Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis; A Tom Waits review
 

As many of you are probably aware, I'm something of a Tom Waits fan. A review of his works is something I've always wanted to do, but as a Mod, MB was starting to feel like work. Now that I've stepped away from the reigns, I feel unrestricted to write, and not worry about what international spam unit is here crowding up the forums with bull****.

I try to make my first post on each of these Discography reviews my experience with the artists. This is my story.

Sometimes, something will happen in your life that has so many eerie coincidences surrounding it that you believe the universe is telling you that you must do it, that this is your fate. My running across the greatness of Tom Waits was something like a negative image of that phenomenon.

I'd known of him, off in the peripheral of music. I'd seen a photo of him once and thought to myself he looked like the love child of James Hetfield [Metallica] and an orangutan. But it wasn't until my father, who spend his life in a Corrections Officer uniform, or ripped up, paint stained jeans, brought home an issue of GQ. I didn't know where he got it, but I picked it up because Chris Rock was on the cover. As it was, there was a lengthy interview with Tom Waits in that issue that would change my musical reality forever.

Because of its length I never intended to read it, but the imagine of him pounding what I recall being a calliope and a side bar of lyrics made me change my mind. I'll never forget the first thing to reach out and grab me...

Anyone, anyone who paints such a bizarre and savage landscape like that in one stanza can have one of my kidneys and a bi-weekly paycheck.

From there it was over and done with. I used whatever peer-to-peer software was the rage of the day and just scooped up the fastest downloads possible. I ended up with most of Mule Variations and went off and bought the record. From there, I would walk a million miles in the world of Tom Waits with all the circus freaks, and down-and-outs dotting the country-side; with every old-time fan, and shiney new novice to his collection.

Reviews are sometimes collaboratives with memories - These are my stories.

Reviews:

1. Blue Valentine

2. The Heart of Saturday Night

3. Heartattack & Vine

4. Blood Money

5. Bone Machine

6. Small Change

7. Mule Variations

Blue Valentine is, for most Tom Waits fans, a forgotten record. This has a lot to do with it being a transitional album between his early 70's "James Taylor-esque" sounds and his post-Europe Brothel singer style. But for my money, its one of the best.

The record doesn't stray far from his origins. The voice has changed but the blues and jazz have stuck around. The album opens with "Somewhere" from West Side Story and sets an odd pace for the album. It sounds very little like the rest of the album, but what it doesn't represent in musicality, it sets in plot.

Valentine is a dark romp through the lower west side; a way past bed-time story set in the immigration-tenements of New York: The strife of a poverty stricken life led to crime; the manic elation of those eye-of-the-storm good times that are wrung for ever drop of good times they'll yeild, and always, overjoyed or miserable, a persistent aura of caution that keeps every character in every song with one-eye over his shoulder.

For a forgotten album, this has some absolute knockouts on it. Whistlin' Past the Graveyard is so over-the-top and frenzied that even Wait's voice, which is notorious for putting off newcomers, won't deter your grandmother from sitting up in bed, asking who this is, and decrying modern music with that old quip "this is how music should be." A baseline/sax riff that gets the blood flowing, drums fills that will give you speeding tickets, Graveyard waits in the weeds, and pounces on you from the sleepy lead ins.

And as for narrative, few songs in the American canon can compared with Romeo is Bleeding, a greaser anthem that might be a better play than Grease itself (I know, I know, boo-hiss...whatever).

But for all its upbeat action, and gutter-celebrity intrigue, Blue Valentine is no exception to Wait's traditional chest-compressing heart breakers. Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis, another amazing narrative, is such a a heavy tale of human tragedy that I'd caution you from listening to it drunk unless you really want to cry alone at your computer. Christmas Card utilizes some well-remembered stories from the narrators past that remind us that nothings is so soul-crushing like the embraced joy of the truly downtrodden. A late-game plot twist only exacerbates the suffering until you can't take it anymore.

And to close it out, the title-track flexes its strength in minimalism - a couple of electric guitars dancing between blues and flamenco - tells a more traditional tale of heartache, but when when Waits holds the brush, its not only a story like you've never heard before, you feel like that story is you.

I'd normally close the review out here, but I just have to write about "A Little Bullet from a Pretty Blue Gun" which is one of my favorite songs ever. The band makes everything here. Cold, calculating, and the flourishes bring the characters to life in a way you only get the full effect of when you hear it with your eyes closed.

