I haven't listened to Waits in a real long time but I consider myself a fairly devoted fan.

Rain Dogs, Swordfishtrombones, and to a lesser degree, Frank's Wild Years were his golden years/albums in my opinion.

Interestingly, Waits is the musician who I have paid the most (by far) to see play live. $75 in Denver on his Mule Variations tour. I was sorta duped into thinking this was his 'last tour' for some BS reason but it was definitely worth it

I saw him on that same tour in Boston. Great show!

It was great. He entered the stage by walking through the audience and he was throwing flowers as he went. You could tell the crowd wanted to throw palm leaves at his feet.:D

It does stick out in my mind as one of the best live music performances I've ever seen. Him solo on the piano was amazing - and those are usually my least favorite songs. That show was extremely honest, showy, and skillful all at once. Excellent

Did he come out in that mirrorball derby hat at the show you went to? I found that part of the show pretty hilarious.

I don't remember that. He definitely wore a derby or a fedora but I don't recall mirrors. Seems like I would have that image in my memory but who knows. I guess it was long enough ago that only certain moments are in there.

You'd probably remember it if he did it at your show. In between songs at one point he ran off stage and returned wearing a derby with little mirrors all over it like a discoball. The spotlight beam narrowed and pointed at his hat, then he began slowly spinning in a circle, sending glittering points of light twirling around the auditorium. It was hysterical.

Those were the two albums I started with too, and I found them to be a very good starting place.

I'd love to see reviews of Bone Machine and Real Gone

Have a preference for which should go first?

I second a Bone Machine review.

alright well lets shoot for Bone Machine. I have a game tonight, but I'll try and kick it out. Otherwise expect it Thursday.

Ah, Bone Machine! Absolutely loved it when I first gave it a spin, but it's been an insanely long time since I last listened to it. Looking forward to seeing what you've got to say about it.

In some ways, Waits is like Dickens or Shakespeare in that his catalogue is long enough, and large enough to have phases, style changes, and growth. In the burgeoning subcultures of artist-followings that wax and wane with the tumult of generational changes; the slothing off of the old and the induction of the new, and the cultural changes that form the prism through which we view things, albums, novels, plays, and films often see their own peaks and valleys over the coarse of time. Certain works age well, some don’t. There are innumerate factors as to why something falls out of fashion and why it comes back into favor but nothing is better than the debates about the value of these albums among the faithful. This leads me to Bone Machine.

Bone Machine is what many regard as the 1992 masterpiece of Waits, often cited as inspiration by acts (though without expression in their music) and heralded as a top 3 in the overall timeline. It also happened to be an album I never quite understood. Why its critical acclaim was so high, especially in hindsight, never jived with me. Its not to say that Bone Machine isn’t good, but, well lets start from the top…

If you’re standing at the bottom of 2010, reflecting back on a careers worth of music from Tom Waits, its hard to see how Bone Machine trumps his Big 3; The Heart of Saturday Night, Raindogs, and Mule Variations. That isn’t my opinion, that’s generally the critical worlds analysis save for those few institutions that pay their bills on contrarian’s smugness.

For one thing, its got one of the stronger consistencies of any album. The deviations on Bone Machine appear at the end, and you need to check back in with reality to make sure you haven’t immersed yourself too deeply in the album. One finds the difference of songs on albums like Bone Machine to be akin to that of the difference between bands in some tiny, “underderground” movement of a subgenre that enjoys its glory in the mouths of social renegades only to be relegated to the barging bins of ailing records stores in the far reaches of a nation, where big commercialism has yet to strangle the last vestiges of small business from the region. In short, only when it becomes all you listen to can you accurately sparse A from B.

Bone Machine also has the distinction of being a transitional record. Like Swordfishtrombones, Bone Machine stands on the cusp of an ethos redraft from the euro-centric vaudeville of the 80’s albums to the bitter and ragged Americana that came to embody the new century.

And forgetting all of this, it plays like the demo version of Mule Variations before it got cleaned up, rewritten, and had its plotlines revisited and sharpened.

