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Okay then, Christmas is almost over so time to wrap up this carnival of the crazy. Here are the last batch.

Keepin' it hip-hop-ish, for now, here's MC Lars...
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Gary the green-nosed reindeer (Mc Lars) from the album “A Santa Cause II”, 2006

I believe I looked at, or at least mentioned, “A Santa Cause”, the charity album compiled by mostly punk acts to benefit the Elizabeth Glaser Foundation, prevously, but this is from the second volume, released three years after that. On it we find Briks's friend, MC Lars, singing about Rudolph's half-brother who decides to kidnap his famous brother. We also get Osama bin Laden ... look, just listen to it, ok?

And now for some punk rock, why not?
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“My first Xmas (as a woman)” (The Vandals) from the album “Oi! To the world: Christmas with The Vandals”, 1996

Pretty hilarious all right: “No more tucking it behind now that I've got my new vagina.” :laughing:

Coincidence that this is from the same year? Maybe. I guess. After all, two different people suggested the two songs on two different days. Anyway I suppose it was always in the stars that this guy would feature in any collection of weird Christmas songs. It's in his name, after all. Weird I mean...
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“The night Santa went crazy” (Weird Al Yankovish) from the album “Bad hair day”, 1996

Yeah it's funny, but I think the Weird One has just run out of steam by now. It's almost expected. Yawn.

Bit of a damp squib ending, but then, weird is as weird does (stop me if I'm being too technical...) ;)

I thought this was a well thought out review. A lot of your points are things I have come to notice as well from listening to the album a few times more. I noticed a lot of what you mentioned upon my first time checking out the album. There's a good number of good, fresh ideas that this band tries out, sometimes pull off, but you do get a sense that the band maybe isn't sure what they want to be, but I think maybe this is somewhat deliberate, almost like it's the whole point, to not be one specific genre of music, but rather be a lot of them all in one.

I still regard it as one of my top ten albums of the year, and maybe I'd rate it lower now. But I agree this isn't a bad album, it's good in my own opinion and I can still listen to it plenty. But it does have its problems and hopefully on their next album, it won't sound as confused or lost, be much more focused. All that in mind. I do still think that Nothing More is one of the better bands to come around in the past five or more years. A fresher breath, but still needs some fine tuning.

Nice review Trollheart!

Thanks Troll. I needed that.

Ouch.

Whenever I think of Christmas with Trollheart, I think Val Doonican.

Why do you think I use this? :laughing:
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And so we've come to the end of yet another year, and it's with some surprise I anticipate heading into my fifth year writing this journal. Odd in itself when you consider I only joined Music Banter originally to do something which, unbeknownst to me at the time, contravened the rules: solicit views for a webpage I had made. However, once I saw the Members Journals section I was instantly attracted and interested, and though my first sojourn here ended less than amicably, I got over that and returned for another shot in 2011. Since then, apart from my absence this year, I've really never been away from the place.

It's always amazed me how popular my journals have become, to judge from views and comments. It's been great being able to share my ideas, thoughts, impressions and feelings with you all, and I hope to continue to do this for a long time yet. As each year passes, I try to expand on and make more individual my presence here, whether that means new sections to existing journals, taking the ones I have in new directions or indeed creating completely new journals, and it's been extremely gratifying to see others here do the same. When I joined, the Members Journals section was pretty dead. A few people had journals --- some very good ones --- but generally it was something of a backwater, unused by a very large percentage of the membership. Since then though, particularly since I began the Update thread, more and more people have discovered a need to share their love of music, or comic books, or movies, or whatever the hell they like, and the section is really buzzing now.

That's the great thing: from being a section which featured most people just writing about music it has expanded to include so many diverse and interesting journals, from Mondo's one on drugs to The Batlord's epic saga and from arguments about Star Trek and Doctor Who to members showcasing their own music. Now it truly is all-inclusive, and there is literally no limit to what people can, and do, write about. Some will tell you this is mostly down to me, but that's really doing an injustice to those who put the hard slog in here every week to bring you their journals. Sure, I may have kicked the place up the arse a little, fanned the flames and got people interested, but all of that would have been for nothing if authors had not written, if ideas had not coalesced into journals and those journals been maintained and enlarged, until we have the thriving sub-community we have today.

So thank you all, for your hard work and for following me (those of you who were not already writing before I showed up: let's not get the idea I invented this section or anything!) into this bright and interesting land where one man or woman's favourite album is another's most hated, and where something one person thinks of as a cult film can be a real snooze-fest to another, where lively debate often breaks out but where, mostly, we're talking about people writing in the solitude of their homes, apartments, offices, small holes in the ground or up trees, putting down their thoughts for the enjoyment, perusal, entertainment and perhaps criticism of others. They can call me the Godfather of Journals all they like (as long as I pay them) but you guys and girls are the true lifeblood of the Members Journal Section, a little place we like to think of as Journaltown. So thanks for that, and long may it continue.

As for me, well this year I've made something less of a splash than I had intended, what with my three-month break and then Metal Month II; a lot of things I had intended to premier this year have had to be held back, and hopefully will come to fruition in the coming year. But it has been the year of the establishment of an annual month here devoted to metal, and believe me, if you thought Metal Month II was good, well, just hold on to your hats is all I can say! There's so much planned for 2015, some of which may actually happen, that it looks like being yet another busy year for Trollheart, which is just how I like it.

With the start of my journey through “1001 albums you must hear before you die”, the soon-to-be-initiated “Trollheart Rates Your Music”, the conclusion (finally) of my NWOBHM special, complete discographies of Tom Waits, Marillion and Genesis (shut up Frownland, you too Batty!) ;), to say nothing of the preparations for Metal Month III and new sections like “Kingmaker” and “Roses among the thorns”, the return of old sections and the expansion of others, there should hopefully be something for everyone here at the Playlist of Life.

And if not, well I have six other journals you can read!

So finally let me just say, thanks again for all the views as we approach the magical two hundred thousand mark; thanks for reading, for commenting, for disagreeing with me if you felt you had to and for mocking me when you felt you wanted to. Whether you're a regular reader or just drop by the odd time, I hope you continue to find something of interest here, and keep coming back.

A very Happy New Year to you all, and I'll see you on the other side!
Blian Nua mhath agaibh, agus beannacht!
Trollheart.
:beer:

Looking forward to see what you do in your journal next year, happy new years man!

Welcome to 2015, and Happy New Year. We've lots of great things planned for this year, some of which will take place in this very journal, though admittedly a lot of them outside it. I hope to prevent these new journals and other developments from taking away from my work here, but it may get just a little less busy around here, due to the volume of work I have set myself. Be that as it may, welcome back and as I mentioned at the end of last year, as well as some new series starting up I will be reviving and even expanding some old ones, one of which I intend to start off with here.
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I've always been a big fan of The Alan Parsons Project, ever since I heard “Eye in the sky” and “Old and wise”, and in general their albums have never disappointed. However, Eric Woolfson was a big part of the APP and with his split with Parsons in 1990, “Gaudi” proved to be the final album from the Project as Alan went it alone. Eric's passing in 2005 meant there would never be a reconciliation or any more albums featuring the co-founder of the band, and though Alan's first and second albums were what I would call triumphs, this, his third, leaves much to be desired.
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The time machine --- Alan Parsons --- 1999 (Miramar)

Perhaps significant that this album marked the coming to an end of a decade and a millennium, and taken as a body of work, the thirteenth Parsons album, this for me heralds his lowest point. Up to then, the only album I could point to and say I really didn't like was 1977's “I robot”, and even that has more decent tracks than bad. This, however, has maybe two. It's a total departure in direction musically, with a lot more electronic/trancey elements in the overall progressive rock we have been used to down the years --- and which continued through his first two solo albums, “Try anything once” and “On air” --- and though it maintains the by-now signature instrumentals and the various vocalists, there's something ... not quite right about it. It's almost like Parsons is not really listening to what's being played, not really that bothered, distracted. If I didn't know it wasn't the case, I would have said it was a “contractual obligations” album, one that he didn't really want to make, but the roots of this concept apparently go back to 1977, when he and Woolfson considered the theme of time travel for “I robot”, discarding it in the end.

So it's twenty-two years later, and with Woolfson (at the time) out of the way and doing his own solo thing, you would have thought this was Parsons's chance to really go for it, and create the album he had wanted to, back then at the tail-end of the seventies when they were just getting up a head of steam and getting noticed, and perhaps could not afford to take such risks. But what do we get? A triumphant vindication of the original idea? Some superb songs, some okay ones, a suite or concerto as Parsons gleefully validates his vision?

Um, no. We get a very weak album with almost half of it instrumentals, some guest singers like Beverley Craven, Maire Brennan and Tony Hadley of all people, and nothing of the flair and panache of the last two albums, or indeed any of the previous ones under the name of the Project. I can pick out one favourite, which almost saves the album for me, as the ever-reliable Colin Blunstone lulls us in “Ignorance is bliss”

and then Maire Brennan does a lovely turn on “Call of the wild”, which oddly enough sounds like Mike Oldfield interpreting “She moves through the fair”

and really, the other ballad is the only other decent track, featuring Beverley Craven on “The very last time”, but the problem is it sounds so much more like one of her own songs than one of Alan's.

Even the usually dependable instrumentals are not up to much, like “Rubber universe”

“Far ago and long away”

or the title track, which opens the album

and the less said about “Call up”

and “Press rewind”

the better.
Tony Hadley tries to restore some class to the album with “Out of the blue”

but it just isn't happening. This is dead in the water, and I was hugely disappointed with it when I first heard it. That was the first time I could ever, or had ever to say that about an Alan Parsons album. I had worried, when he went solo, if he would be up to it, but basically all he did was drop the name and keep the band, minus of course Eric Woolfson, and I loved both his first two albums. After this, he has only released one other, 2004's “A valid path”, but this has scarred me so with his music that I'm not sure I'm ready to be hurt again, to trust again and take the chance that this was just a temporary blip.

I'm not coming out of the shelter just yet. Not till I know it's safe...

Note: In compiling this index it has come to my attention that I already reviewed this album, and indeed for the same slot! But both are done now so take your pick. It is interesting to see how I approached each review differently... What? It is...

The development of bands has constantly amazed me. How one can start as one thing and metamorphose over time into something totally different, for good or ill. This makes it all the more important to go back and check out these bands' often-struggling and stumbling first efforts, to see how they began and if they maintained that same music style throughout their career, or if they changed radically into another animal altogether. And so we set sail for the first time in a long while (well, since Metal Month II anyway, but a long time before that) on another of our
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If you mention the word Supertramp to most people they'll think of “Breakfast in America”, “Take the long way home”, "The Logical Song" or “Dreamer”, or perhaps, if they're a little younger, “It's raining again.” All good decent hits from a band who straddled the often precarious divide between progressive rock/pop and outright commercial AOR/MOR from the seventies to the eighties with a great deal of success. Their albums sold well, some of them going gold or platinum, and when founder member Roger Hodgson jumped ship in 1982 to pursue a solo career, the direction shifted and Supertramp became less of a “happy” band and more a “serious” one, leading to a period that has not, to be fair, been characterised with their best work.
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Supertramp --- Supertramp --- 1970 (A&M)

But if you think albums like “Brother where you bound”, “Free as a bird” and “Slow motion” depart pretty radically from the established Supertramp sound, look how they began. Back in 1970 the band were just getting started, and their lineup had not by any means solidified. They were so nervous that superstition ruled the recording of their debut album, the boys believing that there was some secret knowledge of music to be gained by recording in the small hours, and with both Hodgson and Rick Davies, who were later to become the driving force and creative partnership behind the band's rise to fame, both reluctant to write lyrics, leaving it to Richard Palmer. Palmer apparently hated doing this, which is odd when you consider he later found fame with King Crimson and wrote the lyrics for three of their albums, but at the time he seems to have given the impression of having been pushed into it, or doing it because nobody else wanted to or could.

I'd love to say that the album really reflects this, in bland, emotionless songs that give every indication of having been written under duress and protest, but nothing could be further from the truth. Palmer must indeed be a very good songwriter, because even though he didn't want to, he wrote some pretty stunning songs. Yes, the album suffers from a lack of direction and an almost blind wandering around as Supertramp search for their own musical voice, but though this album has been largely forgotten in the wake of titanic successes like “Breakfast in America” and “Crime of the century”, there are some absolute lost gems on it. That's not to say every song is good, and some of them are just downright woeful, but in general the good seem to outweigh the bad.

The album is I think unique in that not only does it open and close with the same song, but though one is merely a snippet of the other, neither are labelled anything like “intro”, “reprise” or even “Part 1”. Both are simply titled “Surely”, and this is how the album introduces Supertramp to a world who, on balance and for another four years, would not care. But it's a delicate and touching opening, as Roger sings the closing lines of the song with nothing more than acoustic guitar and piano, and the whole thing lasts just over thirty seconds before we head into “It's a long road”, which has more of a Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac feel about it, with trumpeting organ from Davies and a steady guitar riff running through it. There's an extended boogie riff which really showcases Hodgson's skill on the bass as well as the drumming talents of Robert Millar, who would not last beyond this album. It also shows the deftness with which Rick Davies handles the keyboard, switching from piano to organ and then electric piano and back.

It's a nice uptempo number and gets things going nicely, then everything slows down at the end with a sort of bluesy riff almost reminiscent of later “School”, with some fine harmonica --- which would become a staple of their music --- from Davies. The whole thing then draws to a close on a rising organ line and then stops abruptly, which does not prepare us for the laidback lushness of “Aubade/ And I am not like other birds of prey”, with its soft harmonica and keyboard opening, almost ethereal, before it's joined by a jaunty, folky acoustic guitar with whooshing drums and a low-key vocal from Hodgson. This reminds me of early Genesis, though they would only have been getting going at this time also. There's touches of early Neil Young in the guitar too, though this then changes into a slower, almost Floydian style as Hodgson's voice gets more earnest and stronger. This is a song I often forget about when playing this album, and it really does deserve some attention.

A nice restrained line in flute comes in, and Hodgson's voice almost sounds like it's echoing, as the flute makes a sort of bird-call, the guitar keeping up its happy tone until percussion hits in powerfully for the bridge, but it ends also quite abruptly. It leads into one of those standouts I spoke of, carried in on a single organ line while Hodgson's vocal is at first very low and distant as “Words unspoken” begins. A lovely guitar passage then slides in before with the cutting in of the drums the vocal coalesces and becomes stronger. The lyric is very poetic and quite hippyish I guess --- ”How all good men try/ Look around and wonder why/ Can they shape this world to please me?” --- but the song really comes into its own on Hodgson's mellifluous and soaring vocal on the chorus. It's all again very low-key and restrained, almost completely acoustic, and very gentle. I do find myself wondering however if Richard Palmer, chafing under the pressure of being the only lyricist, is sending his bandmates a bitter message when he writes ”Follow, and while you watch in wonder/ I'll pull my world asunder/ And show you who I am.”

Although there are uptempo songs here, the one thing that cannot be denied about this debut is that it is very introspective, very brooding, a sense of hopelessness and despair running through it, which I must admit does not say much of a band's aspirations. Just listen to some of the lyrical content: ”Sweet things come and go/ Give me shame I'll give you woe/ To live for love isn't easy” (“Words Unspoken”), ”Oh, a life alone without a home/ Makes a man ask why he travels on/ When hope is gone” (“It's a long road”), ”Many the empty hopes his lips caress/ Sorry to say his days are spent in vain/ Chasing a dream of doom of nights in pain” (“Nothing to show”) ”Only if I lied could I love you/ Nothing of our lives could we share” (“Surely”) But there's a certain indefinable magic here too, as if we're being invited into a secret world and allowed to see things through the eyes of Supertramp, the way only they can perceive things others would either miss or misinterpret.

A very celtic flute opens “Maybe I'm a beggar”, joined by a soft acoustic guitar, then it all stops and a barely audible vocal rises from the depths, this being one of the few songs on which Palmer adds his voice to Hodgson's. It is the latter we hear much more clearly though as he quite frankly takes over the song once he comes in. Some more lovely bass and ticking percussion, and it would seem that Palmer may be a great lyricist but he is no singer. Almost doing a Roger Waters on parts of “The Wall” here, he is barely heard, sort of screeching torturously in the background. Then for I think the first time a hard electric guitar punches in and the song takes on a whole new shape, sort of echoes of Carlos Santana here as Hodgson racks off quite a rocky solo, which comes almost as a shock, given the gentle, mostly acoustic nature of the album up to this point. Palmer screeches in the background I think but is largely unmarked, as Hodgson's guitar blows all before it away. I'm really not sure why they bothered asking Palmer to sing, as he adds nothing to at least this song, and almost in fact detracts from it.

The next shortest track after the opener is “Home again”, just over a minute, a soft electric guitar and a clear vocal from Hodgson with a certain air of Country to it before we move into “Nothing to show”, where the tempo ramps up almost startlingly, the electric guitar screeching out of the gate and the percussion sounding like Millar means business, as Davies's organ grinds away menacingly. This is the first song where Davies joins Hodgson, and the partnership is already looking better. Hodgson still holds court but his keyboard-playing bandmate is not just a passenger and you can really hear his contributions. There's also some fine work from him on the ivories, foreshadowing some of his work on “Fool's overture” seven years later. A jazzy kind of jam then ensues for the next two minutes, and we end as we began, with an abrupt piano chord ushering in superb flute and another standout on the album.

