The Sick Bag Song
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4.1 • 7 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
The Sick Bag Song is an exploration of love, inspiration and memory shaped around the events of Cave's 2014 tour of North America. It began life scribbled on airline sick bags during the 22-city tour. It soon grew into a restless full-length contemporary epic. Spurred by encounters with modern day North America, and racked by romantic longing and exhaustion, Cave teases out the significant moments, the people, the books and the music that have influenced and inspired him, and drops them into his Sick Bag.
The lead singer of The Birthday Party, The Bad Seeds and Grinderman, Nick Cave has been performing music for more than 30 years. He has collaborated with Kylie Minogue, P. J. Harvey and many others. His album Murder Ballads has sold nearly a million copies. His debut novel, And the Ass Saw the Angel, was published in 1989 and has sold more than 100,000 copies. Born in Australia, Cave now lives in Brighton, England.
‘A restless full-length contemporary epic.’ Run Riot
‘A page turning mash up from the prince of darkness…an epic chronicle.’ Independent
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This short tour diary puts the reader into musician Cave's frame of mind during his 2014 North American tour. Cave occasionally veers into verse and spontaneous compositions scattered within his diary. He muses about different events in his life that pop into his head while on the road. A bridge near Edmonton, Alberta, reminds him of when his "father and mother told about the boy who had died jumping off the railway bridge." Cave writes about books he reads and records he revisits, including John Berryman's Dream Songs and Leonard Cohen's Songs of Love and Hate. He also shares anecdotes about other musicians, such as Bryan Ferry of the influential glam rock band Roxy Music. The book includes drafts of songs inspired by life on the road, such as "The Beekeeper's Wife," which, Cave writes, "hints at growing anxiety about my wife not answering the phone." The book's title comes from a song inspired by the refrain on the back of a Delta Air Lines air sickness bag: "Call the stewardess for bag disposal." Cave's stream-of-consciousness writing definitely makes this an engrossing read, enmeshing the reader fully in the musician's perspective.
