I saw Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds for the first time a couple years ago and it was a hell of a show. I have become a huge fan over the past 5 or 6 years; I find Cave to be perhaps the most interesting aging rocker in history. His past couple of Bad Seeds albums and his two Grinderman releases are all incredibly strong, and kind of unique: in the world of literature you might expect “mature work” from a guy in his 50s, but in the world of 50-year-old rock musicians you are generally stuck with ba…

When I was teaching English, I would occasionally bring in some music for my students to listen to and discuss. 1 One time at the end of October, I was flipping through my CD collection, wondering what I had that was somewhat Halloween-ish. I am not really into gimmicky Halloween music, and a lot of music that could be appropriate is just not really very spooky. I had a little goth music (Type O Negative?), some metal (Tool?), some friggin’-weird indie music (Xiu Xiu?), but none of that stuff wa…