Need a fitting soundtrack for tuning up that rattletrap fuel-guzzling dragster in the garage? Or are you looking for a fab backdrop whist brushing up on the books of the Old Testament, though not for their supposed lessons but rather for their rampant bloodletting and begetting? Maybe you’re desirous of the appropriate musical accompaniment for the dilapidated trailer-park whiskey-still explosion finale in your yet to be filmed epic screenplay? Well, suitable listening for all three circumstances has just saw reissue, and a few mere months high of its 30th anniversary; the title is Junkyard and it’s by The Birthday Party.
These days Nick Cave is a well respected man of letters, an unabashed litterateur whose eternally thin visage gets brief cameo spots in the big Hollywood films that happen to sport his scripts. Indeed, he can be located in Lawless, currently (hopefully) playing in a theatre near you as directed by his friend and collaborator John Hillcoat. But it should also be noted that once upon a time, Cave was a completely punk-centric scribe, his scrawling taken seriously by only a small handful beyond the ‘80s subterranean music playground. In fact his double duty as a musician and writer placed him in the direct company of such names as Henry Rollins, Lydia Lunch, and Chris Desjardins aka Chris D.
Way back then Cave’s “thing” as a pen wielder was totally wrapped up in how he presented a booze-soaked and drug-bent updating of the Southern Gothic tradition as previously staked-out by such Advanced American Lit-Class stalwarts as William Faulkner and especially Flannery O’Connor at her most darkly acidic. Yes, even though the dude hailed not from the Southern US but from the very down there climes of the Australian continent. And why not? Hell, at the time Cave started putting pen to pulp there was hardly anybody in the states besides the late Harry Crews that was even bothering to up the ante on this fine patch of fictive territory anyway.
But who knew, even at the time of the early Bad Seeds, that Mr. Cave would eventually enter the estimable halls of established literary fame, sitting within hailing distance of the greatness of one Big Billy Faulk (to use eternal hipster Terry Southern’s typically charming nickname of endearment for Faulkner) himself?
Chew upon that for a moment, please; this once shadowy, substance-addled figure has attracted a smattering of followers who ultimately care not a whit for his musical background in those long serving Bad Seeds or in the more recent Grinderman and maybe most of all in Cave’s second band, the still potent and absolutely essential post-punk scuzz-merchants The Birthday Party.
Oh, The Birthday Party, named either for a play by Harold Pinter or from a scene from Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, though nobody really gave much thought to these highfalutin references at the time the act was actually extant. For the band, previously known as The Boys Next Door before relocating to London in 1980, were solidly on the disruptive end of post-punk’s spectrum, exemplifying the sort of hooliganism that turned off as many listeners as it enticed.
However, my introduction to Cave came not through The Birthday Party but via Your Funeral…My Trial, the third record by the Bad Seeds released in 1986 in the unusual configuration of two 12-inch EPs housed in a gatefold sleeve. And slowly I came to terms with this hulking four sided beast after it initially went right upside my head, for as a young man I’d frankly heard nothing even remotely comparable to this release’s extremely personal rumination on despair, darkness, and turpitude (though I did at least recognize the title from one of Sonny Boy Williamson’s killer ‘50s Chess sides; what can I say, I was a weird kid).
And as it all started sinking in I then began burrowing backwards into the deep wilderness of Nick the Stripper’s oft formidable oeuvre. And upon first hearing The Birthday Party, I was slapped half silly all over again, though thankfully I had at least been given some sense of context through familiarity with a few of the band’s roughly equivalent stylistic cohorts. Indeed, The Birthday Party joined up with such likeminded groups as The Gun Club and The Cramps, the torrid modes of expression proffered by these three entities forming an exotic and humid Bermuda Triangle where an elevated, exaggerated lowbrow aesthetic reigned supreme.