Blue Valentine is not without its missteps, some songs don't measure up the weight of the great ones here, and thats mostly because they don't exactly fit mood-wise, but all in all, for a forgotten album, its the one you really should try out first.

Must Hear:
1. Romeo is Bleeding
2. Whistlin' Past the Graveyard
3. A Little Bullet from a Pretty Blue Gun
4. Blue Valentine
5. Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis

I've been waitying for someone to have a go with Tom Waits' discography in this way for a while, so I'm really looking forward to the rest of this thread. Can't wait to see your take on the Heart Of a Saturday Night as well, as that's an album that just completely transfixes me every time I hear it. Blue Valentine there's been one of my more recent acquisitions from the man's discography, so as such I haven't listened to it as much as a few other Waitsalbums I could name, but I remember loving it all the same. Great summary of the title track as well - there's just this hypnotic quality about that I can't really put my finger on myself.

Good start to the thread anyway. Looking forward to seeing how this one pans out.

Tom Waits is amazing. I need to sift through more of his discography.

I got into Tom Waits in a way that seemed like fate, myself. I had heard "Real Gone" from a friend, but didn't think much of it. His voice was unusual, which I like, but it just didn't click with me at the time. Then one day, I was pondering picking up another album to give him another chance. I wasn't too sure, but then Dracula came on TV (he played Renfield perfectly), then Coffee and Cigarettes came on (if you haven't seen the segment between Tom Waits and Iggy Pop it is hilarious), and then later in the day I read an article about him in some random music magazine. I took it as a sign that I should check him out again. I then picked up Rain Dogs and have been a fan ever since.

Basically that was a really long way of me saying I'm excited to read this thread. He has a pretty dense discography, and I am far from completing my collection. This looks like it should help a lot!

Thanks! As BD requested it, I'll be doing Saturday Night tonight.

I'm a little late on this, but I'm glad to see someone giving Blue Valentine the credit it's due. It's definitely one of my favorite albums of his, and it's easily one of his most underrated. Great thread, Brendan. Keep it up.

Thanks, Mark.

Edit: To better explain my fury.

Good idea for a thread ,looking forward to hearing your take on Heartattack And Vine.

The Heart of Saturday Night is, for all factual purposes, Tom Waits second album. This, and the informational pieces listed below the albums image above, are the only things anyone can really agree upon. Beyond these facts, the path of opinion will only lead you down the rabbit hole.

Saturday Night represents many many things in the world of Tom Waits. Its the first step toward a whiskey-soaked career, a move away from a James Taylor-clone; its the first glimmering sparks of the carnival jabberwocky that was a decade off. It a full on Jazz album, a well painted portrait of the happier side of the city life's scummy underbelly - a bastard love child of Coltrane and Sinatra. It also has the somewhat dubious honor of being his most well ranked album on one of America's most smoke-blowing rags: Rolling Stone.

Heart of Saturday Night starts off with "New Coat of Paint," a a rollicking, roiling pickup line that sounds like the 50's greasers at 30. People with little to lose, dressing up to paint the night red. They've given up on preconceived notions of how it ought to be, they threw caution to the wind and whiskey at their problems.

Its impossible to set a musical tone for an album as slippery as Heart of Saturday Night, but it does set a narrative theme. And while its often I.D.ed as a Jazz album, there are some of those early-tracked Folk themes still lurking here, but its clear from one listen through that those Taylor-esque songs are on the way out as their Jazz counterparts are not only the memorable ones here, but heavyweight classics that sit atop the Waits canon. Even San Diego Serenade, which is supposedly the best of folky-filler tracks, may as well have been on Closing Time, and is ultimately forgettable.

"Diamonds on my Windshield" is barely sung, beat-jazz with some high-hat and a walking baseline about roving the interstate highways that, while still jazz certainly, is nothing like the Big-band inspired "Paint" or "Drunk on the Moon," and both are nothing like "Fumblin' with the Blues" (both monster songs).

And while the album can seem like a dichotomy, Waits manages to marry both styles while progressing his lyrics beyond drunken caricatures and mass produced lonely love songs on the albums title track (and even better on "Ghosts of Saturday Night"). Unfortunately, his musical prowess was well ahead of his literary powers and the Jazz arrangements on this album are cake-taking, show stoppers.