A breezy, gentle piano drives “Shadow song” with a soulful vocal from Hodgson, and you can hear here the beginnings of songs like “Lord is it mine” or “C'est le bon” in Davies's masterful piano work. The flute does its work too, again this is Hodgson playing the instrument, as he tells ” A story of a foolish man/ Who was playing with some twisted plans”, his voice rising like that of an angel in a manner for which he would become renowned in later years. The early Genesis comparisons are impossible to ignore here, but since, as I said, both bands were recording what would essentially be their debut albums (I always consider “Trespass” the first real Genesis album) I can only think it was coincidence, unless they happened to associate together, which I have not heard to be the case.

Although it's the penultimate track, for me this is where the album loses its way a little. A twelve-minute boogie/psychedelic-inspired track following all this pastoral, acoustic material is more than a little jarring, and I know it stretched my patience the first time I heard it. Which is not to say that “Try again” is not a good song, but it's way too long. Some lovely organ work from Davies again and a fine vocal from Hodgson, though here again Palmer decides to add his voice to proceedings, and while it's slightly better and more effective this time, I still don't see the need for it. There's a certain feel of The Alan Parsons Project in the tempo and rhythm here in places, and I think a balaika is utilised, which gives a very strange, eerie flavour to the song. An extended organ solo takes up over four minutes of the song and does seem to be that old bugbear of progressive rock, pointless noodling just to show off. There's no way this song needs to be this long.

About halfway through it kicks into a kind of boogie blues as Hodgson breaks out the electric guitar, and it does pump some life into the tune, but even this runs for another two minutes, whereupon the organ comes back in, which takes us to the eighth minute before Hodgson brings things back under control as he comes back in with the vocal. Even then, though, it literally stops for a second and then picks up again and this time we get frankly ridiculous messing about with experimental noises, a confused jam that goes nowhere and further extends a song that has no business being twelve minutes long. Thankfully, they did eventually learn their lesson, although you can hear a little of this farting around in the midsection of “Fool's overture”.

Happily the album ends very well, with the full version of “Surely”, which begins almost the same as it did in the opener, except for one extra verse. Then, when you think it's stopped, it fades back in on Davies's muscular organ before Hodgson adds the final flourish with an emotional guitar solo, joining with Davies's keys to bring the thing to a trumpeting and triumphant close.

TRACKLISTING

1. Surely
2. It's a long road
3. Aubade/And I am not like other birds of prey
4. Words unspoken
5. Maybe I'm a beggar
6. Home again
7. Nothing to show
8. Shadow song
9. Try again
10. Surely

On one hand, it's not hard to see why this didn't exactly set the charts alight or have radio DJs reaching for the turntable in ecstasy. It's a very restrained, almost muted album in many ways, and does pretty much everything it can to stay hidden and out of the way, almost as if it doesn't want to be noticed. And yet there are some truly magnificent moments of utter beauty on this neglected debut, moments when the true talent and almost magnetic personalities of Roger Hodgson and Rick Davies shine through, and though it would be a seer indeed who would have predicted these guys would go on to be so successful and conquer both sides of the Atlantic, when you listen to the first Supertramp album now you can hear flashes of brilliance, hints of the glory that was to come and you can begin to see images, snapshots of what they could be, what they could, and would, rise to.

Lyrically it's quite a compelling album, almost as I said earlier poetic in style, and that's surely a tribute to the man who did not want to write the lyrics, but yet did a great job on them, proving I guess that no matter what you do, you can't keep a good wordsmith down. But the undoubted stars are Hodgson and Davies, and soon they would take control of the band and shape it into the powerhouse that would go on to sell millions of albums and provide us with anthems and hit singles, and forever cement their place in music history. It's interesting to note that this is the first, and only, Supertramp album not to use what would become one of their trademark sounds, the saxophone, and you can see points in the album where the songs would definitely have benefitted from one.

Oddly enough, after the lukewarm reception their brand of “hippy blues” received --- let's be honest: it crashed and burned, didn't it? --- Supertramp, though minus Palmer and Millar, went on to record a second album that was, if anything , less attractive than their debut. It would be four more years before the dynamic duo would finally sort themselves out, get over their fear of writing lyrics (they would pen “Indelibly stamped” between them, but it was again a flop and suffered from some pretty pedestrian songs) hire musicians who would share their vision and create a record that would go gold for them and give them a hit single. After that, it would be pretty much plain sailing for the Supertramp ship.

But this tentative, quiet and almost apologetic whisper of an album, which would develop into an exuberant and confident and joyous shout over the next ten years or more, is where it all started, and though it was somewhat at odds with the kind of music they would eventually become famous for, it deserves recognition as the album that set that mighty vessel afloat and on course for a glittering career in music.

Seems 2015 is set to be the year of the discography review, and who am I to buck the trend? Probably wouldn't seem right if I didn't jump aboard this particular bandwagon, much less try to take over driving it! Therefore, let me now bid you welcome to
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Insofar as I can, I'm going to try to do these reviews sequentially, which is to say, I don't intend writing, or at least posting, anything in between each discography. Or to put it another way, I'll be reviewing all the albums one after another with no other entries envisioned until the discography is completed. My intention is to probably focus on the studio output only, as it's generally not only difficult but often counterproductive to review live albums, most of the tracks having more than likely being discussed during the reviews of the studio recordings they come from, though I may occasionally break that rule. Any albums which have been already reviewed will be linked to, as there's no point in my repeating myself.

As already mentioned, briefly, I'll be looking into the careers and reviewing all the albums of three of my favourite artistes, two being of course Genesis and their modern-day counterpart Marillion (shut up Frownland!) ;) but first, a man whose music I would never have envisioned myself liking, or even listening to, and for which I am indebted to my younger brother, who got me into his music.
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Thomas Alan “Tom” Waits is a native of California. He was born there and he still lives there, though of course his musical career and life have taken him far and wide over nearly forty-five years. I'm not going to write a bio of him: if you've never heard him the chances are you've heard his songs sung by someone else, but if you really want to read about him, here :Tom Waits - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Without ever a single hit to his name, and though his albums are revered in many circles they are hardly what you'd call massive sellers, Waits has charted a course through music which has seen him earn the admiration of everyone from Springsteen to Crystal Gayle and The Eagles to Rod Stewart. Many people have had hit singles with his music, and it's been featured on both the big and small screen. Having recently celebrated his sixty-sixth birthday, he's still going strong and released an album in 2013, which surely is not the last we'll hear from him. His style is varied: he uses elements of blues, folk, jazz, vaudeville, island music, soul and rock, as well as other, less recognised music forms, and the number of instruments he employs is hard to determine, as he tends to often make his own, like banging chair legs on the floor or hitting pots and pans together.

But though he has wandered happily through such areas as experimental, jazz and folk music, Waits's music career began in a much more sedate manner, as his debut album, a quiet, understated affair that even then hinted at greatness to come, shows us. And this, of course, is where we begin our descent into the often madcap, exilhirating, sometimes frightening and frequently baffling, but always wonderful world of Tom Waits.

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Closing time --- 1973 (Asylum)

With characteristic laconic wit, Waits chooses words associated with endings for his beginning, and indeed there is also there the connotations linked with the pub and the tavern, which would become his shelter and his keeper for several years as he spiralled into an ever-worsening descent into alcoholism and abuse. There is nothing of the experimental work that would colour his later material here, but then, he was only twenty-four, and had yet to discover all the darkness the world had to offer. Even so, this doesn't read as an album written by a wide-eyed optimist or someone with their head in the clouds. As we'll see, Waits's feet were always firmly planted on the ground, if perhaps too often swinging from a barstool.

Counting in the song, and indeed marking the moment when, to all intents and purposes, his recording career began, its “One, two, three, four” as a song The Eagles would filch for their “On the border” album, a situation of Waits would later growl “The Eagles ain't Country. There's no shit on their boots!” kicks the album off. A slow, lazy piano which would become something of Waits's trademark sound takes “Ol' 55” in, and it is very Country in feel and shape. You can see why Frey amd Henley wanted it. But even as this could be seen as an ode to the car, (I'm not sure which one but I'm sure Big3 or some American will enlighten me) it is in fact used merely as a metaphor for escape, perhaps unwilling escape. When Waits sings ”Just a-wishin' I had stayed a little longer” you get the feeling he would rather have been back with his lover than riding away in his car, but there's a feeling of inevitablity about it, a sense that all things come to an end, and when that happens, it's good to have a means of escape, perhaps even a getaway car.

It's a low-key, downbeat opening to the album, and it doesn't get much more upbeat really for much of it. Even at that, it's a bitterly lovely song as he growls ”The sun's comin' up/ I'm ridin' with lady Luck/ Freeways cars and trucks.” There are some nice touches on the guitar but mostly it's very much a piano driven song, though I think that may be a celeste or a harmonium on the chorus; certainly both are used on the album. Another slow, bitter ballad then in “I hope that I don't fall in love with you”, this time an acoustic guitar song, as Waits fears falling for a woman he has met, knowing the pitfalls of romance. ”Had a beer and now I hear/ You callin' out for me” he drawls as " I wonder if I should offer you a chair?” It's the first example of a song that Waits would use to twist and warp the idea of a ballad, making love a dirty word and something to be avoided. In the end though, he capitulates as he sighs ”I think that I just/ Fell in love with you.” The song also contains the title of the album, although it does finish with a song so titled, an instrumental.

The first time the album takes an upswing it kicks off on the slow, lazy bass of Bill Plummer, then the piano evokes a kind of drunken stagger as lonely trumpet from Delbert Bennett keeps its lonely vigil. “Virginia Avenue” is one of a number of songs which would reference local areas and places Waits knew of, frequented or visited, enshrining them forever in his music. Fun fact: this song also appears on “The Early Years Vol 1” where it is slightly different. Where he sings ”What's a poor boy to do?” the original line is ”What's a poor sailor to do?” Thought you'd like to know. I'll remind you when we get to that album's review. Interesting look forward to the future too when he sings ”Blues I leave behind me/ Catchin' up on me.”

His first song not to include the title in the lyric, “Old shoes (and picture postcards)” is also one of a selection of titles which would have footnotes in parentheses. A jaunty but yet slow acoustic guitar ballad with a lot of folk in it, it relates the decision to leave someone after what would appear to have been a long relationship. He sings ”So long, farewell/ The road calls me dear/ And your tears cannot bind me anymore.” One of the strengths of this album is that none of the songs are too long. Most come in around the three-minute mark, with one or two edging over four and one almost five, but that's the longest. It's just enough time to appreciate the song, let it sink in before it vanishes like an echo in your brain. Waits was, and is, a master of the art of using brevity. You'll find no ten-minute compositions in his music.

I've mentioned in the series “The Word according to Waits” that another feature of his songs is that they usually concern or are built around characters, characters who are inevitably flawed. The man who leaves his clingy lover in the above song, the guy who walks along Virginia Avenue looking for a bar and of course the fellow who hops into his “Ol' 55” and hightails it out of town. These characters and personages make his songs more real somehow, and for me at any rate have enabled them to speak to me; not that I know anything about being drunk and wandering the streets at 3am (!), but the very flaws of his characters, their shortcomings is in my view what makes them real, and relatable, and that much more powerful for being pathetic. We can identify with them. We know them, or someone like them. Perhaps we are, or were, them. But we see through their eyes and hear through their ears, and the world we see is a different one than our own eyes show us. It's a damp, squalid, dark, threatening and unforgiving one, where every shadow could contain an attacker, or someone wanting to rob us of our bottle, and every friend must be searched for a knife, just in case. The milk of human kindness has soured for these people, if it was ever fresh, and as we journey on with them through Waits's albums we will get to know the world they inhabit.

Another thing Waits would often do is build his songs around nursery rhymes, or incorporate parts of them in the lyric, as here, when “Midnight lullaby” begins with the words ”Sing a song of sixpence/ A pocket full of rye”. Acoustic piano is attended by trumpet as the song moves along on a nice, swaying sort of rhythm, and Waits muses ”When you are dreaming/ You see for miles and miles.” The song ends with a piano rendition of “Hush little baby”, another nod to the world of children's stories and rhymes, appropriate as this appears to concern him talking to his child.

I don't want to rag on him on his first outing, but for me this is where the album's quality begins to dip slightly. I do like “Martha”, but I feel the piano is a little harsh here, though the cello from Jesse Ehrlich in the chorus certainly saves the song. Still, I regard it as one of the weaker tracks on the album, despite the reflective nature of the song as a guy telephones his old lover out of the blue to recall the old times. It also ends badly, I feel. “Rosie” then is another piano-driven track, though the piano is much softer and gentler this time. The melody is a little reminiscent of “Virginia Avenue” and returns to the Country feel of “ol' 55” with some fine pedal steel from Peter Klimes, and the subject matter is somewhat similar, then what I would call a lower grade trio of songs comes to a shuddering end with “Lonely”.

Possibly, in my estimation, one of Waits's worst early songs, it's again driven by piano, but the vocal this time I find very harsh, and the lyric mostly consists of the title. It just seems like something that, were there other tracks considered for and dropped from the album, should have joined them. I really don't like this song, and it's seldom I would skip any Waits song but I often do jump over this one. Luckily the album then rallies strongly, as if eager to throw off the somewhat cloying influence of the last three tracks, as “Ice cream man” is only the second upbeat track, where Waits first reveals his wicked sense of humour. Sexual innuendo follows sexual innuendo as he smirks ”Got a big stick momma/ That'll blow your mind” and goes on to assure the lady ”When you're tired and you're hungry/ And you want something cool/ Got something better than a swimmin' pool!” There's a boppy, jazzy, almost big band rhythm driven by some fine basswork and soaring guitar. He even starts and ends the song with the sound of an ice cream van's chimes! Oh Waits, you devil!

And we're back on track. “Little trip to Heaven (on the wings of your love)” is a fine laidback ballad with smooth trumpet and flowing piano, its melody recalling in part “Midnight lullaby”, Bennet really excelling here on the brass. “Grapefruit moon” is the final vocal track, piano again taking centre stage with some very prominent bass, some of the runs on the piano again nodding back to “Virginia Avenue”, and indeed presaging the later “On the nickel”, and Ehrlich returns to add some lovely cello. Waits echoes the thoughts of us all on certain songs when he sings ”Every time I hear that melody/ Something breaks inside” before a beautiful duet between piano and cello sets the seal on a sumptuous almost-closer. We end then on the title track, and only instrumental, the only words being a muttered “This is for posterity” from Waits at the beginning. The tune is taken by a lazy, almost reflective piano and some lovely harmonica, taking us out in fine style and bringing the album to a soft and relaxing close.

TRACKLISTING

1. Ol' 55
2. I hope that I don't fall in love with you
3. Virginia Avenue
4. Old shoes (and picture postcards)
5. Midnight lullaby
6. Martha
7. Rosie
8. Lonely
9. Ice cream man
10. Little trip to heaven (on the wings of your love)
11. Grapefruit moon
12. Closing time

Some debut albums set the charts on fire, some receive critical acclaim, and some just vanish like ripples in a pond. But still waters run deep, and though this initial effort from Tom Waits did not exactly make headline news across the world and introduce a star, he had made his mark quietly and almost unobtrusively, and while the world may not have been watching and listening, the music fraternity was. As mentioned, The Eagles, making their name at this time, were impressed enough by the new songwriter to cover one of his songs, and later Bette Midler herself would cover “Martha”, while Meat Loaf would put a rendition of the same song on his 1995 album.

As time went on, Waits became the go-to guy, the musician's musician, and his refusal to go with the flow, his willingness, even eagerness to buck trends --- he once said “I slept through the sixties” --- would mark him as both a maverick and a stone cold music genius, as well as often one of the only honest musicians left in a world of synthpop, X-Factor and sell-outs. His trademark gravelly voice was as yet still to develop, and would only really come into its own on his third album, “Small change”, when he would really come to the attention of everyone. Taken as an album in its own right, this is a pleasant, if often bitter, country/folk outing, with some extremely clever at time lyrics. But beyond that, it was setting down a marker, a new singer/songwriter honing his considerable talent and placing his bet down on the table, a bet that would pretty much always reap him large and profitable dividends, at least musically if not always financially.

“Closing time” made one simple but undeniable statement: Tom Waits had arrived.

Many of Waits's albums would follow themes, though only one to my knowledge is an actual concept album, and his second one certainly does bring together songs that are linked with a common thread, this being travelling, movement, comings and goings, hellos and farewells. It's a much higher tempo, upbeat affair in general than “Closing time” is, and it shows him stretching his musical muscles as his songwriting develops beyond the mostly lovelorn ballads of the debut.
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The heart of Saturday night --- 1974 (Asylum)

This album would also mark the beginning of a relationship that would flourish throughout most of Waits's career, that of his friendship with producer Bones Howe, who would helm almost all of his albums from here on in. Right away we're presented with a louder, rougher, more rowdy Waits than has been present on the debut. The man who peeked through slightly in “Ice cream man” now comes strutting to the fore as we open on “New coat of paint”, with an exuberant piano and a rolling melody, the voice of a man who's ready for a night on the town. ”You wear a dress” he tells his lady, ”I'll wear a tie/ We'll laugh at that old bloodshot moon/ In that burgundy sky.” Much of the introspection of “Closing time” is left behind now as Waits puts on his best duds and steps out on the town with his best lady, smirking ”Fishin' for a good time/ Starts with throwin' in your line.” If this was anyone else, you might say that he'd learned the lessons from the mostly positive reception of his debut, but its low sales, and had decided to give people something to dance to, or tap their fingers to, a more commecial Waits. But then, this is Tom Waits, and he don't give a shit what you think or who you are. Perhaps underlining this, the next track is a slow moody ballad, as “San Diego serenade”, later covered by Nanci Griffith, returns us to the style of the debut. Again piano led, it features a beautiful string section accompaniment that really lifts the song to another level, and you can hear the regret in his voice as he sings ”Never saw your heart/ Till someone tried to steal it away/ Never saw your tears/ Till they rolled down your face.”