At this point it probably looks like I hate the album, and think it sucks. Its understandable, but understand this is a preliminary vision, and if anything, a warning against approaching the album incorrectly. As I said at the top, albums are often reborn with new cultural understanding.

What Bone Machine does very well, and is its strongest attribute, is that it builds a world for its listener. Earlier I cited ****ens and Shakespeare, but for Bone Machine it might be more appropriate to cite Faulkner. Waits albums are often full of a cast of characters sprawling across the world; Raindogs has Sailors in Singapore, Soldiers in World War 2, and a bunch of guys hanging out in Union Square (presumably New York’s US). Heart of Saturday Night finds people in Wisconsin, San Diego, and the Moon. But Bone Machine is Faulkner because these characters are all in the same little town, if not in words, than certainly in musical accompaniment.

Where it is can be hard to tell, but as critics are want to do, we can look at the first track, “The Earth Died Screaming”, and surmise that towns might be irrelevant in the post-apocalyptic universe that these characters inhabit. And in this world, the music is lower than backwoods, in many ways its scrap yard. I use that word to help us understand, but to the characters, music might have to come from what you find laying in the rubble, organized scrap yards might be a thing of the past.

The music is coarser and darker than anything prior, and even Mule Variations only matched it in moments. The only album able to match wits (or scraping metal as it were) with Bone Machine is Real Gone, and at least that album has a map associated with it. The lumbering stomp of In the Coliseum and the coconut trot of Earth Died Screaming seem to approach the idea of on coming doom with the slow torture of wait in different capacities. It suggest that it may come on us as a mob of society agreeing we should all be slaughtered for enjoyment, or that it will greet us at our lowest, when the world seems desolate, and for no one to find our corpse.

Even when Bone Machine does manage to dust itself off and make itself presentable to polite society, it busies itself by foraging in the dark recesses behind closed doors where culture is gone, and people are the real, raw monsters that hide behind corsets and makeup, suits and toupees. On Murder in the Red Barn, Waits visits the silence of rural inclusiveness, even in the face of unspeakable horror and goes so far to relate its culture to being numb to such trivialities (“there’s nothing strange about an axe with blood stains in the barn, there’s always some killin’ you got to do around the farm”). On Going out West, it would seem our protagonist was headed for LA, but given the album, we might wonder if his overall delusions allow him to believe there was an LA left.

In each, the production is expertly woven into the plot. Every piano bench creek, blown-out speaker, and missed note remains in, giving the album all the character flaws that come with humanity, to the elements those instruments represent.

Bone Machine, in the end, is a strong album, albeit alien in concept to the overall discography and certainly to the albums preceding it. I can’t say where I rank it, in fact, many consider my ranking outright backward to begin with, but lists are for the simple-minded. If we cannot explore each element, down to the note and see how it balances with the world around it, we will lose sight of what truly matters, that we are few things more than the world we place ourselves in, and the characteristics the world places on us.

To that end, maybe we shouldn’t review Bone Machine as an album in time, but a soliloquy in an act, within a play, describing not the person but an ethos on the creation of how Waits makes his overall albums. One dark and murky rant through a rusted out megaphone, about how if we don’t all pay attention, the oceans going to swallow us up whole. Then again, there are days where that’s a blessing, and sometimes the ocean doesn’t want you that day.

Great review, Big 3! I myself am somewhat new to Waits, and thus far I've heard Swordfishtrombones, Closing Time, and Bone Machine - which I must admit made the biggest impression on me. I must have listened to Murder in the Red Barn and Dirt in the Ground 100 times afterward.

Bone machine was most certainly one of Waits' most focused records. Goin' Out West is one of my favorite Tom Waits songs to date.

I spent a good amount of time tearing apart areas of my house looking for my copy of Bone Machine after I read your review. It reminded me how much I like that album. It also reminded me that even though I consider his 'middle' stuff to be his golden years - the later albums are also great. I prefer the later albums to the oldest ones a lot. Anyway, I never found my Bone Machine copy but did dig out The Black Rider and Mule Variations and have had 'em on almost permanent rotation

Great review of my favourite Waits album Big3. Well done.

thanks, gentleman. Anything to advance the cause of awesome.