There are certainly filler tracks on this album, and if you thought his best work came out in a post-1985 world, this may not be for you, or at least not what you're expecting. But for anyone who likes music, Saturday Night is a monster and if its not in your Top 5 Wait's albums I think you're lying to yourself, or to me. Either way, you're an idiot.

Must Hear:
1. Fumblin' with the Blues
2. New Coat of Paint
3. Drunk on the Moon
4. Diamonds on my Windshield
5. The Ghosts of Saturday Night

I love San Diego Serenade, personally. I wouldn't call it filler at all.

Great way to nail what the album basically is that, and pretty much how I think of it too.

I see what you mean about San Diego Serenade too - I still think it's a neat little song, but it is a bit of a space-filler. Even the lyrics (from what I remember) just basically juggle the same idea in each line, each time using a different, clever-clever kinda wordplay; something that just doesn't really appeal to me.

Good picks for the highlight tracks too (although I'd have made room for Shiver Me Timbers and Please Call Me Baby myself - the melodies in those just get me every time). Anyway, very good review sir - looking forward to seeing whichever one you've got up your sleeve next.

Well suicide asked for "Heart Attack and Vine" so I suppose I'll do that one. I have no reason to go in any sort of order. I like the two songs you listed, but I'm limited to 5 and at least I didn't disparidge them in the review, no? As for "Serenade" let me say this...

If, if, IF the music was compelling I'd give it a pass...but anyone who's heard it knows it could have backed Luther Vandross and it wouldn't have been out of place. I should point out that for too many of us here, and its only getting worse, we're hearing Waits backwards. If you want what Waits does, you don't look for this stuff.

At the time it may have been a fine song, the 70's were something of a melting pot for music and I often get lost wondering how the sounds coming out from that decade ever got popular. But in 2010, Serenade shows its age, and its more automobile than wine.

Ah, Heart Attack and Vine eh. I've just looked and seen that it's one of the handful of Waits albums I don't yet have. I went through a little phase a month or two back where I decided to get every one of his albums I could, but ended up getting distracted and forgetting about it. Pretty sure the aforementioned was the next album of his I had on my to-do list, so I shall await the review with baited breath :D

And, yeah, totally agree that Serenade sounds a little dated these days. Not quite as drastically as a number of songs I can think of, but it definitely doesn't sound like it could've been recorded last Thursday or whatever. I do remember listening to Saturday Night for the first time, loving how it kicked itself into life with New Coat Of Paint and got a little turned off by what came next. As I say, I grew to appreciate it more with repeated listening, but it just didn't grab me at the first go like most of the rest of the album.

Heartattack & Vine is one of 4 albums that aren't really on many fans radar. With it are Foreign Affair, Black Rider, and Frank's Wild Years. They each have their reasons, but I'm a "response whore" and I'm going where the money is.

I wouldn't rush out and buy it if you don't hae everything else, but we'll see. I have a packed weekend so I likely won't get to the review until next week, but we'll see.

Yeah, I know that feeling. I've promised 3 or 4 reviews to varying threads around the boards and still haven't got round to doing any of them for some reason or other.

Foreign Affairs I have, and I remember thinking it was pretty decent (despite the rather lame I Never Talk To Strangers). I loved a Sight For Sore Eyes, but other than that I doubt it's an album I'll be listening to again anytime soon - it's a bit like Closing Time in that respect.

It was always my personal favourite of them, and a key album in his creative evolution to the Swordfishtrombones era.

Excited to see what you have to say about Blood Money.

I wanna see Alice and Nighthawks at the diner

I've always thought of Frank's Wild Years as a fan favorite to be honest.

None of the ones I've ever come across. Its a musical that I'm better few of them have scene.

I'm giving H&V one more spin and then i'll review it. I listened yesterday again and I'm getting a good enough feel to review it I think.

To be up-front, before giving this album its lengthy and time consuming I didn't think much of it. And the reason its review is so late in coming is really two reasons:

1. I didn't listen to it much prior so I hadn't had months upon years of thoughts about it

&

2. I wanted to review it fairly. Many posters in this thread alone gave it moderate to glowing reviews and I didn't want to pan it on my lack of listening.