And then we're off again with “Semi suite” (another word play which would become his trademark) as he drawls the tale of a truck driver on the road, and the woman he leaves behind to wait for him. Strongly driven by smoky trumpet and bass, this song trips along in a very mid-paced jazz/blues vein, the sort of song you could definitely see Waits playing in a smoke-choked bar as patrons ignore him and glasses clink amid conversation. Some fine piano as ever sprinkled through the tune, and really effective double bass from Jim Hughart adds to the small-town-jazz-club-after-hours feel of the song. Although written from the perspective of the woman, the song could be taken as an anthem for truckers, as Waits sings ”He's a truck driving man/ Stoppin' when he can.”

One of the standouts for me is next, another ballad as Waits leaves everything behind in “Shiver me timbers” to go to sea, possibly inspired by his time spent with the Coastguard. Soft violin accompanies him as he moans ”The fog's liftin'/ Sand's shiftin'/ And I'm driftin' on by” and there's a lovely midsection on acoustic guitar. Following this beautiful creation we have a swinging blues tune in “Diamonds on my windshield”, pulled along by a wonderful double bass and some skittering percussion, Waits almost performing a rap of sorts, very jazzy. The rhythm of the vocal really comes into its own when he sings ”Eights goes east/ fives goes north/ Merging nexus, back and forth”. It's a short song, an ode to driving home in the rain, an example of the sort of minimalist song he would come back to time and again, one of them being nothing more than percussion.

A simple acoustic guitar then ushers in the first of two semi-title tracks. ”(Looking for) The heart of Saturday night” trips along nicely in a laconic manner, folky and acoustic and very catchy. Double bass again plays a prominent part in this song, then we kick the tempo back up for the first time since the opener with “Fumblin' with the blues”, an upbeat bopper with a lot of jazz and swing in it. The piano comes back into its own here, and some fine saxophone adds its voice, as does electric piano. It's a song that's kind of hard to sit still to, and Waits's voice is on fine form here. He perhaps begins to look at his drinking habit here as he admits ”I'm a pool-shootin' shimmy shyster/ Shakin' my head/ When I should be livin' clean instead.” Taking the tempo down then for “Please call me baby”, a lovely little bluesy piano tune as Waits tries to win back his lover after an agrument, and frames his desire in a blatant lie about being concerned about her health: I don't want you catchin'/ Your death of cold/ Out walkin' in the rain” but defends his actions rather pathetically and self-deprecatingly when he sings ”If I exorcise my devils/ My angels may leave too.” Lovely strings section employed here too.

From this on it's pretty much slow material and moodier pieces as we head into “Depot, depot” riding on a thick trumpet line and some smoky sax, and a repeat in the lyric of a line from “Virginia Avenue” as he asks ”Now, tell me, what a poor boy to do?” while “Drunk on the moon” (is it coincidence, I wonder, that his previous album also had a song about the moon as the second-last track?) continues this loose theme, as ”Some Bonneville is screamin'/ Its way wilder down the street” and Waits realises ”I've hocked all my yesterdays/ Don't try to change my tune.” Great sax solo here from Tom Scott which ushers in a total change of rhythm as the double bass takes the tune and ramps up the tempo, swinging and strutting along till the piano brings it all back down to earth for the concluding section. We end then on the other song with the title in it, “The ghosts of Saturday night”, with an almost narrated vocal backed by rippling piano, kind of an outro to the album, or an epilogue. Here Waits uses a device he would return to, time and again, waitresses and restaurants as he speaks of a woman with ”Maxwell House eyes/ With marmalade thighs /And scrambled yellow hair” and of eating ”Hash browns, hash browns/ You know I can't be late.” The music is almost incidental, a soft backing for his recounting of the late night folks and what they do when we're all in bed, the ghosts of Saturday night.

TRACKLISTING

1. New coat of paint
2. San Diego serenade
3. Semi suite
4. Shiver me timbers
5. Diamonds on my windshield
6. (Looking for) The heart of Saturday night
7. Fumblin' with the blues
8. Depot, depot
9. Please call me baby
10. Drunk on the moon
11. The ghosts of Saturday night (After hours at Napoleone's Pizza House)

You can definitely see the effect his drinking was having on Waits's songwriting here. While it's improving in leaps and bounds from the songs on his debut, it's also more concerned with characters who weave from one dark alley to the next in search of an after-hours drinking hole or club they can stagger into. The problems of relationships are explored too and an abiding love for cars and driving, and here too Waits expands on his respect for and love of jazz and blues, dialling back the folky influences and dropping much of the Country feel too.

Allover, it's a much more accomplished and well-rounded album, and points the way to the one which would bring him to international notice, though that is yet one album away. The things he sings of are not esoteric: they are the visceral and raw, real and relatable, and they pull us into his dark, murky world, showing us what life is like on the bad side of town. This would continue to be the path he would tread throughout his next few albums, always showing us the darker side of life, shining his torch like some spectral nightwatchman and often throwing up darker and more scary shadows than we could ever possibly imagine. There is, however, great tenderness to be found in his songs too, and this would occasionally leak through perhaps despite his best efforts to remain gritty and hard-bitten.

But if you had decided to take that trip through the dark halls of humanity with him, you had better be prepared, because the journey had just begun.

So what do you do when you've had two pretty much whimpers of albums, that never bothered the charts and hardly spread your fame far and wide? Well, if you're Waits you record a double live album, in a studio, and use nothing off the previous two albums! Conceived as very much a jazz record that would capture the atmosphere of small jazz and beat clubs, Waits's third effort would feature entirely new material, plus one cover version, inviting a studio audience into a space where tables and drinks were set up, and encouraging background chatter and noise. It wouldn't win him any commercial plaudits, but it would be different and unique enough to secure him a place in the book 1001 albums you must hear before you die.

And in this case, take it from me, you must.
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Nighthawks at the Diner --- 1975 (Asylum)

If there's one thing this incredible album demonstrates it's how much of a showman Waits is. Not only did he write all this new material and perform it almost without rehearsal (he wrote nothing down, making it a challenge for his band to learn it), but he sprinkles the music with amusing and clever anecdotes and introductions, many of which are almost as good as listening to the songs themselves. An invited audience to what became a sell-out show having first been warmed up by a performance by a stripper, Waits and the band take the stage, and give us an “Emotional weather report”.

Before that though, there's the opening intro, as the band keeps time behind him, Waits welcoming everyone to “Raphael's Silver Cloud Lounge”, although it is in fact The Record Plant Studios in LA. This seems to be the first real instance of what would become his classic drunken drawl, as he slightly slurs his words (though you can make out every one perfectly; this is just an act, a stage persona --- isn't it?) as he goes on to tell us “I'm so goddamn horny the crack of dawn better watch out!” and how “You're gone three months and you come home, everything in your refrigerator's a science project!” When the song begins, it's pretty much a continuation of his opening monologue, as he slips in references to local spots, and sings (or really, speaks in rhythm) about ”Tornado warnings in effect before noon Sunday/ For the areas including/ The western region of my mental health/ And the northern portion of my ability/ To deal rationally with my /Disconcerted precarious emotional situation.”

Some very jazzy music underpins this, upright bass, trumpets and sax, and that sort of ticking percussion that you hear in these sort of clubs, the drummer seeming more to just be keeping time than actually playing. I guess it would be termed a jazz jam, maybe? It's more a slow blues intro then to “On a foggy night”, with another entertaining scene-setting by Waits as he takes us on “an improvisational adventure into the bowels of the metropolitan region.” There's not too much point in my recounting what he says here; you really need to hear this to get the proper atmosphere, and in fairness much if not all of it is very America-specific and quite dated in some cases --- stuff about saving coupons off an “Old Gold”? The song then wanders along on a slow, lazy blues/jazz line as Waits meanders through the tune, slipping into monologue and then back to singing as he goes.

A hilarious resume of his eating experiences in local restaurants introduces the next song, as he drawls, to enormous and knowing applause, “I've had strange looking patty melts at Norms, I've had dangerous veal cutlets at The Copper Penny. I ordered my veal cutlet, Christ it walked off the plate and down to the end of the counter, tried to beat the shit out of my cup of coffee! Coffee just wasn't strong enough to defend itself!” The song then contains the title of the album as “Eggs and sausage (in a Cadillac with Susan Michelson)" slides in from his monologue, the restaurant theme developing through the song. Another slow, bluesy style song with his easygoing vocal and some fine work on the piano too. Another standout then comes in “Better off without a wife”, as he introduces it by saying it's “for anyone who's ever whistled this song (plays “The Wedding March”) then grins as he admits “Well maybe ya whistle it but ya lost the sheet music.” He then goes on to describe his ideal date: with himself. Hilarious.

The song is wonderful though. ”Sleepin' till the crack o' noon/ Been out howlin' at the moon/ Goin' out when I want to/ And comin' home when I please/ Don't have to ask permission/ If I wanna go out fishin'/ Never have to ask for the keys.” It rides along on a slow bouncy sort of honky-tonk rhythm on the piano as Waits croaks out the advantages to being single. This before he met Kathleen I assume. The first song on the album not to have an introduction, and the original intended title for the album, “Nighthawk postcards (from Easy Street)” opens on a sliding walking bass line before Waits comes in with the vocal, something he calls himself an “inebriational travelogue”, the song again not so much sung as spoken, the images evoked of a city at night seen through the eyes of a drunk, as he says “You been drinking cleaning products all night, open to suggestions.” It's by far the longest track on the whole album, at eleven and a half minutes as he weaves his way through the nighttime streets, watching the denizens of the city as they scurry to and fro. Some great sax work again and a hypnotic bassline accompanies him as the song speeds up and slows down, Waits singing/talking about sailors, movie-goers and used car salesmen as he swaggers on down the rainsoaked avenues, “Using parking meters as walking sticks” and the band kicks into a bit of a boogie as he goes on his way.

It's the sort of song that seems so directionless and abstract and improvisational that it could conceivably go on forever, or at least until Waits loses his voice, but it ends well and leads into another anecdote which flows into “Warm beer and cold women”, where Waits returns to the Country influences he explored on his debut album. It's a nice swaying ballad driven by piano as he sings about ”Platinum blondes and tobacco brunettes”, Pete Christlieb ripping off a fine sax solo, then “Putnam County” is another sort of improvisational trip through ... Christ I don't know. It's all very on-the-fly, seat-of-your-pants songwriting. But it's exceptionally entertaining. Into a blues shuffle then for “Spare parts (a nocturnal emission)" as Waits sets the scene: ”The dawn cracked hard like a pool cue/ And it weren't takin' no lip/ From the night before.” It's a finger-clickin', toe-tappin', hand-clappin' infectious beat and sax and bass drive it alone in a sort of a slowed-down “Diamonds on my windshield” feel.

“Nobody” is an old-style Waits ballad with his hard-bitten twist on it, almost completely piano driven, and it's the shortest of the tracks on the album, bar the intros: just under three minutes. It leads into the only cover version, Tommy Faile's “Big Joe and Phantom 309”, with a short --- very short --- intro from Waits who declares “It's story time again!” Quite funny when he declares “Gonna tell ya a story about a truck driver” and one guy --- one guy --- claps, hoping to start something off no doubt, but there are no takers. Hate that. Anyway, the song is credited to as I say Tommy Faile but Waits incorrectly says that it was Red Sovine that wrote it. Some quick research reveals that it was Sovine who had the hit all right, but it's Faile's song. Anyway it's the usual ghost-from-the-past-appears-to-help-stranger stories, set in a trucking concept. Cute, but a little predictable. It's for once not a piano song, but ticks along on some really nice acoustic guitar.

We end then on the outro, “Spare parts II” as Waits thanks everyone for coming: “Woulda been strange if nobody had shown up!” There's the introduction of the band --- perhaps odd, given that this is the end of the gig as it were, but then Waits always has been a maverick and does things his own way. And so comes to an end a pretty unique album, a singular experience and a hell of a hard album to review and get across to you all; I envy the lucky few who got to actually participate in this. Must have been a blast, and talk about immortality!

TRACKLISTING

1. Opening intro
2. Emotional weather report
3. Intro
4. On a foggy night
5. Intro
6. Eggs and sausage (in a Cadillac with Susan Michelson)
7. Intro
8. Better off without a wife
9. Nighthawk postcards (from Easy Street)
10. Intro
11. Warm beer and cold women
12. Intro
13. Putnam County
14. Spare Parts I (A nocturnal emission)
15. Nobody
16. Intro
17. Big Joe and Phantom 309
18. Spare Parts II and Closing

I never got to see Waits live (though I did give my brother a ticket to go when he couldn't afford it) but from the sounds of this album he must be one of the greatest entertainers to see onstage. His presence just radiates from the album and commands your attention. It's something that I again have to remark on, even though I've already said it, but to actually record a live album with completely new material is something I know of no other artiste attempting. To think he had, at this point, a loyal enough fanbase that they would buy this album and listen to all-new tracks in a live setting is really something special. Basically, it's like a new studio double album. But live. If you know what I mean.

If this hadn't cemented his position as a bona fide star, then the album that followed it would, though again the charts would know little of it and radio would always ignore him. No hit singles for Tom Waits, but then, that was not the world he inhabited.

And on balance, I think I prefer to live in his world.

If one album set out to slay the beast that his rampant alcholism had become, it was his fourth album, third studio, “Small change”, released in 1976. Waits has said of that time, “I was beginning to think there was something amusing and wonderfully American about being a drunk. This was me saying cut that shit out.”

Featuring some songs which would go on to become standards of his, and turning out to be one of his most favoured albums, “Small change” upped the ante for Waits, and was the point at which he began experimenting with sounds, moving away from the usual instruments and arrangements, like the doleful title track, which is backed solo by a saxophone, or the irreverent “Pasties and a g-string”, which has nothing in it but percussion. It also features the classic hilarious “The piano has been drinking (not me)” and "Step right up”, which has Waits hawking wares like a barker on a street corner accompanied by nothing else but bass and trumpet.

I have already reviewed the album, so I won't be rewriting it (I'm not that much of a masochist!) but you can find it here http://www.musicbanter.com/members-j...ml#post1076242

Which then takes us to 1977 and his fifth studio album, where everything changed as Waits assumed a film-noir aspect for the album, and invited the great Bette Midler to contribute. It's not, to be fair, one of his better albums in my opinion, and suffers from some weak tracks, but there are some pretty stupendous ones there to make you forget those ones.
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Foreign affairs --- 1977 --- Asylum

The first Waits album to open with an instrumental, and that being in fact only the second such, “Cinny's waltz” is a nice laidback piano tune with slowly rising strings halfway through and finished with a fine sax solo, taking us into “Muriel”, one of the below-par tracks I spoke about earlier. Opening on a piano line similar to some of the introductions on “Nighthawks”, it's a slow blues ballad with Waits in reflective mood, in tone slightly like “Martha” but much gentler, with again nice trumpet and sax accompanying Waits on the piano. It's only when the song ends that we realise Waits is just muttering about the woman into his beer, as he slurs ”Hey buddy/ Got a light?” One of the standouts is next though, and while it's sandwiched between two pretty poor tracks in my estimation, nothing can dull the power of Waits and Midler together, hissing at each other like alleycats and eventually going home together. Midler is the perfect foil for Waits as she sneers “I never talk to strangers”, and he tries to hit on her. The song begins with her ordering a Manhattan, then Waits's drunken slur as he sidles up to her and sing ”Stop me if you've heard this one” and her snapping ”Did you really think I'd/ Fall for that old line?/ I was not born just yesterday.” The music is again slow and bluesy as she retorts ”You're life's a dime store novel/ This town's full of guy like you” and Waits snaps back ”You're bitter cos he left you/ That's why you're drinkin' in this bar” and they duet on the next line ”Well only suckers fall in love/ With perfect strangers.” At the end of course, they realise they're more alike than they would have preferred to have admitted.

I really don't like “Jack and Neal/California here I come”, and really I have to say that only the first part of that sentence is true, as the latter is a cover of the old song, only a few moments of it. But the sax-driven diatribe about Jack and Neal trying to buy ”From a Lincoln full of Mexicans” just doesn't do it for me. It's one of those travelogues he became known for, but unlike the ones on the previous album it just seems like it's missing something. Maybe it's the fact that there's no real tune or melody, just Waits talking over the sax and bass. As I say it then goes into “California here I come” at the end, but as far as I'm concerned they're welcome to it. Waits returns to his usage of nursery rhymes for “A sight for sore eyes”, though the actual tune eludes me. I know I've heard it before, just can't pin it down.

