"An inexplicable emotional attachment to the Royals"

Nick Cave's Red Hand Files continues to create headlines. No sooner has he written the best personal tribute to the late Mark Stewart I've come across (in which he credits the experience of seeing The Pop Group live for making The Birthday Party "more musically adventurous, more anarchic, more confronting, more dangerous") than he's attracted a barrage of criticism for being unrepentant about attending the Coronation.

In the post, Cave makes clear that he's no monarchist, but he's no republican either - and there's more: "What I am also not is so spectacularly incurious about the world and the way it works, so ideologically captured, so damn grouchy, as to refuse an invitation to what will more than likely be the most important historical event in the UK of our age. Not just the most important, but the strangest, the weirdest." I'm far from alone in bristling at the suggestion that those of us who would refuse to attend and have no intention of watching the coverage are "spectacularly incurious", "ideologically captured" and just "damn grouchy".

Cave goes on to explain his attendance by claiming to be instinctively drawn to "the bizarre, the uncanny, the stupefyingly spectacular, the awe-inspiring", which makes him sound rather like a rubbernecker passing a car crash. As Arab Strap's Aidan Moffat (a fellow disappointed Cave fan) has pointed out, all of that fails to comprehend - or even knowingly disregards - the significant historical reasons behind the strength of anti-monarchy feeling.

Of course, it's not the first time Cave has taken flak for going somewhere that fans and fellow musicians feel he should have given a wide berth - but he didn't back down then and he's unlikely to do so now.