Cave. Simply sagely.

7:30pm music chosen by the Seeds gets piped in - stuff like Cohen, Bowie, Lou Reed, old obscure blues.

8:30pm Cave + 3 Seeds (Warren Ellis on Violin / Bouzouki, Martyn Casey on Bass, Jim Sclavuno on drums) take to the stage to quite some reaction.

It's just a back cloth with a number of stage lights and some filterered spots - simple but effective. The crowd looked somewhere between the Royal Albert Hall and a Levellers gig and the merchandise was dayglo colours a la Caves "Stagger Lee" video outfit with either the band logo or "Love Child", all wonderfully starting in sizes from 2years upwards.

He'd only got two tracks in when fans could hold back no longer and started shouting requests out. At this Nick just smiled, laughed and said "ok, if thats the way you want it - you shout it and we'll play it" and, pretty much, that's what they did. In no particular order, in addition to those I've forgotten, they played:-

From her to eternity
God is in the house
Abattoir blues
Red right hand
Cannibals hymn
Hallelujah
Hiding all away
Let the bells ring
Babe, you turn me on
The ship song
Rock of Gibraltar - "this is the height of my writing to date"
Mercy seat - "Last time we played this in Newcastle must have been 22 years ago"
Lyre of Orpheous
Stagger Lee
The Singer

There were maybe another half-dozen tracks played - I'm those will come to me over the next day or so.

Ellis played like a whirling dervish - his violin simply a part of him. Aside from Cave's almost possesed playing style during some of the louder numbers, it was quite incredible to watch him losing himself in every bowed note.

High spot ? Apart from the banter, it was when he brought the place right down with an almost gothic torch-song version of "Christina the astonishing" before banishing the spirits he'd just invited in with a huge rebel-rousing "Henry Lee". Talk about contrast.

Both musically and as a front man Cave was on stupidly good form which, when combined with the incredible acoustics in the hall, made for a quite unforgettable gig. As an idea of the sound quality, there was a bass note you could feel in your chest cavity and, during some of the quieter moments, you could hear Caves feet tapping the piano pedals.

As mentioned Cave was up for enjoying the evening. When some wit decided to 'request' Waltzing Matilda, he pointed a finger, chuckled, and simply said "Mate, comedy is a lonely business". Later, holding his hand above the keys, he waited for an unsuspecting punter to cheer him on - he got a wonderfully sharp "Shh, it's all in the timing".

After joking about selling tea towels at their recent Manchester gig ("Tea towels - total fucking merchandising coup") he was laughing so much he fluffed the start of Lyre of Orpheous - twice.

In a quizzical tone, we got a thoughtful comment about the crowd going from silent reverence to noisy as hell at the end of each track - "This place is weird - it's so quiet when we're playing it's almost like you're actually listening to us".

Genius was there to be witnessed tonight - and he was laughing along at the time.