The song concerns a guy coming back to his hometown and looking for his old mates, but they've all either married, moved on or come to an unfortunate end. It opens with a rendition of “Auld lang syne” before Waits in the role of the returning prodigal shows off his riches --- ”Have you seen my new car?/ It's bought and it's paid for/ Parked outside of the bar.” --- but finds few of his old cronies there to brag to. He meets someone though who tells him ”The old gang ain't around/ Everyone has left town” as the piano carries the tune in that maddeningly-familiar-but-elusive melody. Eager to spread the wealth and show how he's risen in the world he tells the barman ”Keep pouring drinks/ For all these palookas” as he listens to the stories of what's happened to all the old gang: ”No she's married with a kid/ Finally split up with Sid/ He's up north for a nickel's worth/ For armed robbery.”

The longest song on the album is next, and it's an odd one. Riding on a mournful clarinet courtesy of Gene Cipriano with an orchestral introduction, it's the first one I've seen yet where Waits doesn't write his own music, this being created by Bob Alcivar and his orchestra. Waits again more or less speaks the vocal as he narrates the tale of “Potter's Field”, which it seems holds a dark secret. ”Whiskey keeps a blind man talkin' all right” he remarks, adding with a knowing wink and no doubt a ti of an empty glass, ”And I'm the only one who knows/ Where he stayed last night.” It seems to be about a convict on the run, and the music builds up to crescendos of almost forties detective-movie style. Like waves the music rises and falls, punctuated by the bass and the whining clarinet. It's quite a work of art. It comes to something of a climax when he warns ”If you're mad enough to listen/ To a full of whiskey blind man/ You be down at the ferry landing/ Oh, let's say half past a nightmare/ And you ask for Captain Charon/ With the mud on his kicks/ He's the skipper of the deadline steamer/ And it sails from the Bronx/ Across the River Styx!”

But my favourite on the album by a long way is next, and I've written a lot about “Burma-shave” before, so let me just say that it's the tale of a girl who hitches a ride with a stranger out of her one-horse hometown, only to end up dying with him when the car takes a spill on the freeway and crashes into a truck. The music is sad and mournful, almost all piano solo, as if the musician knows what is going to befall the young rebel girl and her new beau. It's so driven by piano alone that it's actually a little jarring when the sax outro comes in, but it fits in well. It's a touching and tragic song, and yet Waits sings it almost with a shrug, as if this sort of thing happens all the time, which it probably does. For every starry-eyed dreamer who makes it out of Nowheresville, USA, there are probably ten who decorate the sides of the road to freedom in wooden crosses or lie in unmarked graves along its length.

Waits being Waits, the next track is based entirely on a bassline with some drums, as Waits visits the barber and has one of those conversations people used to have when they were getting their hair cut but don't seem to bother with any more. “Barber shop” is great fun and a real exercise in how it doesn't have to take ten instruments and multitracking to make a great song. It's very interesting, and something I never noticed before, that there is no guitar at all on this album. Bass yes, but no lead or even rhythm guitar. The album ends on the title track, a sumptuous piano ballad with attendant strings. It harks back to “Burma-shave” as he sings ”You wonder how you ever fathomed/ That you'd be content/ To stay within the city limits/ Of a small midwestern town.” It's a song of wanderlust without any real direction or target as he says ”The obsession's in the chasing/ And not the apprehending.” It's a really nice relaxing way to close an album which is far from his best, but shines with some real gems.

TRACKLISTING

1. Cinny's waltz
2. Muriel
3. I never talk to strangers
4. Medley: Jack and Neal/California here I come
5. A sight for sore eyes
6. Potter's Field
7. Burma-Shave
8. Barber shop
9. Foreign affair

When Waits was creating the album he envisaged a film-noir idea, which is certainly borne out on the sleeve and indeed within most of the tracks, which all retain a kind of forties feel to them, with the mention of Farley Granger in “Burma-shave”, Potter's Field harking back to “It's a wonderful life” (though whether that's intentional or not I don't know) and the barber shop, virtually disappeared now. It fits in well with Waits's kind of refusal to deal in the present and remain in his own gin-soaked world of Gene Crouper and Chuck E. Weiss, muttering about kids these days and dreaming of Cadillacs and Pontiacs. Eventually he would drag his feet protesting into the twentieth century (don't tell him it's now the twenty-first!) and open out his music to more modern sounds and techniques, but it would take time.

Waits is a man whom you take or leave: he ain't gonna change for no-one and no record executive is going to press him to write a hit single or use a famous producer on his albums. The grand old man of real music, Waits is a force to be reckoned with and a law unto himself, but when you have this amount of talent that's accepted. A maverick, a trend-avoider and always the guy stuck on the barstool in the corner, muttering to himself, laughed at until he sits at the piano and starts reeling off those sublime melodies, you could use the old cliche Tom Waits for no man, but we all wait to see what he comes up with next.

And what he came up with after this was ... breathtaking.

Although really none of Waits's albums would ever be considered a proper commercial breakthrough, would never yield him that big hit single or that track that took him into the households of the world and made him known to all, he has quietly over the years insinuated himself into a position almost of music god. So many musicians quote, cite, cover or are influenced by him that it's tempting to think that he was around forever. But though mainstream success eluded him --- I don't really think he bothered courting it, to be honest --- his albums over a period from 1976 to 1987 just got better and better, and this is what I would consider his golden period. That's not to say that albums following that were poor, but as he stretched out in new directions and tried new things, albums like Bone machine, The black rider, Alice and Blood money just seemed to lack something, be a little less accessible. This, however, remains one of his crowning achievements for me. But then, so does the next. And the next...
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Blue Valentine --- 1978 --- Asylum

One thing you always got from Waits, at least around this time, was pure frank honesty on the cover of his albums. He didn't go for showy, glitzy or abstract album covers: it was usually just a picture of him, but the picture almost always portrayed a particular aspect of him, or referenced the state of mind or body he was in at the time. “Closing time” shows him leaning against a piano, alone, perhaps a little daunted on his first outing but still with a confident swagger and a gleam in his eye, while on the cover of “Small change” he's addressing his rampant alcoholism and destructive lifestyle, looking away as if to say “What the fuck am I doing here?” On the front of this album we find him in reflective mood, perhaps thinking about lost lovers, his career or his attempts to stop drinking before it killed him. You can almost see into his heart, which is appropriate given the title, and there's a world-weariness and almost a sense of resignation in his nearly-closed eyes; you can nearly hear him sighing.

But if you thought the album was going to be a contractual obligation, by-the-numbers effort that he really wasn't interested in, then you really don't know Tom Waits. The album contains some of his most cynical songs alongside some of his most beautiful ballads, and is almost a marriage of Heaven and Hell as he goes once again searching through the alleyways of society after dark, poking through the refuse to reveal the human detritus, the spent men and fallen women, the whores and the drunks and the barkers and the con-men, and telling their stories.

Proving once again that you must expect the unexpected with Waits, the album opens on a cover of the famous “Somewhere” from the musical West Side Story, Waits giving it his own special ragged touch as he growls his way through the love ballad, supported by the return of Bob Alcivar's sumptuous orchestra. It's completely out of left-field, something he has never done before and something I don't think he ever repeated, and it sets the tone for the album. Almost like "Thunder Road" o n Bruce's Born to run, it's the only optimistic song on the album, which then descends into a litany of hooker, pimps, eloping kids and spree killers as, if you like, Waits leaves the movie theatre and shuffles back out onto the hard cold streets of reality, turning his collar up against the rain, back in the world he knows.

The song is followed by “Red shoes by the drugstore”, which rides on a boppy, upbeat percussion with sort of sprinkled guitar flying through it, almost like a tribal dance or something. Typical again of Waits, there's no real structure to the song, no verse/chorus/verse; it just sort of runs as an almost stream-of-consciousness lyric yet with a definite form. Having eschewed guitar completely from his previous album Waits perhaps overcompensates this time out, bringing in three more apart from himself, giving the album a fuller sound.

One of his alltime classics is up next, the heartbreaking ballad “Christmas card from a hooker in Minneapolis”, as a woman writes to her ex-lover to tell him how well her life is working out these days. ”Stopped taking dope/ Quit drinking whiskey/ My old man plays the trombone/ Works out at the track.” It's a solo performance by Waits on the piano, a slow, bluesy melody, but in the end the woman comes clean: ”Charlie, for God's sake/ You wanna know the truth of it?/ Don't have no husband/ He don't play the trombone/ Need to borrow money...” It also contains one of my favourite lines written by Waits: ”Everyone I used to know/ Is either dead or in prison.”

I feel the jazz elements are lessened here too, as he proceeds into a straighter blues rock direction, particularly on the next two tracks, starting with “Romeo is bleeding”, with a certain latin swing to it and a feel of, again, the gangs from West Side Story with finger clicking and congas, the vocal a low hiss, almost as if Waits is afraid to be heard, maybe hiding from the gangs. Some great organ on this for which we owe thanks to Charles Kynard, as Waits tells the story of the gang leader who listens to the police sirens but ”just laughs, cos all the racket in the world/ Ain't gonna save that copper's ass/ He ain't never gonna see another summer/ For cuttin' down my brother/ And leavin' him like a dog behind that car without his knife.”. Romeo has been shot but doesn't seem to care, or even notice, hard as nails and probably realising he's dying but glad that he has extracted retribution for his brother.

For the second time Waits records a song over eight minutes, and it's a belter as he really sinks his teeth into the blues for “29$”, another of my favourites on this album. With Kynard again at the helm and Waits himself in fine form on the piano, featuring some stupendously righteous blues guitar the song again follows a broken-down resident of the night city as he tells her ”Little black girl/ You shoulda never left home/ There's probably someone that's/ Still waiting up for you.” and true to his fears the girl is hustled, robbed and ends up in hospital where the doctor shakes his head and groans ”Lucky to be alive/ Only lost half a pint of blood/ Twenty-nine dollars/ And an alligator purse.” Some truly superb blues playing here makes the song seem nowhere as long as it is, and you could listen to it for twice the length. It's a great cautionary tale, again jumping back to “Burma-shave” and showing that the grass is not always greener, that sometimes it's better to stay at home where you're safe.

You might think after a powerhouse performance like that, the aqlbum would begin to dip a little in quality, and to be fair, this might be the case with lesser artistes, but Waits has his foot on the throttle here and he ain't braking for no red light! There are five songs to come and each is as good as, if not better than the other. “Wrong side of the road” takes as its protagonist a couple eloping, with a blues shuffle and again exquisite organ work from Charles Kynard as the man encourages the woman to come with him against her parent's wishes, to run away with him to Reno. It's a slow blues meander as he snarls ”Tell your momma and your poppa/ They can kiss your ass/ Poison all the water/ In the wishing well.” This guy also does not have the Christmas spirit in his heart, as he sneers "Strangle all the Christmas carollers/ Scratch out all their prayers/ Tie 'em up with barbed wire/ And push 'em down the stairs.”

As he convinces her to leave her house and head off with him his intentions take on a much darker tone when he promises "With my double-barrelled shotgun/ And a whole box of shells/ We'll celebrate the Fourth of July/ We'll do a hundred miles an hour/ Spendin' someone else's dough/ Drive all the way to Reno/ On the wrong side of the road.” The tempo kicks up then for the infectious “Whistlin' past the graveyard” in which Waits lays the urban legend down that he was ”Born in a taxi cab”. There's a bit more of the jazz about this one, with trumpets and saxes taking the tune and bouncing it along like Waits as he goes ”Whistlin' past the graveyard/ Steppin' on no crack.” The next song again I've written extensively on, so let me just say that “Kentucky Avenue” is a piano ballad that seems at first to be a story of two kids making plans for their day, until right at the end you realise one is handicapped, as Waits sings, in one of his most emotional vocals, ”Take the spokes from your wheelchair/ And a magpie's wing/ I'll steal a hacksaw from my dad/ Cut the braces off your legs.” It's a song that always makes me cry, and I don't care who knows it. A fragile, viciously beautiful and bitter, heart-smashing ballad that nobody else but Waits could write. The orchestra coming in at the revelation in the lyric just increases the pathos and tragedy of the song. My eyes are wet even now, and that's how it should be with a song such as this.

Then we're in the seedy hotels that he has frequented no doubt on more than one occasion for “A sweet little bullet from a pretty blue gun”, somewhat of a return to the rhythm of “Romeo is bleeding”, and with Waits again plundering childhood tunes as he opens with ”It's raining, it's pouring” and later ”Old man is snoring/ Now I lay me down to sleep/ Hear the sirens in the street/ All my dreams are made of chrome/ Have no way to get back home/ And I'd rather die before I wake/ Like Marilyn Monroe.” The guitars play a great part in this, as does the sax, and it just oozes trashy sexuality and questionable morals as it slinks along the alleyways. At its heart, it's a song that looks back to “29$” and describes the plight of the many thousands of young girls who leave home looking for fame, to be discovered, and end up peddling their bodies, the only thing left that they can sell, on the hard city streets.

The title track closes the album, and it's another bitter ballad, with the addition of an “s” to the end, making it “Blue Valentines”, as the album cover becomes the song, Waits recalling the cards he gets from his ex-lover in Philly "To mark the anniversary/ Of someone that I used to be/ And it feels like there's/ A warrant out for my arrest.” Reflective guitar carries the song almost on its own, no percussion, no sax, no piano, a true triumph, an indication of what can be done with just one instrument. Okay, it's probably a few guitars, but nothing else that I can hear. The song also references his drinking days and what it has done to him as he moans "It takes a whole lot of whiskey/ To make these nightmares go away/ And I cut my bleedin' heart out every night.”

TRACKLISTING

1. Somewhere
2. Red shoes by the drugstore
3. Christmas card from a hooker in Minneapolis
4. Romeo is bleeding
5. 29$
6. Wrong side of the road
7. Whistlin' past the graveyard
8. Kentucky Avenue
9. A sweet little bullet from a pretty blue gun
10. Blue Valentines

At this point, I feel there just was no stopping Waits. Having created a masterpiece like “Blue Valentine” you would have forgiven him for taking a rest, but no: it only took two more years before he would release yet another incredible album. If nothing else though, this showed his refusal to be categorised, boxed up, restricted. On “Small change” he had gone in all directions, making it impossible both to pin him down and to know or be able to guess where he would jump next. For “Foreign Affairs” he went all film-noir and bluesy, and now he was throwing blues and jazz together and adding in some other elements, but continuing to talk and tell the stories of the dispossessed, the pathetic, the drunk and the abused, and to send some half-drunk warnings to those who wanted or wished to join the dark world, tread the grey, unforgiving streets he walked.

If you want to make it out here, you had better man (or woman) up and grow yourself a real thick hide, cos this ain't no place for the weak. You'll be chewed up and spat out by the system, and the only way to avoid that is to do some chewin' and spittin' yourself. You wanna take a walk on the wild side, you better have the bus fare, cos this wagon ain't stoppin' any time soon, and once you're on board you're there for the long haul.

So look into my eyes, kid, he says, chewing down on a cigar and knocking back a whiskey, his bloodshot eyes trying to make out which of the two of you he's taking to, and tell me you got what it takes to make it on these mean streets, And if not, then stay at home with your parents and your college degree and your dog and your summer job, cos you wouldn't last pissin' time. It's not nice out here.

”Probably see someone you know on Heartattack and Vine" croaks Waits in the title track, and perhaps you can. Maybe they're one of those ”Pedal pushers suckin' on a soda pop" or the woman being left sleeping as her lover steals away in “Ruby's arms”, or maybe even the guy who warns “If I can find a book of matches/ I'm gonna burn this hotel down” in “Mr. Siegal". For this album Waits created another cast of characters, all stumbling through their lives and trying to do the best they can, while grabbing what little happiness or shelter they could on the way. It was two years later, and four years into the Waits golden era, when he came up with this gem, which would lead to his songs being covered by a real icon and also to a protracted legal battle over the use of one of them. It was also the year he would part company with his longtime record label.
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Heartattack and Vine --- 1980 (Asylum)

One thing --- one of the many things --- I love about this album is the cover. From the start, Waits has always been on the album sleeve. Sometimes looking a little the worse for wear, but here he's in a hell of a state. On one of the monologues on Nighthawks at the Diner, Waits growls that someone once commented “Christ Waits, you look so raggedy!” And here he does. He actually looks like he has been pulled through the proverbial bush backwards. Even though he's wearing a tuxedo, it looks as if someone dressed him when he was asleep or drunk or both, and he woke up, took one look at his reflection and said “What the hell am I doing in this monkey suit?”

But the picture aside, the sleeve is very clever as I have already mentioned when I featured this, way back when, as one of the “Secret life of the album cover” slots. It's presented like a newspaper, with the titles of some of the songs showing as the headlines, and underneath each are snippets of the lyrics to those songs, written like clippings with a reference to the city in which the song is set. Really innovative, and you can spend some time reading the cover and getting a whole lot more out of it than you would have expected. But that's the cover. What about the music on the disc inside?

We open on the title track, and somehow there's a kind of honking guitar, which takes the first two bars of the song in before the vocal begins. Waits sings in a somewhat scratchier, and slightly higher register voice than he has up to now, though this album would see him try out several new vocal techniques and show just how versatile that sandpaper larynx was. He continues the kind of travelogue lyric he displayed on some of the songs on Nighthawks as he takes a trip down Hollywood and Vine, renamed for the song, and points out the various characters --- ”See that little Jersey girl with the see-through top?” and ”Doctor, lawyer, beggarman, thief” --- yes, all of human life is again on display in all its fragility and vulnerability.

