station and intermodal transport hub) - a convenient and well-thought-out location.
The station was inaugurated in 1998, as part of the celebrations marking the opening of the Expo '98 world's fair and looks like a set from Battlestar Galactica - cool.
Dinner
No gig is complete without a pre-show dinner. When we are gigging we hope for a family-style sit around a table with the band and crew after soundcheck.
Tonight, the gig was not ours and chose a cool-looking and well-reviewed Nepalese restaurant, Bom Vindo relatively close to the venue and station where we arrived.
The food was really good and inexpensive. Our table was conveniently next to the bar that was stocked with Luckla Nepalese beer. It looked like a small place until I visited the loo and found another ten tables in an adjacent room. Check out their MoMo’s which are the best we’ve tasted in Portugal.
The arena
The MEO Arena is a toilet: not literally you understand, but a steel box more suitable for sport than music, seconds of reverb and a nasty slap back from the rear wall.
It’s the type of venue you never want to see a band, and in the days before in-ear monitors took some of the pain away, one you would never want to play yourself.
We have all been there.
The Murder Capital
Timing of gigs in Portugal is tricky as sometimes the support starts at the time it says on the ticket and sometimes the main act. In the case of this gig, it was the latter and we arrived towards the end of their set catching just three songs.
They are an Irish rock/post-punk band that formed in Dublin in 2018 and their music has been described as dark, intense, and introspective.
They didn’t grip me, but went down pretty well with the crowd.
Put your fucking phones away…
I didn’t take any photos as quite rightly, Cave doesn’t like mobile phones being used at gigs which distract from the all-important moment. Starlite however took a couple as a momento.
This video was from an earlier show from the tour which I think most of the Portuguese audience had seen. He is pretty clear.
Frogs
The band walked onto the stage at 2031 with Cave following within seconds. He was due at 2030 which indicated how the night was going to progress - seamless perfectionism.
They fired up with Frogs from their latest album Wild God. The sound was surprisingly good although Cave’s vocal was a little low. Within two songs, the sound was really improving with his voice clear and present. It improved even more during the course of the set.
We were positioned around 40m from the stage which we considered to be an optimal listening position for the room. Normally we go as close to the mixing position as possible, but the venue’s acoustics dictated we move closer and the Portuguese audience was very calm and easy to negotiate. Or so we thought…
Where the fuck do all these tall people come from? Not this country for sure and we heard a lot of English and French spoken - bastard tourists.
A scuffle
Even though Starlite was wearing the ‘Boots Of Rock’ which elevate her by 100mm, to see the stage she partly stood on the cable cover which ran from the mixing position to the stage to get a better view. Only to be pushed off and insulted by a very aggressive Portuguese woman to her right. Fuck her - we moved forward.
There was back projection with live video showing Cave interacting with the front row, punctuated with lyrics and song names in the same font as used in all the publicity—very cool and not overdone.
It’s all about the lyrics
Although I have bought a fair few of his albums we are not die-hard fans and found the latest release overblown and dare I say pompous! To us, his lyrics are the most potent part of his art and the music wraps around them as a delivery mechanism. There is no doubting his sincerity.
The show progressed nicely and the song selection in terms of mood and tempo was spot on.
Check out the full setlist here.
The band
The band were great and it was good to see Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood on bass who had taken the place of regular Bad Seeder Martyn P. Casey, having dropped out of the European tour due to ill health.
As per usual he was rooted in his spot right next to the drummer - in this band Thomas Wydler, the longest-serving member of the Bad Seeds, who occasionally flipped to two Tympani conveniently located just behind his drum set.
Greenwood and Wydler played with power and accuracy. Great job.
There was a point when the audience was clapping during a breakdown in a song - I can’t remember which one - and Wydler lost the groove, switching the one with the backbeat. Cave amusingly counted him back in and I suspect this slip in an otherwise flawless performance was due to the massive reverb in the room.
Guest keyboardist Carly Paradis - a successful singer-songwriter in her own right - occasionally came out and played the grand piano that was for most of the set firmly in the domain of Cave. She whistled on O Wow O Wow (How Wonderful She Is) replicating her performance on the Wild God album.
Some backing tracks were going on but most of what we heard was live.
The four backing vocalists were fabulous, one male and three female, who later on in the set moved from the rear of the stage to join the main man at the front.
George Vjestica was effective, playing mostly acoustic guitar, switching occasionally to electric and sang a lot of backing vocals.
The percussionist, Jim Sclavunos, was cool, played well and was a good visual addition to the show surrounded by an array of instruments from Tubular Bells and Musser Vibes to electronic pads triggering samples and synthesisers.
Percussion is tricky to mic up live and the sound engineers really showed their prowess as everything was audible, a miracle considering the dire room acoustics but I suspect the absence of stage monitors really helped.
Tubular bells
Not the Mike Oldfield album…
The tuned percussion interested me as recently we had a geeky discussion on our gear-based Mastodon tag. We were discussing Xanadu by Rush and how they managed to record tacks with these troublesome instruments.
Troublesome because they are generally orchestral tools with a base frequency of A=442 Hz as opposed to rock and roll where A=440 Hz. I recorded a little stub of one song where Cave was playing the piano - checked - and it’s clear everyone was tuned to 440Hz and the percussion was a special order.
Welcome to my world 🤣
Sclavunos switched to the drums and Wydler took over the percussion in the second full band encore Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry but IMHO he should stick to his knitting, percussion.
The front row was treated to a religious experience. He swept his hand across theirs and somewhat bravely used various audience members as temporary mic stands whilst pulling his preacher-like shapes and delivering his sermon.
The second star of the show was long-term accomplice Warren Ellis who was suitably weird and an excellent foil to Cave.
Playing electric violin - with plenty of cool-sounding distortion - he was the only person with enough charisma to draw eyes from Cave. Ellis also played synthesizer and a signature tenor guitar from Eastwood Guitars.
Cave mentioned that he had hurt his leg and Ellis entered and left the stage using a walking stick. At one point he stopped the show to bandage it up with bizarre wide white tape.
Great.
Here’s a short video from the concert to give you an idea of the feel and sound - again taken by Starlite for posterity.
Anita Lane
A very poignant moment in the set was dedicated to Anita Lane, who passed away in 2021.
She had both personal and professional relationships with Cave, was briefly a member of the Bad Seeds and sang on this track from the album. Videos of her were shown during the song. It was emotional.
He finished the encores with Into My Arms sitting at his piano. He played with the melody a little which somewhat confused the audience who were singing along. I love that fucking track, and I am clearly not the only one.
The Red Hand Files
I love the concept of Nick Cave and he writes beautifully. I have still to buy any of his books but I regularly read his blog, the Red Hand Files, where he responds to fans questions and comments. This post was written from his balcony overlooking the wonderful city of Lisboa.
If you have any suggestions on where to start with his books please share them with me in the comments section below.
And finally…
There is no doubt Cave is a superstar and the fact was reflected in the ticket price, but the performance was superb and we both thoroughly enjoyed the whole two and a half hours. The stage setup and lighting were not overblown and the sound was first-rate.
Would we go and see him again? Yes. Amen to that.