About three-quarters through a performance by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds on a Friday night in Columbus, Ohio, in a quiet moment between songs, a gentleman had a song request: “Release the Bats!” he yelled. But “Release The Bats” is a song from 1981 by Cave’s second band, the post-punk, grungy gothic noise merchants known as The Birthday Party. Cave — who, with the incredible stage presence that allows him to perceive everything that’s going on around him, onstage or in the audience — addressed the request: “Wrong band,” he said, noting that he’d had to think about whether the band that performed it hadn’t been the same ensemble he was onstage with.
That was, of course, a joke, an example of Cave’s self-effacing wit mixed with his eternal unwillingness to suffer fools: this tour, supporting his 18th album with the Bad Seeds, "Wild God," is the absolute opposite of anything The Birthday Party ever did. The implied undertone was, of course, that if you looked at the 10 musicians onstage (including the four-person gospel choir) and thought that it would be a good time for two and a half minutes of industrial grunge and shrieking histrionic vocals, you had come to the wrong concert.
