You have never had a better reason to call Lord Mayor Graham Quirk.
"There's some f---ing absurd curfew in this place," Nick Cave tells the Brisbane Riverstage crowd a few minutes short of 10pm.
"... They fine you. They fine you per minute. Thousands per minute.
"Write to your city council."
We miss out on at least one tune but probably more, treated to a two-song encore that has been four or five in every other city. Thanks Quirky.
Almost two hours earlier, Australia's newest OAM and his Bad Seeds take the stage for a sonic exploration of emotion. Just bloody intense feelings. Oh and great songs.
The grief that pervades new album Skeleton Tree following the death of his teenage son is there from the beginning in Anthrocene and especially Jesus Alone: "You convalesced, you fashioned masks of twigs and clay, You cried beneath the dripping trees, Ghost song lodged in the throat of a mermaid."
But the sadness ebbs and flows, rather than dominating. There are more laughs than tears as Cave teases the audience rolled up tightly in the palm of his hand.
All of a sudden it's a blues orgy and if you're at the front right of this massive amphitheatre, this is the night of your life.
Cave is gyrating, swaying, grabbing some hands, teetering on others as he stands upright on his disciples. "Come on motherf---er", conducting the small patch of crowd like an adoring, spotlit orchestra. He plays to the 15 people directly in front of him but somehow brings thousands along with him.
Maybe it's all part of the show. Or just maybe it has something to do with the giant fan at that side of the stage.
"It's hot. It's hot. It's always so fucking hot in Brisbane," he croons, briefly turning Higgs Boson Blues into an ode to humidity.
"How do you even? How do you even tolerate it? Burn burn burn. It's hot. Aaah. Aaah. You get a fan. Burn burn burn."
Now Cave wants to tell us about a girl and all of a sudden the lights are bright.
The musicians play in a hundred directions but all at once together as their shadows jockey for position on curtains behind them and Cave screams From Her to Eternity.
This is The Bad Seeds in full flight. A band that almost completely fades from your consciousness in Anthrocene, Girl in Amber and Distant Sky but effortlessly flicks a switch to all out careening, just-shy-of-out-of-control madness and back again. And again, Martyn P. Casey's chugging bass holding everything together.
For two chaotic, brief moments in Red Right Hand it feels like all of Brisbane is exploding in front of us and maybe that curfew is there for a reason after all. And how, after all these years, has no one told Warren Ellis that is not how you play a violin? Not that he would listen.
Cave is everywhere, a picture of flailing passion and music. Sadness, despair, anger, celebration, the sheer exultation of performance.
The distinctive riff of Jubilee Street tentatively steps out on its own before building and building until the force of eight towering musicians is inescapable.
He hugs a woman in the crowd ("come here you big, beautiful thing") at the end of a beautifully restrained Into My Arms singalong.
"That was good right? Fifteen years and we finally did a good version of it."
Even when he's six inches tall (with no help from a video screen that makes only the briefest of appearances) from the back of the hill, you can not escape that something. The rockstar magnetism.
But also cheekiness. Is that a nod to the newly elected @POTUS?
"You read him in your tweets. You see him on your TV screen…
"One microscopic cock and his catastrophic plan … RED RIGHT HAND."
Then all of a sudden there are 10 minutes before curfew and Cave knows what we want but asks anyway.
It's that bad motherf---ker called Stagger Lee. Mr Stagger Lee.
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