Also, this unholy trifecta presented one distinct avenue in the general post-punk tendency to tangle with prior cultural detritus. To elaborate, The Cramps exemplified Famous Monsters of Filmland, craven rockabilly, buxom pinups and stoop rock supreme. The Gun Club was somewhat closer stylistically to what Cave and company purveyed while pushing more of a voodoo and “Hellhound on my Trail” blues vibe, a motif that Cave went on to explore himself in the Seeds and elsewhere.
But what The Birthday Party and their brethren were all attempting was noticeably different from the more standard post-punk methods of either subverting or simply updating/adapting various strains of quote art close quote. Instead of a dialogue with styles or genres that were vindicated as inarguably artistic (anything from jazz to soul to Dada to Musique concrète for instance), the Club/Cramps/Party axis was taking a huge plunge into wanton extremity and uninhibited theatricality and even more importantly throwing a clamorous celebration of pure delicious Trash.
Yeah, Trash. The Birthday Party’s second album, 1982’s Junkyard got its name for a reason, and the artwork on its cover amplified that concept tenfold. Featuring the Junk Yard Kid, a cartoon axiom for muscle-car aficionados worldwide borrowed from the portfolio of legendary artist/cartoonist/hotrod designer Ed “Big Daddy” Roth and replete with a cameo from his spray-can wielding cultural icon Rat Fink, the record set a massive precedent for the subsequent cover art of 1000s of records including a walloping chunk of the Sympathy for the Record Industry label’s discography. And Junkyard also figures in the low-brow and outsider visual art sensibilities as promoted by such folks as Fantagraphics Books and the publishers at Juxtapoz magazine, so it appears that Cave and The Birthday Party were ahead of the curve in a variety of areas.
But maybe The Birthday Party’s biggest achievement is how their records have never really fallen out of vogue, at least at the underground stratum where they will surely reside in perpetuity; accepted by open-minded punks of all ages, embraced by the wily early Gothic rock scene as a wildcard example of the form, documented as a fellow traveler of No Wavers (most of the band collaborated with Lydia Lunch in the star-crossed project Honeymoon in Red) and the surly countenance of producer and prime ‘80s industrialist J. G. “Foetus” Thirlwell, and lastly serving as a major influence on the noisier side of indie rock all the way up to the present day, even getting a tribute album Release the Bats from 31G Records back in 2006.
As evidence of this lasting importance Junkyard has just been given a nice vinyl reissue. And naturally focusing so much on Cave in championing the cause of The Birthday Party greatly disrespects the other members of the band, all of them crucial to what made the group’s records clatter and roar like the engine of an overheating, fume-spewing roadster.
Hell, multi-instrumentalist Mick Harvey and late great guitarist Rowland S. Howard alone deserve long scrolls of laudatory verses for their roles in shaping not just The Boys Next Door and The Birthday Party but also in setting an example for legions of latter musicians on how to borrow from the past without being in any way beholden to it. And the respective bass and drums of Tracy Pew (also deceased) and Phill Calvert made up one hell of a consistently underappreciated rhythm section.
But given Cave’s role in communicating the apocalyptic toxic-swamp fever dream that is the group’s legacy, it’s certainly understandable why someone might refer to Junkyard as the second record by the bard’s old band. And love him or hate him (for he surely does promote a sharp diversity of opinion right up to the present) it’s a plain fact the guy has a big yawp and has never been shy about using it. But in the end it doesn’t much matter if Cave is the sole focus or not; the name on this record says The Birthday Party and they were one hell of a band.
And Junkyard is my pick for their finest work, throbbing like an agitated nerve three decades after it was first belched into existence. Anyone interested in the whole picture regarding undiluted rock at its sludgiest and most primal should consider its procurement an utter must. And for film buffs or book nuts who know of Nick Cave primarily as an heir apparent to the likes of Cormac McCarthy, The Birthday Party’s raucous, righteous din will quite possibly inspire an intense reaction, a potential response so powerful that it could even be described (albeit somewhat hyperbolically) as similar to the title (and for that matter the story line) from one of Flannery O’Connor’s greatest short works; that is to say, a Revelation.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A+
