Nick Cave, Petőfi Csarnok, 26 May

The Rolling Stones, from even beyond middle-age, say yes. The first generation of rock ’n’ rollers from the 1950s are mostly dead. A whole pantheon of 1960s noise-makers have hit their 60s but are hardly ground-breakers any more: McCartney, Starr, Bowie, Dylan, Iggy, Young, Cohen …. Now they give us nostalgia.

Cave was born in Australia on September 22, 1957. No doubt several of his band, the Bad Seeds, have also hit the big Five-O. Musically, Cave came out of the late-1970s punk era. Particularly with his early band The Birthday Party, he was an all-snarling, spitting, roll-around-the-stage-topless, heroin abuser who confronted his audience with bile and hate and fury.

With the early Bad Seeds through the 1980s and into the 1990s he released a series of astonishingly excellent albums of dark and superb imagery. Above all, Cave never pandered to his audience. You got what you got, like it or lump it.
From the late 1990s, two things happened. Cave’s music mellowed out somewhat and he seems to have become intent on his legacy. A wider audience came to him, on his terms. It appears that he now wants to be seen as a quality artiste up there with Dylan and Cohen and Young. 

And with this he has become much more audience- and critic-friendly.

The latest album, Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, has had a very warm reception, and each release now pitches Cave into that rock cliche, the album-tour, album-tour treadmill. He will be here to flog the CD.

Cave is 50. It has been the artistic death of many who burst upon us and then faded. Budapesters who see him will no doubt get excellent music and a professional show with lights and maybe even back-up singers. He will give it his all and drench the omniprescent suit.

But it won’t be as hair-raising as before and perhaps we shouldn’t expect it to be. We have all grown up.
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, May 26, 7:30 p.m., , Dist. 14, Zichy Mihály út 14. Tel: 363-3730;

Source: Budapest Business Journal