Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Birmingham Carling Academy, 5th May 2008

There's cool, there's uber-cool and then there's Nick Cave. Australia's finest export - the Black Crow King himself - was on particularly fine form as he performed in front of a sell-out crowd at the apparently soon-to-be demolished Academy on Monday night.

He certainly looked the part. Dressed in a black, open-top silk shirt and sporting a horseshoe moustache, he put one in mind of a Latin American Revolutionary Hero with Goth-inclinations. For over two hours' he had the audience eating out of his hand. Granted, this may have something to do with the fact that few rock stars have fans who are quite as obsessive as Cave's (although, unlike the last time I saw him, I didn't spot any obvious 'Nick Clones' in the audience), but then again, few rock stars can match his charisma as a live performer.

With a two hour-plus set comprising of tracks from his new album Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! and some generous portions of from his not inconsiderable back catalogue, Cave and his long-time cohorts The Bad Seeds kept both new fans and decrepit old farts (like me) more than happy for more than two hours. This welcome trawl through the archives went as far back as 1986's deliciously-titled Your Funeral, My Trial (surely a contender for the quintessential murder ballad title) and included the perennial crowd-pleaser and movie soundtrack tart Red Right Hand. Other highlights of the evening included a stunning rendition of one of my favourite Cave tracks, Tupelo, from 1985's The Firstborn is Dead. It sounded every bit as menacing and magnificent as when I first heard it as a teenager.

Cave, though, saved the best for last. Before an impromptu and unrehearsed encore performance of the Abattoir Blues' opener Get Ready for Love, Cave warned the audience to prepare themselves for a disaster. The performance proved to be anything but: the Bad Seeds played mean and tight and the performance was electrifying. The night ended with The Lyre of Orpheus, which Cave transformed into a full audience-participation, call-and-response anthem.

I'll be seeing him again at the Latitude Festival this year in his incarnation as lead singer of Grinderman. That makes me an exceptionally lucky bastard.



Thanks to DinosauriaWe on YouTube for the following:

O Brother, Why Art Thou?

The following is a transcript of a text message exchange that took place yesterday between me and my younger brother, Rob (AKA Brother Younger):

ME: Julian Cope is playing at Latitude... :)

ROB: Great! Who's Julian Cope?

ME: Philistine!

ROB: I'm not sure who they are, either

ME: You're saying you haven't heard of Phil S. Stein?

ROB: Any relation to Phyllis Stein?


That's how things are between Rob and me.

Invincible

Okay, let's start this with off a pair of disclaimers. Firstly, due to time constraints I'm going to have to knock this out in a bit of a rush. If it appears at all disjointed, misspelt and badly structured it's possibly due to the excuse that I'm working against the clock. Secondly, although I'm writing about the film Iron Man (which I went to see yesterday), I do so not only as a card-carrying cinephile but as someone who has also spent just over three decades as an unrepentant comics fanboy.

So, having said all that, I'd just like to take this opportunity and say that Jon Favreau's Iron Man was the most fun I've had at the cinema in bloody ages.

As summer blockbuster fare goes, I found it hard to fault. Smart direction, excellent performances and more substance and subtext than you'd normally expect from that kind of budget at this time of year. As a superhero movie - that increasingly ubiquitous if not always respectable of genres - it was one of the best. Up there, in my humble opinion, with long-underwear benchmarks like Superman: The Movie, X-Men 2 and Batman Begins.

As a comics fan with a more than passing familiarity with the source material (the first superhero comic I read as a 7 year-old featured "Shellhead"), I was quite taken aback at the extent to which Favreau and his team successfully condensed forty years' worth of fictional history whilst remaining true to the spirit of the comics. Sure, the same has been said for other successful comic2films adaptations, but none have gone as far as Iron Man to strive for authenticity. I kept waiting for that one duff artistic choice that would spoil it for me - like Sam Raimi dropping Spider-Man's character defining wisecracks because they didn't fit his vision- but it didn't happen. It was a note-for-note perfect adaptation.

And what can I say about the casting of Robert Downey Jr as the eponymous armour-clad person of mass destruction? It was a bloody stroke of genius: RDJ is Tony Stark. He absolutely nailed the role. I've been a big fan of Downey Jr since 2005's Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, going out of my way to watch pretty much anything he's appeared in ever since and never being let down. I think he's one of the most charismatic actors of his generation, and its great to see him getting top-billing on a big summer blockbuster. And his well-documented bad boy shenanigans of the past actually helped Iron Man: his personal baggage was actually an asset to the role, giving Tony Stark the kind of implied background a 12A certificate can't make explicit.

For fans of Iron Man - and Marvel Comics in general - the film was packed with treats and hints of things to come (and, if there's any justice in the world, there will be more to come - I haven't left the cinema that hungry for a sequel since Batman Begins).

And as for the obligatory Stan Lee cameo - it's a gem.

William Shatner sings "Rocket Man"

'Nuff said.

I quite like this one, too...

OK, I'll stop this now. It's getting silly.

I suspect my geek gland will be working overtime this summer...

Slight return

"We met a crazed speed garage afficianado from Northampton, who advised us not to buy a double gin and Red Bull (and not because of the taste), and told the most uninteresting interesting anecdote about the Astoria. It’s a bit scary to get stuck talking to somebody like that, but looking back it means that I’ll remember the Breeders gig as the gig with the nutter. It fits."

Steve Miller remembers the Breeders gig with his far more succinct (and possibly far more accurate) account of the evening here.

How cool is this?