I digest Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds' "More News from Nowhere" (from Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!) and I burp, "how bizarre." Or more like, "How Bizarre." The connection is probably tenuous and one no else has grasped; it's two men playing the role of wry, observational sideline reporter: OMC frontman Pauly Fuemana conflating children's storybook imagery with urban color; Cave updating Lou Reed's "A Walk on the Wild Side" with the Burroughs handbook (my second favorite bit: "Now Betty X is like Betty Y minus that fatal chromosome"). Judging by the gory details, Cave's got more reason to distance himself from the characters in his narrative, but it's Fuemana who sounds more detached. I like that; detachment is cool, and so for one brief moment in time, Pauly Fuemana ends up sounding more cool than Nick Cave. Go figure."How Bizarre" reaching level red on the ubiquitous pop song scale (in '97? '98?) forever tainted my opinion of it. But I always remember my dad coming back from a day at Old Orchard Beach that summer (more a people-watching exercise than anything else; you have to know my dad). He was sitting outside, having a beer, surveying the legions of pasty Québécois on the prowl for real shark's teeth trinkets and this song came on, and he thought: how neat, how perfect. Nostalgia is a wonderful thing . . . even when it's not mine to dole out.
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