Nick Cave - Idiot Prayer: Nick Cave Alone at Alexandra Palace Piano/Vocal/Guitar Songbook

by Nick Cave (Artist)

(Piano/Vocal/Guitar Artist Songbook). 22 songs from Australian musician Nick Cave's critically-acclaimed Idiot Prayer live album. Originally an online streaming event during the Covid pandemic lockdown, the songs included span Cave's career, including early Bad Seeds and Grinderman, right through to the most recent Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds album, Ghosteen . Includes the title track, (Are You) The One That I've Been Waiting * Black Hair * Euthanasia * Into My Arms * Jubilee Street * The Mercy Seat * Palaces of Montezuma * The Ship Song * The Spinning Song * and more.

144 pages, Paperback

Published December 1, 2021

About the author

Nicholas Edward Cave is an Australian musician, songwriter, author, screenwriter, and occasional actor. He is best known for his work in the rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and his fascination with American music and its roots. He has a reputation, which he disowns, for singing dark, brooding songs which some listeners regard as depressing. His music is characterised by intensity, high energy and a wide variety of influences. He currently lives in Brighton & Hove in England.

Cave released his first book King Ink, in 1988. It is a collection of lyrics and plays, including collaborations with American enfant terrible Lydia Lunch.

While he was based in West Berlin, Cave started working on what was to become his debut novel, And the Ass Saw the Angel (1989). Significant crossover is evident between the themes in the book and the lyrics Cave wrote in the late stages of the Birthday Party and the early stage of his solo career. "Swampland", from Mutiny, in particular, uses the same linguistic stylings ('mah' for 'my', for instance) and some of the same themes (the narrator being haunted by the memory of a girl called Lucy, being hunted like an animal, approaching death and execution). A collectors' limited edition of the book appeared in 2007.

Cave wrote the foreword to a Canongate publication of the Gospel according to Mark, published in the UK in 1998. The American publication of the same book contains a foreword by a different author.