The Sick Bag Song

By Nick Cave

The legendary indie rock star offers a genre-bending chronicle of his 2014 American tour with the Bad Seeds that’s part memoir, part epic poem.

The Sick Bag Song began when Nick Cave was struck with inspiration during a flight between tour stops and reached for an airplane sick bag to scribble it down. This improvised diary soon grew into a restless full-length contemporary odyssey. Spurred by encounters with modern-day North America, beset by longing and exhaustion, Cave teases out the significant moments, the people, the books, and the music that have influenced him over the years.

Drawing inspiration from Leonard Cohen, John Berryman, Patti Smith, Sharon Olds, folk ballads and ancient texts, The Sick Bag Song takes the form of a quest, turning over questions of creativity, loss, death, and romance. It is also the perfect companion piece to the Sundance award-winning feature documentary 20,000 Days on Earth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 25, 2016
• ISBN: 9780544814578

Nick Cave

Nick Cave has been performing music for more than forty years and is best known as the songwriter and lead singer of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, whose 2019 album, Ghosteen, was widely received as their best work ever. Cave’s body of work also covers a wider range of media and modes of expression, including film score composition, ceramic sculpture and writing novels. Over the last few years his Red Hand Files website and “Conversation with” live events have seen Cave exploring deeper and more direct relationships with his fans.

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Reviews for The Sick Bag Song

[larryking1-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What a ride! This short collection of vignettes, ostensibly written on the backs of airline 'vomit' bags, recounts Cave's 22-city 2014 North American tour. It is a work of delirious imagery and his insights tap into an imagination without limits. As his journey gains momentum, the account takes on a fevered reverie of a mentality running wild! Is there anything that this man cannot do?

[cail_judy · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Nick Cave's wild, dancing poetry interweaves with his memories of the Bad Seeds 2014 tour. My brother and I saw him in Vancouver and it was a top-three, all-time experience. His sick-bag write-up of Vancouver was good but I wish he'd talked about humping my brother's face during Stagger Lee.

Audacious in its imagery and (surprisingly) lucid in its narrative, this book is a must-read.