This reissue of these rightly widely acclaimed films with a few additives for good measure captures the Cave in peak form at The Paradiso following a wade in the waters of the troughs of America on the former title.

A potent montage of the paradox of playing in a band this really should be watched by everyone who plays music and also those who ever wanted to, who perhaps wear the suits like a bad seed but on a very different stage. Or...desk. The ephemeral elation of performing rapidly descends into the drunk-like drudgery of endless miles of highway and stale cigarette smoke only enlivened by a few stark snatches of old country tunes, improvised and clapped out on battered old acoustics. To highlight this effect the performance aspect of ‘...Knows Where’ is comprised of snapshots of gigs, showing their fleeting fervour before fading into the fickle flights of memory...’One more mile gone’ to paraphrase Cave’s own ‘The Good Son’...counting down the miles, hours and gigs till they can leave.

But this is, of course, a film about the behind the scenes ‘glamour’ and is almost typically left up to Cave alone to deliver, or be a part of, a film resolutely against the gropin’ groupie grain and simply mauling the mundane. Not for nothing does the film open with Cave idly smashing a pool ball around the table waiting for show time. However, also being the Bad Seeds, there are some great slivers of accidental satire here – the usually sartorially elegant Nick perpetually dressed up trucker style in baseball cap and mirror shades; dancing round an empty venue at soundcheck to Madonna’s ‘Papa Don’t Preach’; Blixa Bargeld arguing with promoters over the shoddy, inadequate sound systems – hedging for more $$$ from one, being told by another that ‘this system works for Flock Of Seagulls’; an awkward, decidedly unanimated interview with LA Weekly – the female journalist seemingly in awe or stark terror, Cave nonchalant and disinterested.

Not for nothing are the final words – ‘This is the final song of our tour of America – Thank God for that’.

Short film ‘The Song’ is also worth more than a glance, an at times fascinating glimpse into the man at work, playing Cave the conductor, showing the meticulous arranging of his haphazard-sounding hellhound hollering macabre blacktar blues.

The show from Hollands’ Paradiso is a mesmerising example of the Bad Seeds arguably at their peak, or one of them. On the rush from ‘Tender Prey’, ‘The Good Son’, ‘Henry’s Dream’ and about to hit the home run to ‘Let Love In’ (surely a quartet to rank alongside the Stones classic set from ‘Beggars’ to ‘Exile’) Cave rages and bellows like the very proverbial man possessed.

Pretty much essential. Nothing actually happens, mind. That’s the point. Existential to the last.
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- Stu Gibson