A Lovely Pulse of Joy

Earlier this week, Bob Dylan shared on Twitter/X that he had recently attended Nick Cave’s concert in Paris. “I was really struck by that song ‘Joy’ where he sings ‘We’ve all had too much sorrow, now it the time for joy,’ I was thinking to myself, yeah that’s about right,” Dylan wrote.

Now, via his website The Red Hand Files, Cave has responded to Dylan’s post. As Cave explained, “I hadn’t known Bob was at the concert and his tweet was a lovely pulse of joy that penetrated my exhausted, zombied state.”

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“I was happy to see Bob on X, just as many on the Left had performed a Twitterectomy and headed for Bluesky,” Cave continued. “It felt admirably perverse, in a Bob Dylan kind of way. I did indeed feel it was a time for joy rather than sorrow. There had been such an excess of despair and desperation around the election, and one couldn’t help but ask when it was that politics became everything.

“The world had grown thoroughly disenchanted, and its feverish obsession with politics and its leaders had thrown up so many palisades that had prevented us from experiencing the presence of anything remotely like the spirit, the sacred, or the transcendent – that holy place where joy resides. I felt proud to have been touring with The Bad Seeds and offering, in the form of a rock ‘n ’roll show, an antidote to this despair, one that transported people to a place beyond the dreadful drama of the political moment.”

“I was elated to think Bob Dylan had been in the audience, and since I doubt I’ll get an opportunity to thank him personally, I’ll thank him here. Thank you, Bob!”

Next April, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds will embark on a North American tour. Tickets are available here.