The song mostly continues on the same chords, apart from the bridge, where it changes very slightly --- well, it could be a chorus: hard to say with Waits, as he seldom sticks to any musical rules and often makes his own up. It's a hard-rockin' tune though, probably the most in-your-face we've heard since, well, ever. It's almost a total change of style, from the breezy devil-may-care attitude of “Romeo is bleeding” or the maniacal killing spree in “Wrong side of the road”. You can just see him with his hands in his pockets, (at this stage he was getting his drinking under control, so let's assume his character has managed to kick the bottle too) strolling down the street, stopping under a lamppost to adjust his hat and light up a cigarette, grin at some girl across the road and saunter on.

This is, to my knowledge (I'd have to check back but I think I'm right) the first time Waits has mentioned or brought God into his songs (other than exclamations like “Christ!” of course), and when he does it's not as a bible-thumper --- you'd never have expected that anyway --- but with a sly wink and a dry joke at his expense. ”Don't you know there ain't no devil?” he grins. ”That's just God when he's drunk!” Love that line. This is the song that led to that lawsuit I spoke of in the introduction. Levi's used a cover of this by “Screamin'” Jay Hawkins, who had given them permission to, but Waits was not so sanguine about the idea. Someone who does not like his music being used to sell products, Waits took a case against Levis and won. Since then you won't find his music in any advertisements.

Some great trumpet in this too, adds to the sort of raw feel of it as Waits snarls ”This stuff'll probably kill ya/ Let's do another line.” It's followed by an instrumental which could have come off The heart of Saturday night, as “In shades” envisions him in a club where nobody is really listening to him, and he's playing background music against which people have their conversations and drink their drinks. There's some great Hammond organ from Ronnie Barron and some fine, laidback guitar too. I like the idea he's gone for, where you hear, in between the bars, people talking and glasses clinking, and when the song ends there's the barest smattering of applause. Clever too, how they applaud when the song hits a false ending. Very jazzy, and it leads into the first of four ballads, which I think may be the most he's had on any one album to this point.

“Saving all my love for you” is driven by Bob Alcivar's beautiful orchestral work again, the man having become something of a permanent fixture on Waits albums since he wrote the music for “Potter's Field” on Foreign affairs. Pealing churchbells pull the tune in then are absorbed very cleverly into the actual melody as Waits's piano takes over. He sings of an early morning when "No-one in this town/ Is makin' any noise/ But the dogs, and the milkmen and me.” It's back to his familiar rough drawl as he admits ”I'd come home/ But I'm afraid that you won't/ Take me back.” The song also contains one of my alltime favourite Waits lines (this album has three, one of which I've already mentioned) when he sings ”I'll probably get arrested/ When I'm in my grave.” Did a line ever encompass a man's reputation so perfectly before?

It's a beautiful ballad, relatively short, and then the tempo picks up a little on the organ-driven “Downtown” which kicks its heels along with a sort of sullen pleasure, dragging its feet and shaking its head. Some good boogie guitar joins the organ and the whole thing has a swagger about it, then the next one is one of perhaps his most famous, having been covered by Springsteen. With a simple acoustic guitar and bass, “Jersey girl” is an uncomplicated song of young love, as Waits declares ”Nothing else matters in/ This whole wide world/ When you're in love/ With a Jersey girl.” Some lovely orchestral strings swelling up through the chorus here too. Wonderful song.

And from a heartfelt love song we're on the other side of the coin as Waits sneers ”Baby I'll stay with you/ Till the money runs out” launching into the song with lowdown dirty delight as he sings ”Bye bye baby/ Baby bye bye!” Again the organ plays a prominent part in this mid-paced rocker, though so too does the bass from Larry Taylor. If anyone knows what “on the nickel” means, please let me know. I think it refers to social welfare? Anyway, it's the title of the next track, another beautiful ballad, which just shows how Waits can swing from cynical user to concerned observer, as with the backing of Alcivar's lush strings again he opens with another nursery rhyme snippet --- ”Stick and stones/ Will break my bones” --- and sings a lullaby to his child. Piano threads through the song, as does more folk rhymes --- ”Better bring a bucket/ There's a hole in the pail/ If you don't get my letters/ You'll know that I'm in jail.”

Even with this tender ballad under his belt, the best is yet to come in the closer. Waits drops his register even lower for the second part of the song, which gives it a rougher, rawer feel, then he switches from high to low as the song progresses. More nursery rhymes corrupted as he sings ”Ring around the roses/ Sleeping in the rain”. Then he warns ”The world just keep on getting bigger/ Once you get out on your own.” It's hard to choose a standout, as so many of the songs could qualify, but “Mr. Siegal” does contain another of my favourite lines, when he growls "How do the angels get to sleep/ When the devil leaves/ The porchlight on?” It's another bluesy, rocky tune with a scratchy vocal from Waits, scratchy guitar and warbling organ, moving the song along in a mid-paced swaying rhythm. With the references to casinos and the title presumably nodding to the famous gangster who built Las Vegas, it seems to be a song about a guy losing his shirt and trying to make it out of the city. Waits even tips his battered hat to The King when he sings ”One for the money/ Two for the show/ Three to get ready/ Now go man go!”

He has in fact saved the best for last. One more heartsqueezing ballad before we're out, and it's one of his best. “Ruby's arms” is the story of a man leaving his sleeping lover and stealing away in the early hours of the morning. As if he's spent himself with the rest of the album, Waits's voice is low and soft here (or perhaps he doesn't want to wake Ruby) and almost breaking with emotion as he tries to tear himself from her --- ”The only thing I'm taking is/ The scarf off of your clothesline” --- his piano and the orchestra combining beautifully to end the album on the very gentlest of closers, and prove once again that Waits can turn his hand to anything: he can make you cry, laugh, shock and scare you, open your eyes to a pitiless, unforgiving world or draw you into a secret, safe place where you can hide for a while. A true artist who has never compromised his art, and hopefully never will.

TRACKLISTING

1. Heartattack and Vine
2. In shades
3. Saving all my love for you
4. Downtown
5. Jersey girl
6. Till the money runs out
7. On the nickel
8. Mr. Siegal
9. Ruby's arms

Like “Foreign Affairs”, this album has a mere nine tracks, though just about every one is gold. The previous album had ten, but from this on in Waits's albums would be much longer, culminating in the triple box set “Orphans: Bawlers, Brawlers and Bastards” which would feature no less than fifty-six new tracks. That's not till 2006 though, and there are eleven more albums to go before we reach that, the next one being his first full movie soundtrack and a collaboration with a Country music superstar and legend.

While normally I would tend not to include movie soundtracks in discographies, this time there are a few reasons for breaking that rule. First off, you're usually talking about an instrumental-only affair, with possibly music from other artistes on it. Second, the music is usually not all written by the artiste in question and has little relevance to their own collection. None of these apply to the next album. Waits wrote all the songs and music for it, and not only that, it was while recording this album that he was to meet the love of his life, future wife and songwriting partner, Kathleen Brennan. Add to that the fact that he collaborates with Crystal Gayle on some of the tracks (she is solo on some, but even then he's writing the music and lyrics) and you really have an album you can't overlook.

So I won't.
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“One from the heart” original soundtrack --- 1982

Written for a movie that's far less sublime than its music is, “One from the heart” (the movie) is a massive disappointment, the more surprising when you consider that the great Francis Ford Coppola himself directs it. But at its heart (hah!) it's an awkward story of the love between two people and the trials they go through. Having loved this album, and wanting to hear how it translated within the movie, I watched it and was left with a feeling of an hour and a half wasted: the movie was formulaic drivel basically, but the music: ah, that's something else entirely. Step this way, my friend.

There's a typical Waits piano line opening the album, kind of reminds me of “I never talk to strangers”, then Waits's voice is low and hoarse, counterpointed by the clear tones of Crystal Gayle, and they duet beautifully on the last line, before the brass section takes the song, following some nice strings conducted by the almost by now permanent fixture Bob Alcivar, as we move into a sleazy blues tune with jazz overtones for the second part of the introduction, “The wages of love”, Waits and Gayle again duetting. Lyrically it's a dark song as Gayle sings "Firmly believe love was designed/ To exploit and deceive” and it moves slowly along with sax and trumpet and soft percussion, into the first solo song from Crystal Gayle.

It's only a short one, just over two minutes, but it's a beautiful ode to love lost as she sings “Is there any way out of this dream?” with Waits on the piano, her soulful voice lighting up the composition. Although Waits does not sing on this you can hear his songwriting genius in lines like ”Let's take a hammer to it/ There's no glamour in it” and ”Summer is dragging its feet/ I feel so incomplete.” There's also some a lovely tenor sax solo taking the song into its conclusion. Then Gayle remains behind the mike but is joined by Waits for a classic as he argues the benefits of his lifestyle and she snaps at his untidiness in “Picking up after you”. Waits at his most sleazy is brilliant in this, as he groans ”Looks like you spent the night in a trench” and she sneers back ”The roses are dead/ And the violets are too.”

It's a slow, jazzy number with blues overtones, driven on sprinkly piano and trumpet, the two singers doing a great job communicating the idea of a couple really sick of the worst side of each other, and ready to split up. Gayle then takes the next song solo, for the slow, moody “Old boyfriends”, with a country lilt and again piano backed, electric piano I think or maybe celeste, not sure. You can almost hear the cracks appearing in her heart as she sings ”They look you up/ When they're in town/ To see if they can / Still burn you down” while there's some lovely reflective electric guitar sliding in and out of the tune too. But the album's highlight comes next, and it's Waits in his best “Blue Valentines” mood, in fact this song could have been on that album. “Broken bicycles” draws a great but not obvious parallel between a lover and a bicycle rusting in a garden yard. ”Broken bicycles” sings Waits, ”Old busted chains/ Rusted handlebars out in the rain/ Somebody must have an orphanage for/ These things that nobody wants anymore.” Superb.

The song is driven on an almost classical piano line, slow and evocative with Waits's vocal soft and close to muttered, a great sadness hanging around it as he sighs ”Summer is gone/ But my love will remain/ Like old broken bicycles/ Out in the rain.” An absolutely beautiful song, a masterpiece both of unexpected imagery and heart-wrenching emotion, and definitely the highlight of this album for me. Also the point at which, rather unfortunately, it begins for me to dip.

“I beg your pardon” is another piano ballad, based I feel something along the lines of “Cinny's waltz” with a certain cinematic feel to it, Alcivar's strings really adding another layer to it as Waits sings ”You are the landscape of my dreams” but it's when “Little Boy Blue” begins that I start to lose a little interest and from here on it's much lower par than it should have been. I have nothing but good things to say about the first half of the album, but with a few exceptions it's hard to find much complimentary to say about the closing half. I guess you could make the case that the first half is the “old “ Tom Waits we heard on albums like Closing time, Foreign affairs and Blue Valentine, whereas what surfaces on the second half is a little more experimental, a bit more avant-garde jazz, the kind of ideas he would bring into his next proper album.

He met Kathleen during the recording of this album, but I don't know if she helped him or gave him any ideas on it, but if so then you could possibly attribute the sudden change here to her influence. With a bouncy, finger-clickin' bass line that harks a little back to “Romeo is bleeding”, “Little Boy Blue” is driven on hard-edged organ from Ronnie Barron, with Waits's vocal again low-key, the sort of song a man sings with his collar turned up and with his hat down over his eyes. His penchant for plundering nursery rhyme really comes into its own here as he sings ”Little Boy Blue/ Come blow your horn/ Dish ran away with the spoon” and later sings of Bo Peep and other childhood favourites. The song ends on a rather frenetic organ solo and piles into “Instrumental montage (The Tango/Circus girl)” with the first part being, not surprisingly given the title, a tango on the piano with some wild saxophone being added by the returning Gene Cipriano, a soft little piano run then taking it into a carnival waltz which would later resurface on Frank's Wild Years, five years later.

“You can't unring a bell” is backed by some pretty amazing thunderous percussion and some spooky guitar, with Waits often speaking the lyric like a monologue, while Crystal Gayle returns to accompany him on what is essentially the title track . I feel the melody on “This one's from the heart” sails very close to that from “Picking up after you”, and perhaps that's intentional, as it's the reconciliation song which mirrors the trouble in that song, or at least the hope that it can be sorted out. Gayle is wonderful on this, and it's not hard to see why she is regarded as one of Country's first ladies. I'm not sure what the link is or how they came to be working together, but it's a pity this was the only time they did, as they really are one hell of a team. Perhaps Kathleen put her foot down after they were married?

Like much on this album, it's a slow, romantic, moody ballad, and it's followed by another, the last vocal track, which oddly enough, but given the conclusion of the film, is sung by Gayle solo as she forgives her lover and asks to be reunited with him in “Take me home”. It's a short song, just over a minute and a half, and with a very simple lyric: ”Take me home/ You silly boy/ Cos I'm still in love/ With you.” We end then on a glockenspiel instrumental as “Presents” revisits the melody of the previous song, a mere minute of music but quite effective. Interesting point for you trivia fans: it's played by Joe Porcaro, father of Toto brothers Jeff, Mike and Steve. Nice low-key ending, though with all respect to Joe, I'm not entirely sure how essential it was to run the same melody twice.

TRACKLISTING

1. Opening montage (Tom's piano intro/Once upon a town/The wages of love)
2. Is there any way out of this dream?
3. Picking up after you
4. Old boyfriends
5. Broken bicycles
6. I beg your pardon
7. Instrumental montage (The Tango/Circus girl)
8. Little Boy Blue
9. You can't unring a bell
10. This one's from the heart
11. Take me home
12. Presents

As film soundtracks go, this is one of the best I've heard that has been all composed by the one musician, and which is not all instrumental. It's hard to capture the feel of a movie like this, and even though “One from the heart” is, as I recall, a very basic and boring movie with a predictable ending, perhaps that's a good reason for Waits to have scored it. Not that it's predictable, but that it deals at its heart with human relationships and the darker side of emotions, and shows that the world is not a fairytale. There are songs here which deserve to go down as Waits classics, and you don't often say that about film soundtracks, or I don't anyway.

In addition, being the backdrop for that fateful meeting with the woman he would eventually marry and who would become his muse for, well, the rest of his life, this album holds a special place in the discography of Tom Waits. It may not be perfect, and it may be the soundtrack to a film I would advise nobody to watch, but it truly does in fact live up to its name. It's also a great chance to see Waits duet, which happens so rarely, and sure if you're a fan of Crystal Gayle (and who isn't) then there's something for you here too.

If you thought, at this point, that you knew and had a fairly decent handle on the music of Tom Waits, well what happened next should have shown you the danger of adding up immature roosters before they have broken out of the shell. Although the next album Waits would release had some recognisable influences yet from his previous body of work, this is pretty much where he entered the studio more as a scientist than a musician, if you like. That's a very bad analogy, but what I mean is that from here on in Waits experimented more with his music. He started trying out odd rhythms, strange singing patterns, weird lyrics and brought in instruments he had previously never used, like shaker, African talking drum, bagpipes and glass harmonica. In short, it was a total seachange for the man, and must have taken his fans by surprise when it originally hit.

The album also marks the end of a long partnership, as Waits decided to dispense with the services of producer Bones Howe, taking the controls of the mixing desk and sitting in the director's chair himself, solidifying his grip over his music. This is the first album he self-produced, and once he got the hang of and the taste for it, there was no going back. Although he had by this time met Kathleen Brennan, and her tastes would inform much of his music from here on in, she has no actual input into this album and only co-wrote one song on the next one. Waits had, and has, always been a man to jealously guard the creation of his music, treating it like his baby, as he would later reveal on the collection of unused songs released on triple CD in 2006. But here is where you can see the effects of Captain Beefheart (apparently) to whose music Brennan introduced him, and which obviously impacted upon him strongly.
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Swordfishtrombones --- 1983

It had been three years since Waits had been in the studio to record his own music, and it certainly shows, in a fresh, powerful, often disturbing and also beautiful collection of songs that run the gamut from zany to heartbreakingly sad. As if making a conscious decision to be “less mainstream”, although Waits wouldn't know the mainstream if he fell into it and drowned, the album kicks off with “Underground”, a stomping, swaggering almost muted sound which sounds like trombone or tuba but seems like it may be a bass marimba. Whatever, it's not only the music that is weirdly out of the ordinary here: Waits growls the vocal with a kind of almost barking cadence, cutting off the ends of sentences sharply, like someone saying “I – told – you – once...” The song itself seems to be about maybe the city after dark, as he sings ”They're alive, they're awake/ While the rest of the world is asleep” and may refer back to the many unfortunate and pathetic characters who people albums such as “The heart of Saturday night” and “Small change”. It may not; it's a strange song.

Things get weirder then with “Shore leave”, percussion provided by Waits hitting a chair off the floor, seriously, and a strange kind of moaning, screeching sound with timpani and other odd instruments meshing with guitar, marimba and trombone, much of the vocal spoken sotto-voce by Waits. It details the exploits of a sailor, far from home, as he tries to fill up the time before he has to go back to his ship. The chorus is the only sung part, in a sort of hoarse whisper. ii]I was pacing myself[/i] he says [/i]”Tryin' to make it all last/ Tryin' to squeeze all the life/ Out of a lousy two day pass.”[/i] It's followed by an instrumental as Waits gets behind the Hammond and racks out a spooky, chilling carnival-like tune that goes by the name of “Dave the butcher”, then, being Waits, he changes tack completely with one of his soft aching ballads as he pays tribute to the town in which Kathleen was born, “Johnsburg, Illinois.”

