It's always a pleasure to welcome a right and proper music legend to these pages - and make no mistake, Mick Harvey is a legend.
The Australian multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter, composer, arranger and record producer is possibly best known for his long-term collaborations with Nick Cave, with whom he formed The Boys Next Door, The Birthday Party and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.
Harvey has also produced and contributed to multiple recordings by different artists - he produced PJ Harvey's Mercury Prize winner Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea - and released several acclaimed albums and soundtracks as a solo artist. He talks to RTÉ Arena below...
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This month he'll be in Dundalk, Co. Louth to participate in These Are The Waves, a weekend of events celebrating the life and music of his Bad Seed comrade Conway Savage.
We asked Mick for his choice cultural picks...
FILM
If asked about a film recommendation I always defer to Kurosawa or Orson Welles. And why not? Can't go past The Seven Samurai or Touch of Evil… or Hidden Fortress, for that matter.
MUSIC
I normally just find myself telling people to listen to Nina Simone or that Leonard Cohen is clearly the best songwriter in the pantheon of so-called greats but… I have two ongoing and new projects, Bleak Squad and the collaborative albums I’ve been making with Amanda Acevedo, and I really am very excited about both ventures. So, if you’ve ever been interested in the music I make, give them a listen.
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BOOK
A Walk on the Wild Side by Nelson Algren is, apart from the title and its reuse in other contexts, a forgotten classic. Algren is something of a forgotten writer too and apart from being a stylist in and of his time, and therefore arguably dated, I would counter argue that everything dates in one way or another but great writing remains great writing.
THEATRE
My friend Emma Pursey is producing a one-woman show in Melbourne at the moment called Where is Joy? about the artist and muse/friend to other important Australian artists, Joy Hester. A remarkable woman in every sense and a remarkable presentation by another remarkable woman. Probably not coming to a stage near you anytime soon. More’s the pity.
TV
Of the many great serialised TV shows of recent decades I still consider The Wire to be the best. Alone amongst such shows it attempts to depict the complexities and impossibilities of a living city with all the attendant corruption, chaos, hope and tragedy. And it succeeds. Repeated viewing does not dim its fire and intelligence.
GIG
It’s very hard for me to remember recent concerts or what I’m going to see next but it is always worth noting that probably half of the best 10 live shows I’ve ever seen were by Einstürzende Neubauten. Alex Hacke recently left the band and I can imagine it will take a while for them to find their feet again, especially as he was the thrust behind much of the sound, but I suspect they will always be a great live experience.
ART
The exhibition which has stayed with me powerfully for several years was a career overview of Hokusai in Melbourne. It contained full selections from several of his conceptual series. I haven’t been to many exhibitions lately. I suspect I am finding the commodification of "great" art to be a bit suffocating and false and the big blockbuster exhibitions to be akin to mega-concerts and Broadway musicals. All too much of a sales pitch and homogenisation of what is accepted as important. And that just puts me off.
RADIO
In Melbourne we have two subscription FM stations - 3RRR and 3PBS - so when I’m in my car driving around the city, that’s what I listen to.
TECH
Google Translate is amazing, really. Especially the camera pic translator and the speech function. Aside from that I like Funkbox and my guitar tuner app because they are immensely practical.
THE NEXT BIG THING...
Maybe some good world leaders would be useful. Maybe it HAS to be the next big thing or we’re all cooked. The current crop are driving us inexorably to an ugly demise in an ocean of plastic waste, radiation, carbon imbalance and a new age of inequality which will simply damage everything it is to be a human. To say nothing of the current world conflicts which could escalate. Bring on some good, compassionate leadership aimed at uniting peoples, not dividing them.
These Are the Waves: Celebrating the Music of Conway Savage takes place from 12–14 September at various Dundalk venues - find out more here
