09/26/2016
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. (Nov.)
A Publishers Weekly Pick of the Week "A lyrical odyssey that feels like a blend of Kerouac’s On the Road and Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."—READ IT FORWARD "Elusive; darting glimpse into the complex universe that is the mind of Nick Cave" —LIT REACTOR "This book is pure Cave: a hallucinatory ramble of poetry and lyrics, hotel room meditations, and Big Questions" —Jon Foro, AMAZON’S OMNIVORACIOUS “Cave chronicles each of his city stops, weaving thoughts on beauty, disgust, longing and the toll of travel into a piece of road literature that holds its own next to the giants of the genre…[it is] a journey that vacillates between jaw-dropping turns of phrase and point-blank confession.”—BOOKPAGE “Exquisite… Unlike barf bags, Cave’s book is beautifully packaged.”—EAST BAY EXPRESS, Holiday Gift Guide"The Sick Bag Song is a reminder of the power of language when condensed into poetry." —SHEPHERD EXPRESS “Each North American location on Cave’s journey inspired a passage of reflection, witness, or imagination. These significant human moments are ones of loneliness, inspiration, and encounter, and Cave never shies away from making these experiences glitter, not so that they are rendered more pure or beautiful but rather in a way that makes them more realistic… A radical odyssey of interaction and influence that is part poetry and part diary… Many are viewed through his perception as a performer, even as he reminds us that the performer is not an icon but a human being. It makes perfect sense to call this book a ‘song’; it is sung with a voice of memory and yearning.” —BOOKLIST “Cave’s stream-of-consciousness writing definitely makes this an engrossing read, enmeshing the reader fully in the musician’s perspective.” —PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY “[Cave’s] ideas are just fascinating, and his thought process is fascinating. It’s a very personal book and also it’s a little sad to read because he wrote this leading up, it was his tour of 2014, and you read it and you know that his life is drastically going to change after this tour because his 15-year-old son died in the summer of 2015.”—BOOKRIOT “The gloomy Aussie rock star ponders the ways of the road in this blend of prose and poetry... Cave channels Allen Ginsberg.” —KIRKUS REVIEWS “Lyrical, hallucinatory and laced with sly wit, The Sick Bag Song is a revelation and a pleasure.” —Hari Kunzru, author of The Impressionist and others “Mad and amazing.” —Ian Rankin, author of Knots and Crosses and many others "The narrator’s obsessive thoughts about his young self facing death juxtaposed with the illusions of fame . . . offer an interesting perspective on mortality." —SUNDAY HERALD (UK) "Mr. Cave is experimenting with a new literary form – a mash up of prose, poetry song lyrics and autobiography."—INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES "A radical odyssey of interaction and influence that is part poetry and part diary...Cave never shies away from making these experiences glitter, not so that they are rendered more pure or beautiful but rather in a way that makes them more realistic. Many are viewed through his perception as a performer, even as he reminds us that the performer is not an icon but a human being. It makes perfect sense to call this book a “song”; it is sung with a voice of memory and yearning." —BOOKLIST "A dark journey written in a style you might describe as modern beatnik...You can at times detect the rhythms of Ginsberg’s famous poem Howl in Cave’s prose...It’s a book of longing and there are many passages that are beautiful and engaging.There is humour, too, and flights of fantasy...This is Cave in high definition. He is, quite deliberately, fully exposed." —NEW ZEALAND LISTENER "The Sick Bag Song is an exhilarating exploration of the bleeding line between the creative space and everyday life...a showcase for the abstract beauty of words which flow and tumble towards meaning...This little book swept me up, and as soon as I finished it the first thing I wanted to do was to read it again." —INDAILY (Australia) "Elegant indie-rock oddity Nick Cave has woven his 2014 North American tour diary with strands of memories, song lyrics, mystical symbolism and dream-scenes and spun an epic, modern poem which brings the Beat bang up to date...The way Cave meanders between fantasy and reality during the 22-city tour gives his writing real weight...Cave's lyrics and music have often collided the mystic with the mundane while maintaining humour, style and honest storytelling – The Sick Bag Song is one of his more adventurous and successful offerings." —STUFF (New Zealand)
Sept. 6, 2016
The gloomy Aussie rock star ponders the ways of the road in this blend of prose and poetry.The sick bag: until the airlines decide to trim the cost, every seatback contains one. Constantly airborne but not prone to motion sickness, Cave (The Death of Bunny Munro, 2009) chose to use the device as an impromptu notebook to record a tour of 2014. “You must take the first step alone,” his guardian angel intoned as, packed into a van brought to a crawl on the highway by a decapitated accident victim, he tried to get some sleep. A few cities later, the author had a theme: a man at a German restaurant in Milwaukee served him “a pretzel big as a severed human head.” It’s not the most appetizing vision, but Cave’s sick bag becomes a medicine bundle of a kind, a storeroom of such images, to say nothing of books by Patti Smith and songs by Elvis Presley and company. The author hovers above the Platonic domains of beauty and ugliness, the former perhaps best represented by Roxy Music frontman Bryan Ferry, who waves his manicured hand across an idyllic English landscape and confesses to not having written a song in years, saying, “there is nothing to write about.” A devotee of grimmer venues, Cave surveys the loveliness of a Canadian river (“pleasant,” “faultless,” and “fabulous” are three of the glowing adjectives that come in quick succession) and then rushes back to the hotel to write a poem that begins, “I was born in a puddle of blood wanting everything.” Well, at least the head remains on the body. Along the way, Cave channels Allen Ginsberg (“Hop in my sick bag! All you wild Texas girls!”), casts a sideways look or two at rock-star fame and the music business, and generally amuses himself with bouquets of words. Like Cave’s growling music, this book isn’t for everyone, but who doesn’t like the specter of “a gloop of ectoplasm spurting through the orange air”?
Part tour diary and part free-ranging rumination on the business of performance. Capture[s] the mind-frazzling disorientation of "the road"
An epic narrative poem about his travels across North America . . . Cave is experimenting with a new literary form - a mash-up of prose, poetry, song lyrics and autobiography
Biblical, slightly manic and distinctly berserk; it's also touching, poignant and utterly absorbing
The stories twist and turn like mad dash through the dark forest that is Nick Caves imagination. It's very revealing, but I guess it's too dreamlike to be called a diary or journal, and yet I came away understanding more about Nick Cave than ever
Far from your typical diary; snapshots of mundane reality (traffic jams, reading in a park) melt into disturbing visions peppered with flashbacks from his childhood. There are heated exchanges between Cave and his muses, and unsettling encounters with a few of his musical heroes (Bryan Ferry, Bob Dylan) that cause Cave to ponder the "vampiric" nature of creativity
Nick Cave goes the distance with The Sick Bag Song
Mad and amazing
Lyrical, hallucinatory and laced with sly wit, The Sick Bag Song is a revelation and a pleasure
A page turning mash up from the prince of darkness
About as rock'n'roll as you can get . . . [The Sick Bag Song] is shot through with fantasy, fiction, apocalyptic musings and tall stories
The narrator's obsessive thoughts about his young self facing death juxtaposed with the illusions of fame . . . offer an interesting perspective on mortality