It's a pained, emotional vocal which has him almost hoarse with quiet passion, and accompanied only by piano, which he plays himself, and bass. It's a very short song, only a minute and a half, but the amount of love that's poured into its run is truly exceptional. The basic melody would later be revisited in part on another song further along on the album. Then, as if to say BOO! He launches into “Sixteen shells from a thirty-ought-six”, with heavy, choppy electric guitar and thumping percussion, the vocal raw and ragged, the song structure virtually nonexistent, just verse following verse. There's a great beat to it though, lots of percussion and bells. One thing that doesn't, and probably never will change in Waits's music though is the characters who populate it, and they're all here, from the shore leavetaking sailor to the gin-soaked boy in the song of the same name and the dead soldier in “Soldier's things”, not to mention Frank making a pre-appearance before the album which would bear his name in “Frank's wild years”. Up next though is a slow, morose ballad driven on piano with a strained, almost defeated vocal in “Town with no cheer”. This is also the first time Waits uses bagpipes, through they're only used in the short intro.

This album also marks the end of the “short” Waits albums, as I think I mentioned previously. With fifteen tracks, this is a far cry from any of his older albums, most of which had seven or eight tracks. This is a format he would continue throughout his career; whether it was just that he was writing more and wanted to use more, or he wanted to give better value to his fans, or even that he didn't even realise he was doing it, from this on in Waits albums would always give great bang for buck, few less than twelve tracks in length. There's a bit of a return to the old form for “In the neighborhood”, a song of claustrophobia and hopelessness, a feeling of being trapped in a one-horse town (a theme Waits used quite a lot). The tone is doleful, almost funeral as he utilises a lot of trombone and slow percussion, baritone horn and organ.

Another instrumental in “Just another sucker on the vine”, which he plays almost entirely solo on the harmonium, with some assistance from trumpet and then we're into “Frank's wild years”, which I have written about already. Carried on the somewhat madcap organ of Ronnie Barron, it features Waits basically talking the lyric, almost in a bored monotone as he tells the story of Frank who, fed up with his life, burns his house to the ground and heads off for a new life. This would, as I've intimated, lead to a whole album based on a play Waits would write with Kathleen. It, and all the succeeding tracks, are short, some less than three minutes long, and the next one up is the title, with just the “s” removed. “Swordfishtrombone” runs on a marimba and conga rhythm, with nothing else but bass supporting the tune, while the much shorter “Down, down, down” has the full band, and is a faster, more frenetic affair with a jazzy, syncopated beat and Waits returning to the somewhat harsher vocal of “Sixteen shells”.

After that we slow everything down for another piano ballad, and again I've featured “Soldier's things” in detail before, so I'll just say it's the gut-wrenching aftermath of a funeral, as the soldier's widow (we assume) tries to make some cash by selling off his personal effects. It's totally heartbreaking, and if you want to read more about it check here http://www.musicbanter.com/members-j...ml#post1206215. It has, as I mentioned above, something of the melody of "Johnsburg, Illinois", in it. That leaves us with three tracks to go, all short, and “Gin soaked boy” comes a little towards the idea of “Sixteen shells” again with a hard grinding guitar and thumping percussion, another growled vocal with a lot of power in it, while “Trouble's braids” recalls the basic rhythm of “Red shoes by the drugstore” with another muttered vocal and virtually no instruments bar drums and bass. We end then on one more instrumental, with no less than four glass harmonicas as “Rainbirds” ends a pretty stunning album.

TRACKLISTING

1. Underground
2. Shore leave
3. Dave the butcher
4. Johnsburg, Illinois
5. Sixteen shells from a thirty-ought-six
6. Town with no cheer
7. In the neighborhood
8. Just another sucker on the vine
9. Frank's wild years
10. Swordfishtrombone
11. Down, down, down
12. Soldier's things
13. Gin soaked boy
14. Trouble's braids
15. Rainbirds

The variety on this album is pretty staggering, even given the sort of thing Waits had given us up to now. This is a man almost reborn, stretching his musical muscles and testing the limits of his talent and creativity. There aren't too many other artistes who would get away with some of the tracks here and not lose some of their fans, or at least cause some puzzled looks. But at this point we've kind of learned to expect the unexpected with Tom Waits, and this is just the beginning. Next time out he would venture further into the unknown, like a man on a spacewalk who suddenly considers letting go and just floating into the vast mystery of space, taking us all with him.

You know what caused the new and sudden change in Waits' style?

...His wife introduced him to Captain Beefheart.

As I noted in the intro to "Swordfishtrombones"...

Most of Waits' pre-Swordfishtrombones albums are a little boring for me so I've been waiting in anciticpation for you to get up to this point!

Swordfishtrombones is amazing but the entire experience for me to this day is still hurt by the existence of Dave the Butcher...a track that almost makes me feel ill just listening to it. There's something about it that I absolutely despise...it sucks that the rest of the album is so great but I have no choice but to skip a track. I just don't know why he made that song

You know I don't have time for that reason business. I usually skip your intros, no offense.

Considering how much TH updates, how long his entries are, and our differing tastes, I tend to pop into this journal only every now and again, but I'm happy I looked at some of his Tom Waits posts. I fell in love his PBS live performance a couple years ago, but have only checked out a small bit of his studio work. Just listened to Swordfishtrombones last night and loved it.

Nice to know my hard work goes unrewarded! ;) But you see, if you HAD read the intro then you would have realised I already noted Beefheart's influence on Waits. So what's the moral...? :)
If you liked that you'll probably love the next two.

You should listen to Beefheart?

I'll have to, won't I, in the Prog Rock journal...

Mwa. Ha. Ha.

Safe as Milk is child's play.

Having branched out on the previous album Waits continued to explore the limits of his music, almost inventing instruments and shunning the popular digital electronic recording process. As he said himself, “If I want a particular sound I'd rather get it by going into the bathroom and hitting the door really hard with a piece of two by four.” No samples for our Tom! Although he did, technically, use samples in the recording of this, his eighth album, when he used an old-style cassette recorder to capture the sounds of the street --- traffic, people walking, dogs barking etc --- in order to infuse this new album with a feeling of being right down there among the people. His second album without Bones Howe and the continuation, in many ways, of Swordfishtrombones, this album is, if possible, even weirder and in places even more beautiful.

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Rain Dogs --- 1985

A double album, this would be, apart from Nighthawks at the diner, Waits's longest yet, clocking in at almost fifty-four minutes and with a total of nineteen tracks. He explores many different genres in it, and it opens with a boppy cousin of “Underground” melding with “Shore leave” as “Singapore” kicks right out of the traps. Waits's vocal is again that hoarse, ragged whisper we've started to become used to, the song driven on thick double bass and powerful percussion. There are some great lines in it, such as ”In the land of the blind/ The one-eyed man is king” and ”Every witness turns to steam/ They all become Italian dreams.” Next it's a slow, almost funereal tune with timpani and miramba in “Clap hands”, Waits more restrained on the vocal here, then it's a polka as he brings in accordion for “Cemetery polka”, with the hilarious line ”We must find out where the money is/ Get it now before he loses his mind!”

Typical of Waits, of course, after all this madness and experimentation he's back to simple acoustic guitar for “Jockey full of bourbon”, percussion again playing a big part in the song, with a kind of muttered vocal from Waits before he comes alive for “Tango till they're sore”, one of the first songs of his I ever heard --- and I hated it --- but I can see his genius now. He sings like a man drunk, reeling all over the place as he sings ”Put my clarinet beneath your bed/ Till I get back in town”. The discordant piano from “The piano has been drinking” is back, as he weaves expertly in and out of the tune, fat trombone adding a real New Orleans touch, delivered by the perfectly-named Bob Funk. He kicks into full gear then for the manic “Big Black Mariah”, featuring guitar from the legendary Keith Richards. This melody and vocal style, at least the beginning, foreshadows the later “Earth died screaming” on his Bone machine album. There's a lot of blues and swing in this, and it rocks along nicely.

Things slow down then for a few tracks, as “Diamonds and gold” is a low-key short track with banjo from Robert Musso, the return of the marimbas and a sort of almost slurred vocal, tracing the basic melody of “Hushabye mountain” before Waits interprets the folk standard “Tom Dooley” in his own inimitable way as “Hang down your head” is his first collaboration with his wife, Kathleen Brennan. It actually has a nice country-ish electric guitar from Marc Ribot and pump organ from Waits himself. Good solo from Ribot, then we're into one of the standouts with “Time”, the first real ballad on the album. Again it's a low-key, almost disinterested vocal from Waits, lovely sad accordion as William Shimmel reprises his role from “Cemetery polka”, soft strummed guitar from Waits.

Shimmel remains and opens the title track, which is then taken by Ribot with some uptempo guitar, mournful trombone from Funk and those marimbas again. The first of two instrumentals follows as the quite frenetic “Midtown” is driven by the Uptown Horns with a kind of sixties cop-show theme, dashing all over the place and bringing us into another standout, “9th and Hennepin”. Again I've written extensively about this song, but in case you haven't read that, it's a spoken word piece backed by clarinet, marimba and piano. Some incredible lines in the lyric: ”I'm lost in the window/ I hide in the stairway/ And I hang in the curtain/ And I sleep in your hat.” Banjo and percussion drive “Gun street girl”, very folk-oriented; one of the lines is ”Bangin' on a table/ With an old tin cup” and sure knowing Waits, maybe they are!

“Union Square” hits the tempo back up then, with a raw, manic vocal from Waits in a sort of jazzy rocker, Keith Richards making another appearance, then after that Waits turns his attention to Country with his first pure Country song, “Blind love”, and it could certainly hold its own among the likes of Haggard and Nelson. More guitar from Richards, who also adds backing vocals to this gem, and some superb violin from Ross Levinson. We're back then in “Blue Valentine” territory for “Walking Spanish”, and a song made famous by Rod Stewart is another standout in “Downtown train”. If you've only heard Rod's version then you need to hear the original. That's all I'll say.

The second, and final instrumental is barely a minute long and features just harmonium, sax and drums as “Bride of rain dog” reprises some of the melody of the title track, messed about in the lovingly chaotic way Waits loves to do, then we end on “Anywhere I lay my head”, as the Uptown Horns return to finish us off on a gospel-inspired hunk of craziness as Waits really goes for it on the vocal. Testify, brother! Testify!

TRACKLISTING

1. Singapore
2. Clap hands
3. Cemetery polka
4. Jockey full of bourbon
5. Tango till they're sore
6. Big Black Mariah
7. Diamonds and gold
8. Hang down your head
9. Time
10. Rain dogs
11. Midtown
12. 9th and Hennepin
13. Gun street girl
14. Union Square
15. Blind love
16. Walking Spanish
17. Downtown train
18. Bride of rain dog
19. Anywhere I lay my head

Rarely have I listened to an album with so many different styles, genres and ideas mixed together which still managed to be a cohesive whole and come out triumphantly on top. With this album, once and for all Waits proved that he could not be boxed, labelled, categorised or indeed equalled. A man with whom, quite literally, you did not know what was coming next, he would forever surprise, confound and delight. With almost impish glee, he would change his style, then change it back, do something new, look back to his past, subvert genres and even invent new ones as he continued his crusade to be something utterly different, indefinable and absolutely magnificent.

At this point, it seemed the time might have arrived to declare a new genre of music: Tom Waits.

Would anyone else title an album after a track from a previous one, and not include that track, or any reference back to it? Well, probably not. But then, this is just another example of Waits not so much breaking the rules as gleefully pounding them with a sledgehammer, in the process taping the sound to be used as another effect on his album. Two years after the herculean Rain dogs completed, he was back in the studio and this time he had help. New wife Kathleen Brennan was beginning to have a little more of an input on her maverick husband's music now, arranging all the vocals on the new album and also helping to write three of the songs.

Originally conceived as a play, and premiered in Chicago more than a year before the release of the album, this next recording would continue Waits's foray into the world of experimental music, and lead to him playing even stranger instruments, such as the Optigan, Farfisa and, um, rooster? It would also feature the only collaborations in songwriting he had allowed since Bob Alcivar wrote the music for “Potter's Field” back in '77 on Foreign Affairs, and though he would count the co-writers he worked with on the fingers of one hand, Kathleen would become more and more involved in writing songs with him, until with 1992's Bone machine they would share equal songwriting credits; Waits would finally have someone who knew his music as well as he did, and who could be his muse, and perhaps vice versa.
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Franks Wild Years --- 1987

If you've been following my writings on his discography, you'll remember that the title of this album, as mentioned above, comes from a song off Swordfishtrombones, about a guy who finally snaps under the pressure of suburban living, burns down his house and drives off in the direction of Hollywood (Frank Goes To Hollywood?) in search of a new life. Although the album is subtitled “Un operachi romantico in two acts”, and was, as mentioned, based on the play of the same name, oddly enough it does not appear to be a concept album. At the same time, there does appear to be a general thread of motifs running through the songs: themes like loneliness, depression, failure, regret all crop up and the songs could to a degree be said to be linked to form a loose story.

“Hang on St. Christopher”, which kicks the album off, can certainly be seen as following on directly from the song on the '83 album, as Frank, driving north on the Hollywood Freeway, goes over in his mind the actions of the last few hours. Whether he regrets them or not is unknown, but it seems he is determined to put his past life behind him as he joins the great swell of humanity heading down the highway. With a down-and-dirty brass section backing him, Waits sings the vocal in a sort of mechanised style, as if he were talking on a really old radio or microphone. There's something of a shuffle in the rhythm and again it's a song with no real verse or chorus, just all the lines sung in the same melody. “Straight to the top (rhumba)” is indeed just that, backed by brass and double bass with congas going and Waits with another strained, hoarse vocal which seems somehow divorced from the melody and yet works well. Glockenspiel on “Blow wind blow” and pump organ recalls “Tango till they're sore” in a slower, moodier vein, with some lonely horn blowing. Waits changes his vocal style halfway through here, affecting a kind of operatic tenor, while ”Dancing at the slaughterhouse” recalls a line from “Gun Street girl”.

I have to admit, this is not one of my favourite Waits albums. After Swordfishtrombones and Rain dogs I was pretty disappointed with this one, but that's just me. He changes his voice again for “Temptation”, a slowish, almost tangolike piece driven by bass, maraccas and congas, with some freaky guitar from the returning Marc Ribot. We're back in familiar territory for a moment then as one of two versions of “Innocent when you dream” takes us back to the bar, with Waits a slurring drunk singing ”The bats are in the belfry/ The dew is on the moor” and the song moves in a sort of slow waltz carnival rhythm, a real drinking song. Some nice violin from Ralph Carney and accordion maestro William Schimmel takes the seat behind the piano. One of the better songs on the album, certainly.

Schimmel straps back on his squeezebox for “I'll be gone”, and there's that rooster I spoke of, crowing at the very start. It's one of those madcap songs Waits loves so much, bopping along on a bouncy bassline as he sings gleefully ”I drink a thousand shipwrecks/ Tonight I steal your paycheques”. By contrast, “Yesterday is here” plods along in a slow, measured western-style rhythm, bass and guitar driving the tune and Waits returning to what could be called a normal vocal for him, a lot of echo on it giving it a very sombre feel. A screechy baritone horn runs “Please wake me up” in as the vocal comes through almost unnoticed, a slow, Beatley tune with elements of Sinatra and old twenties Vaudeville there too, with another carnival organ outro before a short accordion piece prefaces one of the better tracks on the album, one of my favourites. “More than rain” is like a Waits tune of old, and could have been on Blue Valentine or Heartattack and Vine.

Featuring an accordion intro that really recalls the album cover, it moves along on again a sort of slow carnival rhythm, with bells, bass and of course the accordion and horn. Great lines like ”None of our pockets are lined with gold/ There are no dead presidents we can fold” really make the song. Fans of “The Wire” will be familiar with “Way down in the hole”, which was the theme for that show all through its run, though performed by various different artistes each season. Waits screeches the vocal in a sort of semi-gospel tone allied to a lowdown funk melody driven on Ralph Carney's soulful sax as well as Ribot's guitar. Echoes of the melody from “Hang on St. Christopher” coming through here, while a second version of “Straight to the top”, subtitled “Vegas”, gives us a different interpretation of the second track, with a very Sinatraesque turn. Cocktail piano from Schimmel and super little bass lines from Greg Cohen as well as Carney's sax really put you in the front row of a Vegas nightclub as Waits sings, with obvious relish in the irony, ”I can't let Mister Sorrow/ Drag ol' Frankie down!”

It kind of ends on a bit of a confused mess though, like a reverse tune-up, and segues directly into the again Sinatra/Armstrong-like “I'll take New York”, with some very dissonant organ and a melody that is cheekily very close to that of Frankie's classic, then a Rain dogs style infuses “Telephone call from Istanbul” with some picked guitar and banjo from Ribot. Good advice from Waits: ”Never trust a man in a blue trenchcoat/ Never drive a car when you're dead!” Vocally this is probably closest to “Heartattack and Vine” or maybe “Mister Siegal”, but musically I can hear the likes of “Big Black Mariah” and indeed “Rain dogs” itself.