But one of the issues I had to reconcile as well was that this is still an album review coming from me - not an empirical review - and at the end of the day I need to sleep peacefully with what I've written.

Heart Attack & Vine is still, to me anyhow, an album lost in time. Adrift in an ocean full of bigger albums, better songs, and stations that Waits landed on. Because of this, the album is better seen as a journey than any sort of stance in the musical landscape.

Its two-faced. Which is generally true of his entire Catalog. His wife Katherine is quote as saying its "Grim Reapers and Grand Weepers." Riffing on that review, HA&V is Grand Weepers and Blackout Drunks. If I need a sentence to review this album it would be...

Of the 9 songs, it would break down something like this

A) Heartattack and Vine
A) In Shade
B) Saving All My Love For You
A) Downtown
B) Jersey Girl
A) 'til the Money Runs Out
B) On the Nickel
A) Mr. Siegal
B) Ruby's Arms

The A's are the drunks, the B's are the weepers. And they each have their appealing attributes but like some of the lesser songs on Closing Time, the B's show their Age. "Saving All My Love" is probably the worst song on here if only because of its 70's style string sections and, of the B's its not the heaviest hitter.

The other three are "On the Nickle" and "Ruby's Arms" which have enough vocal grit and lyrical brilliance to carry through the day; The Third is "Jersey Girl" which is the least Waits song ever, but simultaneously brilliant. Theres a reason Springsteen covered it, and its not just because he's from the Garden State.

You can tell, looking backward, that this was the start of an amazing style Waits will employ for much of his career, but you also would note that this isn't the best he's done.

The A's (the drunks) on the other hand are Waits at his transitional best. This is neither Closing Time nor Swordfish Trombones but while he's going from the former to the latter, he rides a Hammond B3 to amazing results.

This isn't the blues because its too happy, and thats only because its drank away its problems. These 5 songs are the film you wake up with on your skin the next day when you're hung over in a room you know isn't yours. Its the heat of sin in the moment you're going in for the kill, its not the thoughts of a drunk man, its the soundtrack to his swagger.

The title track is what everyone should play as they drive out of their neighborhood for a forgotten weekend in some far off destination you aren't bringing your wife on. And "'til the money runs out" is what the dice roll to in side alley gambling scams. This album is filthy and it could really only take place in two places in America - Las Vegas & New Orleans. But the absolute killer is "Mr. Siegal." Rollicking piano, a guitar that cuts like that first shot of whiskey at 11 am.

While I still can't say this is the first or third Waits album you should pick up, you should give it a listen before you rule it out. There isn't a field to harvest from lyrically here, neither is there the wild experimentation musically that Waits is known for, this album is the best friend you're going to have when you're showing off the gutter the next morning.

Must Hear:

1. Mr. Siegal
2. Jersey Girl
3. Heartattack & Vine
4. Ruby's Arms.

If the three previous albums represent a Tom Waits in transition, then Blood Money would tell us that he was clearly becoming possessed. This is the album every scary metal you've ever heard wished they could have made. Of all the Waits albums there is, Blood Money might be one of my favorite. Waits throws out all the stops here; wild musical experimentation, vocals that gave up hedging bets and went full on hoarse, and some of the darker lyrics in the catalog.

Written simultaneously with Alice, Blood Money represents the aforementioned "Grim Reapers" element of Waits writing side. It leads off with "Misery is the River of the World," the soundtrack to what could only be a death march of carnival fire ants. A stand-up Bass keeps a 2-beat throb while the rest of the instruments create an entire world with flourishes from some unlikely tools: the steel drum sound comes from a tree that grows in Brazil, hollowed out and played on its bends, crash symbols appear from nowhere and grow like ripples in a pond, and a piano that rides the vacillation between creepy blues stomp and music from the carnivals house of mirrors.

Sound confusing? Read it while you're listening.

To keep with the theme, this track is followed closely by "Everything Goes to Hell" which gives a full on horn section that appears often on the album and is actually one of the reasons that I really dig this album. I'm a sucker for horns, and Waits doesn't give us mere trumpet flashes, we're getting instrumentation. These babies have some personality. And this is an attitude on Blood Money that is pervasive; Instruments floating around the room, in the high orbit of a simple beat or groove and Waits's barking gravel vocals reminding us that the musical drunken revelry is the only escape we have from the horrors that await us when we go back to face the real world.