Anyone have a favorite Bone Machine track?

Personally, I swing between Black Wings, Going Out West, and Murder in the Red Barn (which as I recall are close on the album). Depends on the mood, but I guess the one I go back to the most is Black Wings. Its not too abrasive in sound, and creates a mood beyond chaos.

Mine would certainly be Murder In The Red Barn. That track never gets old.

So did you like the review or did it make you reevaluate your memories of Bone Machine?

I think what makes that song so great is that, for one thing its not terribly far-fetched, and secondly that it doesn't take many players to pull it off.

I remember on one of those terrible VH1 lists of the top metal songs, they had either Green Day or Nirvana listed somewhere on there, and Dee Snider said something like (i could have all of this wrong) "I liked that they trimmed the fat" referring to the fact there were only 3 of them.

Why it matters to me that only a few people make that escapes me, but I think its that so few of them can make such an environment with such little resources.

I liked your review. Honestly most of them are too long to accomodate your haphazard way of internet writing (i.e. no spelling or grammar checks). Sometimes your points/ideas get lost on me by the time I've translated what a particular sentence means, for example. I know it's just the internet but you should still at least skim over what you've written before you post it if you want people to read your shit.

But I found your Bone Machine review easy to read and it's full of interesting comparisons and apt descriptions. Mentioning Faulkner is always a plus. Overall, I think your review's a reflection of what's good about the album.

It didn't make me reevaluate my memories of Bone Machine (or Waits in general) but it did inspire me to listen to it again.

"Dirt in the Ground", "Black Wings", "Going Out West", and "In the Colosseum" are probably my favorites on the album. Great instrumentation and lyrics on all of them.

The day the posters of MusicBanter understand me is the day I hang up my keyboard. Some curses we just have to bare. (bear?...**** it)

Haha - 'bear' is correct.
And it's a poor writer who blames his instrument .. or whatever.
Are you saying that posters on other forums understand you better?

You know I brushed off the first jab, but its looking like you want a boxing match.

I'm not blaming anyone other than myself. My problem is that I always know what I mean and few others do. I suppose I could work on changing that, but for the same reason Jewel doesn't get her snaggletooth fixed, I don't care to change my approach. I'm afraid it will sully my craft.

If you want clear, you'll have to read an instruction manual. I don't understand much of what O'Hara's going for, but I still read him. He's a good mood-maker. We are what the stars have made us, I see to reason to question their judgment.

I really didn't even mean to make a jab, let alone a stick-and-move.

Write however you like, it's your writing.
But your comment did make me wonder if you think Musicbanter's posters are less intuitive or cognitive or post-modern readers than other sites' posters. That's all.

Btw - how about a review of Alice?

I really like the posters here. If I have any criticism its that too much goes on in the non-music section, and possibly that the classics get blown a little too often, but overall this is one of the better communities I post in, and the only music forum I post in.

Me not being understood isn't a sore spot, but it is one of those frustrating things where you sometimes think "jesus, is it even worth it?" I think when speaking it translates a little easier since I can gauge reaction and get an idea of where other people are coming from. For all its benefits, text can really **** you.

Also, Alice it is.

Alice has to be one of Waits' most melancholy albums. I've had a hard time getting into it.

Replace "most melancholy" with "worst" and I totally agree with this post.

Really? I don't know Alice that well but I know it's got some songs that I love.
Why do you say it's his worst?

Because I like it the least out of all his albums. :p:

I love Tom Waits, he's one of my favorite musicians, but one gripe I've always had with him is his occasional tendency toward writing extremely tedious ballads. It was a bit of an epidemic for him early in his career. The second half of The Heart of Saturday Night, for example, is almost unlistenable because of this. The good news that for most of his output since the early 80s he's managed to largely avoid this trap. The bad news is Alice, which unfortunately is an entire album's worth of this kind of material.

I think I understand exactly what you're saying. I don't like pop ballads in general and I like Tom Waits but I don't really like his ballads either.