An almost fifties rock-and-roll fusing with Country/folk takes us into the “Cold cold ground”, with a fine performance by David Hidalgo on the accordion and some hypnotic bass from Larry Taylor, while there's a whole lot of slow gospel in “Train song”, almost coming back to the Small change era. That would have been a great ending, with the tagline ”It was a train that took me away from here/ But a train can't bring me home” but Waits decided to throw another version of a song that is already on the album into the mix, and for my money the alternative version of “Innocent when you dream” (it's not a bonus track; this is part of the album) is completely superfluous. I liked the original but this is just silly. A sad end to an album that could be a lot better.

TRACKLISTING

1. Hang on St. Christopher
2. Straight to the top (Rhumba)
3. Blow wind blow
4. Temptation
5. Innocent when you dream (barroom)
6. I'll be gone
7. Yesterday is here
8. Please wake me up
9. Frank's theme
10. More than rain
11. Way down in the hole
12. Straight to the top (Vegas)
13. I'll take New York
14. Telephone call from Istanbul
15. Cold cold ground
16. Train song
17. Innocent when you dream (78)

There are a lot of things to recommend this album, but somehow it just doesn't do it for me. After colossi like Rain dogs and Swordfishtrombones I was just expecting more, and whereas normally I might --- might --- point to one, maybe two tracks on a Waits album I'm not totally into, here I can easily count off at least six, and on an album with seventeen tracks overall that ain't good. I've listened to this a few times, not as many as other Waits albums, and when I make playlists it's one I take very few tracks from. It's not that I think it's a bad album, but it fails to give me the vibe I've got from every single one of his recordings prior, and to be completely honest, from here on in, with a few exceptions, I found much of his material quite inaccessible and disappointing. Not saying I hated every album from here, but it does make Rain dogs for me a high watermark, leaving everything that came after --- as I say, with a few notable exceptions --- just slightly lacking.

Mind you, as I review them now I may start appreciating them more. Here's hoping. But for me anyway, Franks wild years just fails to reach the high standard Waits has set himself for, at this point, fourteen years, and the next twenty-plus would continue to test my faith in the man, occasionally proving it, more often than not though unfortunately straining it to often breaking point. I think the real problem with Waits, for me at any rate, is the expectation. Every album up to this has been top-drawer, and once you slip even slightly it really shows. This is a good album, even a very good album, but at this stage I'm a Waits purist and I want great, not good.

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Another unbelievable milestone!

I'd just like to take the time to thank everyone who stops by, reads regularly, or comments here and who has taken the time to read what I write. Your continued interest has allowed me to reach the incredible milestone of
Two Hundred Thousand Views
a feat, so far as I can see, never equalled in the annals of Music Banter journals. In fact, from what I can see, this journal has now received more views than all of the other journals in the first two pages added together! That's nothing short of amazing.

However, it's quite clear that I would never have reached this staggering total if people were not interested in what I am writing, so my eternal gratitude goes to you all for keeping my belief alive that what I write is being read, and in turn keeping me interested in continuing to write.

I don't want to make a big song and dance about this (two hundred thousand balloons? Yeah, just put the boxes over there please mate. Sign here? Sure. Thanks) but I think it's important to mark the occasion, as it's a massive vindication for me as a writer and probably a searing indictment that a lot of us need to get out more! ;)

When I started this journal all I wanted was somewhere I could write about my favourite music, and maybe share it with like-minded people. Though many of you hate my music taste, I think a large percentage of you recognise and respect the passion with which I write, whether I like something or hate it, it will get a fair and (ahem) thorough review here, and I in turn respect and am grateful for that acceptance. Now I have NINE journals, and even the least popular of them still gets respectable views, so some of you out there are reading most, if not all, of what I write, and again for that you have my thanks.

I have great things planned for the coming year, but as ever if there is something you would like to see, something that you think I'm not doing right or at all, or some way you feel I could improve this, or any other of my journals, please let me know. Comments are always welcome.

In addition, let me just thank the mods who tirelessly approve my many entries: Janszoon, Urban, Goofle, Vanilla, Pete, Burning Down, Pedestrian and anyone else who may be, or have been in the past, a mod, and whom I have either forgotten or missed out. My journals would be empty without your work, and it is appreciated. I hope I don't drive you all too mad!

:shycouch:

So thank you once again and I hope I can keep writing the stuff that keeps bringing you back here.

Cheers, and thanks to you all!
:beer:
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One of the longest hiatuses in Waits's career, five years would elapse between his last album and his next, but he would make up for that by producing two albums in 1992, one of which was a studio album that would go on to develop his interest in experimental music and lead to some amazing songs, but which has already been reviewed by me in full here http://www.musicbanter.com/members-j...ml#post1309289. The other would be his second movie soundtrack, though this one would be mostly instrumental. Having worked with director Jim Jarmusch on “Down by law”, Waits hooked up with him again to score the movie “Night on Earth”, about five different taxi drivers and their passengers in five different cities on the same night. Kathleen had, again, some small input into this album, though she had obviously acquired a taste for songwriting, which she would carry later into the writing of Bone machine, on which you can certainly hear her love of Beefheart begin to really take hold, and to exert its power over her husband.
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Night on Earth Original Soundtrack --- 1992

It gets underway with a very “Singapore”-like track, with congas and accordion, slow in the vein of “More than rain” but with that sort of cracked, growly voice Waits had adopted since Franks wild years. “Back in the good old world” starts the album off well, and is one of only three vocal tracks as we move into “Los Angeles mood (Chromium descensions)”, with marimba and cello straining along the sides of the track like drunks carefully navigating their way along a sidestreet, feedback shooting back like the glaring headlights of cars that narrowly miss them on their inebriated stroll. It's a slow, almost heartbeat rhythm that drives the piece, with some wailing guitar added in, while the companion piece, “Los Angeles theme (Another private dick)” runs on smoky lonely sax from that right into a sort of Peter Gunn idea, with rockabilly guitar and horn. It shuffles along nicely as the guitar and sax trade licks like two gangsters trying to outboast each other.

You can hear moods from Rain dogs and Franks wild years go off here and there, and I'd wonder if some of this music was not written during those sessions but never used? “New York theme (Hey, you can have that heart attack outside buddy)” switches things up with a piano lead yet retaining the basic melody of the previous track, quite a honky-tonk idea in the music, sax still there but somehow it's more upmarket in a way yet sleazy too. Great bassline, like the one from “Diamonds on my windshield” but slightly slower. This of course then gives way to “New York mood (New haircut and a busted lip)” which takes the theme but slows it right down, removing the piano and allowing the sax to take centre stage as the bass follows along.

There's a big, crunching, striding swing melody then for “Baby, I'm not a baby anymore (Beatrice theme)” with some banjo but driven on the alto sax of Ralph Carney, who plays a hell of a lot of instruments on this album. “Good old world (waltz)” is exactly that, a slow waltzing rhythm driven on accordion and violin that circles around like two dancers oblivious to everything around them, then “Carnival (Brunello del Montalcino)” kind of takes that basic melody and puts a ragtime spin on it, throwing in organ and strange horn sounds as well as odd percussion in that way Waits does so well. The second vocal track is next, as Waits croaks his way through a rather tender and French-tinged “On the other side of the world”. There's been so much instrumental music at this point that the first time you hear him sing again it comes as something of a surprise, but of course a pleasant one. Some great minimalistic banjo here from Joe Gore, to say nothing of Carney's sublime clarinet work.

There's another version of “Back in the good old world”, this time an instrumental, possibly a little indulgent though it is a great song, and then we're travelling again with “Paris mood (Un de fromage)” which kind of tippy-toes around the main theme with really less French flavour about it than some of the other tracks, despite the accordion used, but my favourite on the album, certainly title-wise, is “Dragging a dead priest”: the images it conjures up! Musically, it has that great screeching, scratching sound that, yeah, does give the impression of someone hauling a heavy weight through the streets. Very atonal and some cool off-kilter percussion really makes this track stand out I feel. Sort of a moan in there for good measure (are you sure this priest is dead?) then “Helsinki mood” skitters along as if hoping not to be seen, the same basic theme again running through the music, which is fine I guess as they're all supposed to relate to one another.

“Carnival Bob's confession” has a nice uptempo feel to it and steps away from the main theme, with some cool horns and crashing drums again a la “Singapore”. Climbing violins really help as does some accordion and some other weird instruments I'm not even going to try to identify. We then get a vocal version of “Good old world (Waltz)”, and it's quite nice to hear it. Reversing that, then, the album closes with an instrumental version of “On the other side of the world”.

TRACKLISTING

1. Back in the good old world (Gypsy)
2. Los Angeles mood (Chromium descensions)
3. Los Angeles theme (Another private dick)
4. New York mood (Hey, you can have that heart attack outside buddy)
5. New York theme (A new haircut and a busted lip)
6. Baby, I'm not a baby anymore (Beatrice theme)
7. Good old world (Waltz)
8. Carnival (Brunello del Montalcino
9. On the other side of the world
10. Good old world (Gypsy instrumental)
11. Paris mood (Un de fromage)
12. Dragging a dead priest
13. Helsinki mood
14. Carnival Bob's confession
15. Good old world (Waltz)
16. On the other side of the world

It's been a while since I listened to this album, and I must say I find that it has a lot of flaws. While the music is great, so much of it is merely variations on a central theme that it's easy to get the tracks confused. I know that's because of the nature of the movie, where each story crosses over into the other and all end up intertwined into one great tapestry, but I feel this doesn't give Waits the freedom to be as versatile as he normally is. I wouldn't go so far as to say that once you've heard one track on this album you've heard them all, but in some cases --- far too many --- it does seem as if he's just repeating himself, altering the melody slightly or adding things in, but basically sticking to the one general tune.

There are exceptions of course. “Dragging a dead priest” is nothing like anything else on the album, and “Carnival Bob's confession” stands out on its own, but much of the rest can be almost lumped together as one melody, and that's a pity, because while Waits does infuse certain pieces that refer to cities with something that makes it their own, identifies with it --- New York with the bar piano, Paris with the accordion, etc. --- it's a little cliched, a little expected, and one thing we have learned about Waits is that he usually shies from the usual, the typical, and surprises us at every turn.

Although it's a soundtrack album, and can be given something of a pass because of that, it's still miles behind One from the heart, which was a much more varied and interesting album. Less than six months later he would enter the studio again and record a real Waits album, that would reaffirm his delight in confounding, thrilling and surprising us, and though this is a good soundtrack it would soon be forgotten in the wake of the release of Bone machine, as it should be.

That is one of the ****tiest covers I've ever seen on a non-rap album.

What? It's the Earth. At night. Night on Earth. Geddit? Wait till you see the next one!

My problem is with the font more than anything.

Blame the movie....
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Been a while since I logged on to this journal, which is not like me, but there’s so much else to do. However, I need to get back to it, and now I realise I missed out two of Waits’s albums as I prepared to move on, so I need to check those out now before I get to his next studio recording proper. Although both of these albums contain songs that have been released before, they are not simply greatest hits packages, as we will see.
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The Early Years, Volume 1 --- 1991

Although released in 1991, the songs on this album were in fact all recorded prior to the release of his debut in 1973. Some of them appear on that album, some on the second, but there are songs here too that never saw the light of day until now. It kicks off with “Goin’ down slow”, a lazy, laconic almost folk ballad played on acoustic guitar with some fine steel too. It’s typical of the kind of thing you’’d find on Closing time, a song that sounds like it was just written as he waited for someone or for the day to end, or his glass to be refilled. Without a band at this point, Waits plays all the instruments here himself, and yet makes the album sound less acoustic than you would expect. “Poncho’s lament” is another Country/folk style swinging ballad with the great line ”I’m glad that you’re gone/ But I wish to the lord that you’d come home.”

(Yes, yes! The videos are back! The mob has spoken...)
His voice sounds less ragged and growly than it would later become, and the slighltly embarrassed cough at the end, left on deliberately one must assume, really reinforces the idea of a man writing up his demo before trying for an album deal. The first song though that really shows the talent Waits would become famous for is “I’m your late night evening prostitute”, where he considers the idea I guess of whoring out his music. It’s driven on soulful piano that would resurface in part on “A sight for sore eyes” on the Foreign affairs album. When he sings ”Drink your Martini and stare at the moon/ Don’t mind me: I’ll continue to croon” he’s singing for all the pianists and guitar players in bars and clubs who pour their souls out to an uncaring crowd and receive perhaps a smattering of applause if they’re lucky. Again, he would revisit this idea, though instrumentally only, on “In shades”, nine years later on Heartattack and Vine. Back to Country slow bopping with the pretty hilarious “Had me a girl”, in which he lists all the places he’s visited and had romantic interludes: ”Had me a girl from France/ Just wanted to get in her pants” and "Had me a girl from Chula Vista/ I was in love with her sister.” I particularly love the idea at the end, when he runs out of ideas or just doesn’t care and sings ”I had me a girl from … mm. Mm.mm mm mm mm…” Classic!

Next we have the first of the songs that actually made it onto his debut, as we hear a stripped down version of “Ice cream man”, pretty much the same melody but somewhat slower, played on the piano and guitar. “Rockin’ chair” is another lazy ballad on acoustic guitar, kind of Delta blues feel to it, kinda sounds like it would have worked well on Nighthawks. “Virginia Avenue” is a slower version of the song which appears on Closing time and as I mentioned earlier, a slight change in the lyrics makes ”What’s a poor boy to do” into ”What’s a poor sailor to do”, other than that it’s pretty much the same song. It’s followed then by “Midnight lullaby”, which again is little different to the song that ended up on his debut.

“When you ain’t got nobody” is a new song, as such, though, and highlights his cynical attitude towards life but shot through with the humour that would become his trademark. ”When you ain’t got nobody/ Anybody looks nice” he opines. ”Doesn’t take much to make you/ Stop and look twice.” Another piano solo piece, another slow song and one that could really have been a classic had he included it on the album. I love the almost-shocking ”I’ll be your Dick honey/ If you’ll just be my Jane.” People under a certain age won’t get that, but I smiled. Back to the early versions of songs that made it onto Closing time with a slightly barebones “Little trip to Heaven (on the wings of your love)”, the lounge/bar-room idea filtering in here nicely; the whistled verse is nice. Maybe he couldn’t think of any more lyrics but it gives the song some new life and a personal touch. I think on the finished version there’s a sax solo there?

A man who would appear in later songs, and inform a full album, “Frank’s song” is the first we hear of him, whether he’s the same one we are introduced to later or not I don’t know, but Waits here approaches the whole idea of marriage as he does on Nighthawks as he declares ”We used to go stag/ Now he’s got a hag.” It’s a short, acoustic ballad which leads into one of the best on the album, the hilarious “Looks like I’m up Shit Creek again”, with a slow COuntry flavour that ticks along really nicely and presages the likes of “Ol’ 55” and “Hope that I don’t fall in love with you”, perhaps why he didn’t include it. Certainly wouldn’t have got any radio airplay! I love it though; it just drips self-pity and recrimination. The album ends on “So long I’ll see ya”, showing the beginnings of the guitar style he would develop and the vocal slightly more loud and a little manic, pointing the direction he would go in over the years. It also features some of the scat singing he would use in the, um, early years.

TRACKLISTING

1.Goin’ down slow
2.Poncho’s lament
3.I’m your late night evening prostitute
4.Had me a girl
5.Ice cream man
6.Rockin’ chair
7.Virginia Avenue
8.Midnight lullaby
9.When you ain’t got nobody
10.Little trip to Heaven (on the wings of your love)
11.Frank’s song
12.Looks like I’m up Shit Creek again
13.So long I’ll see ya

You could say this is bad value for money, seeing as four of the thirteen tracks on it are ones you would by now have already heard --- that’s a third of the album ---- but although those four songs are not really sufficiently different from the final versions to really merit inclusion, the other songs are all new and this album opens an interesting and unique window into the thought and songwriting processes of a man who was at the time struggling to find his voice and make a name for himself. So historically at least, this is an album that any Waits fan should really want to hear.

The second album in this series would be released two years later, but about six months before his next album, and would contain songs that not only would feature on Closing time but the followup to that also. Like volume one though, it also has a lot of tracks that are new at first listen, again recorded around 1971, before he even had a record deal.
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The Early Years, Volume 2 --- 1993

The first two tracks we know, as they’re both on the debut, though “I hope that I don’t fall in love with you” is played slower but somehow sung a little faster than the version that would end up on the album, sort of more relaxed. He also hums some of the lines, probably having not quite worked out all the lyric at that point. The version of “Ol’ 55” is quite different though with a folky guitar intro, unaccompanied by any percussion, the vocal more low-key, chords a little different. Nice soft guitar solo too. Definitely worth hearing. He also gets the lines mixed up when he sings ”Lights all passing/ Trucks are a flashin’” which makes it all the more honest and demo-like.

“Mockin’ bird” is a song I’ve never heard though, and brings in the chimy. echoey piano we would become so familiar with during the early part of his career. More whistling, with a song the most uptempo on the album so far, quite bouncy and almost poppy in its way, while “In between love” slows it all down again with an acoustic ballad on guitar, but “Blue skies” is really just retreading the ground trod on “I’m your late night evening prostitute” and, to a smaller extent, “Goin’ down slow”. It’s something of a disappointment for an artiste of Waits’s calibre and originality to find that he is here plundering the same basic melody for a different song. But he does it so seldom, if ever other than here, that I guess we can forgive him. The only song that made it on to [i]Nighthawks at the diner/i], “Nobody” is here sung pretty much the same as it is on that incredible live event, piano backed and with a sad, drawly vocal from Waits.