Even when the mood changes musically, the lyrics keep the clouds grounded, showing a cast of characters lost in their own emotional fog. "Coney Island Baby" and "All the World is Green" sound as pleasant as some of Waits's sappier ballads, but there's an Oh Henry twist to this taste of pleasantries and the way "All the World is Green" plays out, you'd think it was inspired by some Persephonian style of torture.

But if this is taken as a speed bump by the listener, things aren't just going to get back on track, they're about to ride off of the rails. "God's Away on Business", while not as vicious in title as the first two songs on the album, brings a sharp, fast-paced baratone-horn and upright bass tempo. And this song illuminates something you've been hearing from the jump on this album that shows Waits's skill more than almost anything else - the mask of horror that this album wears is supported by an undercurrent of quirky, almost laconic and good-hearted instrumentation. But as they operate in the gravitational pull of Waits's voice, it becomes one of the more sinister albums I've ever heard.

While the album shows Tom at his more...adventurous, and the album has a few more of those "Coney Island Baby" takes (Woe, Lullaby), they maintain the same lament as their earlier counterparts.

Still the album maintains the sort of tone you'd expect from a recording called Blood Money, with some of its darker tracks, "Another Man's Vine" which wouldn't be out of place in some terrible pirate narrative, and "Starving in the Belly of a Whale" with its driving pulse and sharp, jabbing trumpets, create not just a wounded cast of characters but a world punished by what seems to be less of an Angry God, and more of a God who's gone off on Business.

Must Hear:

1. God's Away on Business
2. Starving in the Belly of a Whale
3. Misery is the River of the World
4. Knife Chase [Instrumental]

Well it was with all the Tom Waits fans I knew in college for sure. Right where you live no less.

LOL wat. Are you drunk? :p:

Dear Mr. Zoon,

It has come to my attention that I've written two reviews you seen to have found invisible, and instead pointed out that I was either drunk or hammered when I wrote back to you. Please find the two reviews you missed above.

All the best,
Big3

P.S. College kids in this city suck balls.

All in due time, old bean. I simply felt I would be remiss if I failed to respond to your remarks.

Your balls?

When they aren't being pussies.

Also, I hope you didn't take my response as too douchey. I'm high on wine and Snake shows on discovery. I'm just talking out of my asp.

lol

I finally tried Tom Waits after hearing his name mentioned so much. The only album that really struck me was Blood Money. I love it immensely

How'd you think my review went?

If you like Blood Money, try Real Gone.

Fannnnnnnnntastic! And I surely will :D

Blood Money and Alice were the first two Tom Waits albums I ever got. Probably not the best place I could've started with him, but all I knew about Waits at the time was that Nick Cave liked him, so not very much in other words :p: It must be at least three or four years since I last tried listening to either albums, so I guess it's about time I gave them another run through. Top review by the way.

Same with the Heartattack and Vine - sounds like a really interesting album.

Looking forward to whichever one/s you've got lined up next.

Heh. Yeah, Alice is probably his worst album IMO. Blood Money is a pretty good album, but like you said, probably not the best place to start with him. I'd recommend Bone Machine or Small Change as good places to start with Mr. Waits. Both great albums, plus they will give you a sense of the two distinct phases of his career.

Discussions always help my chart a course, and one of the things I've never understood about the Wait's universe is how people think Bone Machine is a good place to start.

Its an amazing album, but few albums result in a bigger "what the **** is this ****" moment and are still good albums. I think Bone Machine also tends to stay in the same geographical location.

I actually can't wait to review this now.

I disagree. Bone Machine was the first Tom Waits album I ever bought (though I had listened to a "best of" of his early stuff quite a bit prior) and it immediately blew me away. There was no "what the **** is this ****" moment, just a "wow, this is amazing" moment. I think it's a good starting point because it has a little bit of everything style-wise. I'd imagine that's why other people think it's a good place to start as well.

how so?

Because, like I said, it has a little bit of everything: quiet songs, loud songs, guitar songs, piano songs, percussive songs, experimental songs, "normal" songs, the whole Tom Waits nine yards.

Oh see, I was thinking more like Rain Dogs where you get every genre known and unknown to man.

I would say the two albums are really pretty similar in that regard, but I think Bone Machine is more accessible to someone new to Tom Waits. Rain Dogs is probably my favorite album by him though.