In fact the main reason I like his later stuff more than his early stuff is because his later-years voice is rough and garbled enough to make up for his sappiness.

I may be remembering it wrong but I thought there are at least a couple songs on Alice where he belts out that excellent deep guttural sound. And I remember kind of liking the ballads, too, but like I said, I hardly remember

I always get about half way through and then I hit my limit. Too much sap and unhappiness throughout the album. That being said, the song Alice, and Watch Her Disappear are excellent

Released September 1976
Recorded July 15, 1976 – July 29, 1976 at Wally Heider Recording, Hollywood, CA
Genre Jazz
Length 49:28
Label Asylum
Producer Bones Howe

Small Change is reportedly Tom Wait’s mental breakdown. As he described it in 1977 to Rolling Stone Magazine, in an article called “Smelling like a Brewery, Looking like a Tramp”, a lyric from his song “Panties and a G-string” (two o’clock club) [Small Change]:

It was this action that spurned rejection. Waits went off to Europe and soaked in a lifetime worth of whiskey and culture. What came from this was a rejection of his earlier sounds, which did include jazz and blues, but also relied heavily of folks and country and both previous albums had a lighter feel. The booze-soaked rejection featured on Small Change might be the first signs (in hindsight) of Waits’s downward decent into the dark underworld of much later albums.

Its not hard to imagine much of the album going in the same direction. For a man who’s most noted for heavy and depressing lyrics, Small Change packs some of the most brutal.
Invitation to the Blues most noteably:

“But she used to have a sugar daddy and a candy-apple Caddy,
And a bank account and everything, accustomed to the finer things
He probably left her for a socialite, and he didn't love 'cept at night,
And then he's drunk and never even told her that her cared
So they took the registration, and the car-keys and her shoes
And left her with an invitation to the blues”

Or

“But you can't take your eyes off her, get another cup of java,
It's just the way she pours it for you, joking with the customers
Mercy mercy, Mr. Percy, there ain't nothing back in Jersey
But a broken-down jalopy of a man I left behind
And the dream that I was chasing, and a battle with booze
And an open invitation to the blues”

While the album isn’t all dark - “I wish I was in New Orleans”, “The Piano’s been drinking”, and “Jitterbug Boy” are certainly less heavy – Small Change has a gritty immigrant feel due largely to the albums European influence, but American themes.

For me this album was always a sleeper. Its strength comes not from the immediacy of singles or powerful melodies (though there are tracks that do this), but to the enduring feel of the “Dear John” letter American life. Waits has always been a master navigator when it came to the ruthlessness of humanity. Small Change might signal his arrival at the top.

No "Closing Time" yet? Should be next one you do.

Thanks for the comment. I haven't decided what I'll do next but I can promise you when Closing Time steps up I'm going to tear that piece of **** to shreds.

lol... I would not call it a POS personally. Has some of my favorite songs, like "Ice Cream Man", "I Hope That I Don't Fall in Love With You" and "Little Trip to Heaven (on the Wings of Your Love)".

I love that one.

Or you could just do the expected one and go with "Rain Dogs".

Yeah, well I generally don't plan the order out ahead of time. Did you read the Small Change review?

Looking at it now, I think I can see how that album was the mental breakdown album. Mainly due to his drinking, "The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)" and "Bad Liver and a Broken Heart (in Lowell)" are two songs that really speak to this.

It is still in my tops list for Waits. I personally tend to get more into the Asylum years with Tom. Though I love the later experimental years as well.

I made a 3 disc anthology of Tom for my mom for Mother's Day and included virtually all material from the asylum years and she loved it.

Might do a part 2 soon with the more exerimental stuff. Not sure if she would like it the same. She likes blues and jazz a lot, so the Asylum years seemed like the better way to introduce her to him.

My other album suggestion for review is "Nighthawks at the Diner", which is one of my favorite albums of all-time. One I do not seem to hear many discuss when talking his discography. Which is a shame, cause it has a lot of great moments. Seems to be the more devout fan favorite with many though.