With a sort of Simon and Garfunkel pop sensibility, “I want you” is a decent little song but a little below par for Waits, not a lot in it;, it’s quite short too. The next four tracks are all from his second album, and I must say the version of “Shiver me timbers” is worth hearing for the different way he approaches it, none of the laidback piano --- this is far more staccato --- and no orchestra of course, then “Grapefruit moon”, never one of my favourite songs on The heart of Saturday night is pretty much a carbon copy of the eventual version that was published, minus the descending end run on the piano, which is weird because it ended up being such an integral part of the song. I’m interested to see how the original “Diamonds on my windshield” sounded, as this is the first time I have heard this album, and I feel that song rides so much on the bassline it will be hard to duplicate in this stripped-down demo.

Well he does a good bass on it, the vocal kind of more uptempo jazz than it turned out, a sort of muttered one on the album. Bringing the piano in on it is something different for certain, but I don’t think it really works and I guess he came to the same conclusion as it’s not on the “real” version. Think he may have added lyrics here, not completely sure but then Waits can write on the fly, we all know that. The last song then off The heart of Saturday night is “Please call me baby”, a bit rough and ready on the piano but basically the same song, though the orchestral backing on the final version turn out to be what makes the song in the end.

(Sorry for the crap video, but it was the only version I could get that wasn't off Nighthawks...)
That leaves two tracks, and I feel that one of them may be yet another off Closing time but we’ll see shortly. The penultimate track is “So it goes”, nice little folky acoustic ballad, kind of reminds me of later Steve Earle, echoes of “Halo round the moon”. And I was right: the final track is called “Old shoes” but became “Old shoes (and picture postcards”) on the debut, and to be fair there’s not much difference in the version here and the one that ended up on his album.

TRACKLISTING

1.Hope that I don’t fall in love with you
2.Ol’ 55
3.Mockin’ bird
4.In between love
5.Blue skies
6.Nobody
7.I want you
8.Shiver me timbers
9.Grapefruit moon
10.Diamonds on my windshield
11.Please call me baby
12.So it goes
13.Old shoes

If what I said about volume one being poor value for money, viewed from one perception, is true, then this second volume really rips the buyer off. No less than eight tracks are “old” songs, more than half the album. Some of the originals are worth hearing, some are not, and as for the new songs, well I’m sorry to say that generally they’re a poor lot really. I certainly prefer volume one, but even at that, the two albums taken together give a real snapshot of a man on the cusp of greatness, of a master songsmith honing his trade and finding his place, and show us the kind of musician, and the eventual enigma and phenomenon Tom Waits was going to become.

I guess it’s no longer possible to avoid this. 1993 began a trio of albums that made me really strain to keep liking Waits. I’m not alone: many people consider this his weakest period. Perhaps the stress of bringing out two albums in the same year, on the same month, on the same fucking day told on him, and although that was 2002 I believe the rot, as it were, set in here at the end of ‘93. Mind you, there was a bright spot just before the millennium closed, but more of that later. Right now it’s time to gird my loins, take a deep breath and dive into what is unquestionably my least favourite of any Tom Waits albums.
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The Black Rider --- 1993
Maybe it’s something to do with plays. Franks wild years was, as I have already related, the first Waits album I wasn’t head over heels in love with, and that was based on a play. So too is this, and the two I mentioned in 2002. It could be coincidence but I wonder. Anyway I found this album extremely inaccessible when I first heard it, but to be fair I only remember listening to it once, so maybe time will have softened my attitude towards it. Maybe I’ll get it. Or not.

Based on the play of the same name written by William S. Burroughs, the album is the soundtrack to the life of a man who chooses to make a pact with the Devil but is outwitted by him in the end, as are all mortals, and he ends up going mad. You can check out the full story here The Black Rider - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia if you wish. It’s another long album, with twenty tracks in all, though some are quite short, a few just over one minute. Interestingly, after her almost total collaboration with him on Bone machine, Kathleen Brennan is conspicuously absent from the songwriting here.

We open on “Lucky day overture”, Waits bellowing as a carnival barker against a slow brass waltz background, quite FWY in theme. No singing at all; Waits shouts the vocal completely with a wild abandon I haven’t heard since “Going out west", and the old-style carnival atmosphere is reinforced by his use of a calliope, then we’re into the title track, which has Waits sound like a German or something (not surprisingly: this is based on a German folk tale after all) against a Rain dogs style rhythm driven mostly on organ. Some of Waits’s old faithful return for this album, such as Joe Gore, Ralph Carney and here, Greg Cohen who does a superb viola. “November” opens in saw and accordion, then we hear for the first time on this album the voice we all know so well, dark broken and morose as the accordion plays out its sad tale. Some really great banjo from Waits adds to the feel here, as does the saw, which sounds like the whistling moan of a soul haunting the song.

“Just the right bullets” staggers along on a threatening, compelling melody as Pegleg, the Devil makes his entrance and the bargain is sealed, as is the hero’s fate, did he but know it. Suddenly it all goes into overdrive with a fast western-style theme, galloping along in a “Ghost riders in the sky” sort of idea till it slows back again with echoes of Franks wild years then speeds up for the frenetic conclusion. A spooky chamberlin and Doug Neely returning on the saw colours “Black box theme”, the first instrumental (if you don’t count the opener, which had plenty of vocals if not singing), cello, bassoon, French horn and banjo all adding to the weirdness. A slow, haunting little piece, perhaps underlying the pact just agreed, then on of the few covers Waits ever did comes in the shape of a totally out-there version of “Tain’t no sin”; it’s really quite unsettling. No percussion at all, just clarinet and a synth; marimba is mentioned but I don’t hear it.

“Flash pan hunter/intro” is another short instrumental with very much a stately, funereal sound, contrabassoon and clarinet merging with the sounds of seagulls overhead, a real dirge, then Waits and Burroughs collaborate on “That’s the way”, with a dark organ motif and an almost spoken vocal from Waits. It runs directly into “The briar and the rose”, whose music reminds me of something off I think One from the heart, but I can’t quite place it. A slow, ragged ballad, the kind Waits excels at, while “Russian dance” is, well, a Russian dance with Waits’s inimitable touch. It’s good fun but at over three minutes it’s way too long. Another instrumental is next, this being “Gospel train/Orchestra”, which oddly enough does not seem to involve Waits at all, if the credits are to be believed. If so, it may be unique in all of his work.

Kind of reminds me of a slower version of “Bride of rain dog”, bits of “Singapore” mixed in and led on a thumping trombone. I can’t believe Waits didn’t play on this. They must just have missed his credit out. More Franks Wild Years style for “I’ll shoot the moon”, a Country-flavoured waltzy ballad, quite nice, then there’s another teamup with Burroughs as he writes the lyric for “Flash pan hunter”, more of that spooky saw from Neely and some fine organ from Francis Thumm, with again a sort of crying chant like we heard on FWY. Back to that sort of western/Country rhythm for “Crossroads”, while “Gospel train” is just weird. Look, I know weird is Waits’s middle name, but this is weird. Almost the same musical phrase going all the way through, and I think he’s quoting part of Curtis Mayfield’s “People get ready” in there. Plus there are train whistles. Yeah.

At almost five minutes though it quickly wears out its welcome and after an eighteen-second “interlude” we’re into “Oily night”, which seems not to feature Waits himself either. It’s got the deepest vocal, almost death metal in a way, and surely that has to be Waits? Other than that it’s like someone scraping a paintstripper off a wall or something. Pretty unnerving. Frownland would probably love it. Again it’s way, way too long, but we’re getting near the end now, and I have to say I’m still glad this is the case. Much better though is “Lucky day” which again has the “Frank” vocal and a swaying carnival rhythm, reminds me very much of “Innocent when you dream”. I’d actually pick this as my favourite on the album, though that’s not hard as I pretty much dislike most of it anyway.

It’s just Waits and Greg Cohen to close out the album then, with first the ballad “The last rose of summer” and then a short instrumental, “Carnival”, as our hero ends up in the Devil’s Carnival, having lost his mind after shooting his bride to be. Suitably manic and frenetic, it ends the album more or less as it began, at the fairground, though this time a dark, evil, malevolent one from which there is no escape. Somewhat like this album.

TRACKLISTING

1.Lucky day overture
2.The Black Rider
3.November
4.Just the right bullets
5.Black box theme
6.T’ain’t no sin
7.Flash pan hunter/intro
8.That’s the way
9.The briar and the rose
10.Russian dance
11.Gospel train/Orchestra
12.I’ll shoot the moon
13.Flash pan hunter
14.Crossroads
15.Gospel train
16.Interlude
17.Oily night
18.Lucky day
19.The last rose of summer
20.Carnival

When I first heard this album I really hated it. It began, as I said in the intro, for me anyway a period of nine years over which I would struggle to try to like Waits’s albums but find myself fighting a losing battle. Apart from one bright spot in 1999, when he released “Mule variations”, and I was able to say after six years I had listened to one of his albums I really liked. But that then was followed by two more in quick succession that tested me sorely again.

Perhaps if I was more familiar with the play this is based on I might enjoy it more, get into it more, but even though, listening back to it here, I don’t quite hate it as much as I did, it’s still a very inaccessible album to me and not one I would tend to put on again unless for review purposes. I find it too avant-garde, too experimental, and sadly for me this was the way, mostly, Waits’s music was to go for the foreseeable future. Personally, I regard it as one of his weakest efforts, and even though I can appreciate it a little better now, much of it still annoys me.

Not to mention that I used always to think the track “Black wings” was on it. It’s not: that’s on Bone machine, so I don’t even have that. So there’s not a lot I can say about this album, other than if you’re I guess a Burroughs fan or a fan of German folktales you may very well enjoy it. I’m not, and I didn’t. I doubt I ever will.

Over a nine-year period the one shining beacon in what became a shroud of darkness and hard times for me with Waits's music was the album he released in 1999, which returned somewhat to his previous style, mixing elements from Rain Dogs with Blue Valentine and even older albums like The heart of Saturday night. It's not that there wasn't any experimentation on it --- one of his cleverest, weirdest and darkest songs, “What's he building?” is on it --- but after the like of The Black Rider and the two albums to follow this, it felt like he had come home, if only for a brief rest and to change his shirt before heading back out into the world of weird and avant-garde.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Variations.jpg
Mule variations --- 1999

This is an album where Kathleen returns to exert her influence, or add her muse, depending on which way you look at their relationship, in a way that she had not done since 1992's Bone Machine. She writes twelve of the sixteen tracks with him, and co-produces the album. And yet, it's a much more organic feel than with Bone Machine, which for all its beauty sounded harsh, stark and almost mechanical at times. There's a lush almost calm over some of the recordings here, and it ends up being as much a folk as a rock album.

“Big in Japan” gets us underway, and in case you were wondering, no, it's not a cover of the Alphaville song! Everything here is original. Reminding me in ways of “Such a scream”, it's a big, echoey, bouncy percussion as the song struts along with a sort of falsetto vocal from Waits, some screeching guitar ad some cool trumpet from Ralph Carney. There's a real Rain Dogs feel then to “Lowside of the road”, a slow, grinding, dark haunting tune that trips along on banjo and guitar, Waits on the optigon organ, and back to his slurred, nearly drunk vocal. “Hold on” slows everything down with a soft ballad reminiscent of “Time”. At five and a half minutes it's almost the longest track on the album but is well beaten by the next one, which at just shy of seven minutes is I think the longest Waits track to date.

“Get behind the mule” sees him in full flight vocally, rasping out the lyric with a sort of phased effect and some fine harmonica taking it along in a sort of Delta Blues manner; I hear echoes of “Gun street girl” here, then the first song he writes solo on the album is “House where nobody lives”, a lovely piano-driven ballad with more than a hint of gospel about it and a fair slice of Country too. This is very like something you would have heard on Closing time, while “Cold water” is more in the Heartattack and Vine style, a boppy, bar-room drinking song sparked by sharp guitar in a very blues vein. He actually nods back to Blue Valentine when he sings ”Slept in the graveyard/ It was cool and still” whereas on that album he was whistlin' past it. The next two are his own creations also, with “Pony” another piano ballad like something off Franks Wild Years, with a nice dobro line from Smokey Hormel and then I have already written extensively about the genius that is “What's he building?” which you can read here http://www.musicbanter.com/members-j...ml#post1164094, but suffice to say it's one of his oddest, best, and most disturbing songs when you read between the lines, and certainly a standout on the album, perhaps my favourite.

“Black market baby” slides along with its hands thrust deep into its pocket, head down, trying not to make eye contact, turns a corner with a quick look over its shoulder and is gone, leaving us standing in the darkness and pretty much unprepared for the sort of tribal-influenced “Eyeball kid”. This album is, I think, the first time Waits has used the DJ technique of spinning decks, which began with “What's he building?” and continues on through the next two tracks. I don't really see their impact to be honest, but someone more familiar with their use may do. Even at that, it's a new direction for the man who is forever kicking over signposts that say “Don't go this way” and gunning his car towards the “Bridge out” sign. A simple piano ballad harking back again to Closing time” for the tender “Picture in a frame” and things stay slow and folky for some fine banjo on “Chocolate Jesus”. In fact, to an extent we might as well be in 1973 now, as “Georgia Lee” could easily have found a home on his debut album, another piano ballad with some mournful violin and a slow, growly vocal. An accusatory lyric: ”Why wasn't God watching?/ Why wasn't God listening? / Why wasn't God there for Georgia Lee?”

Time to up the tempo now, as “Filipino box spring hog” (don't ask!) bops along with wild abandon, Waits almost tipping his hat to Queen's “We will rock you”. I'm serious. Slowing down again then with another piano ballad, “Take it with me”, with Waits at his quietest and most reserved, and we end on a cheery gospel track, as “Come on up to the house” just exudes joy and acceptance and welcome. And for a brief time, welcome back Waits: you've been away too long. He even throws in the signature piano riff from “Innocent when you dream” to finish it off. Wonderful!

TRACKLISTING

1. Big in Japan
2. Lowside of the road
3. Hold on
4. Get behind the mule
5. House where nobody lives
6. Cold water
7. Pony
8. What's he building
9. Black market baby
10. Eyeball kid
11. Picture in a frame
12. Chocolate Jesus
13. Georgia Lee
14. Filipino box spring hog
15. Take it with me
16. Come on up to the house

If Waits fans are divided into two camps (and I'm not saying they are), it's probably between those who prefer the “early” material, say up to about 1985, and those who enjoy the more experimental side he began to show from Swordfishtrombones on, thanks to Kathleen and her Beefheart influence. I am of course firmly in the former section; I love everything he did from Closing time up to and including Rain dogs, but after that I felt he began to move in a direction I was not completely happy with. Franks Wild Years was where things began to change for me, and really, it never quite recovered from that on.

Bone machine was an album I did enjoy, and of course the soundtrack album was good too, but the Waits I knew and loved and had come to know was a long way away from me now, and so this album came as a really unexpected and welcome relief from all the harshness of the ones either side of it. It's a return to the “real” Waits music, for me, and it's rather a pity that it was then followed by two albums which, if memory serves, I totally disliked. As we will see.

Some artistes would think it an achievement to release two albums in the same year. Devin Townsend of course releases about ten every week, but Waits went one better than most here, having both this and the subsequent album, Alice, put out on the very same day in 2002. Both are basically music based on two plays, one of which would crop up in a later album four years later, and to be honest as they both came out simultaneously I have no idea which to do first, so I'm just going with the listing Wiki has on his discography, which puts this one first.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...lood_Money.jpg
Blood money --- 2002
Again, it's a co-production venture between Waits and his wife, and this time she co-writes every single track with him. What was that about “better off without a wife”, Tom? ;) This is another of the “experimental era” Waits albums I have such a hard time with, and I know for a fact that I only listened to both of these albums once, and was singularly unimpressed with them. For me, Mule Variations was the exception to a rule that held true from late 1993 till mid 2002, and again my faith was sorely tested. Let's see if anything has changed in thirteen years.

Perhaps appropriately, given how these albums affected me, the opener is called “Misery is the river of the world”, and has a real Rain Dogs rhythm to it, a sort of slow stomp and a kind of sullen vocal. There is a great line right away: ”If there's one thing you can say about mankind/ There's nothing kind about Man.” Kind of sets the tone I guess but a real Waits gem. He uses the calliope again here, giving everything a real carnival feel, though not a happy one. Must admit, I don't hate this track as much as I remember doing. It is pretty dour though, and the next track “Everything goes to Hell” doesn't really inspire any confidence that it may get any more upbeat. Uptempo yes; the rhythm is very “Jockey full of bourbon” with some fine bass and a spoken vocal from Waits. Nice bongos and timpani percussion and something that sounds like a marimba or xylophone.

“Coney Island baby” has a nice twenties-style slow trumpet intro, lounges along nicely in a New Orleans jazz style and accompanied by lovely cello, and once again he uses that piano line from “Innocent when you dream” right at the end. Creeping along like a drunk jester sidling along the darkened streets, “All the world is green” has another nice trumpet line and Waits's vocal is restrained and almost gentle, then the tempo jumps for “God's away on business”, which I have to be fair, really follows the lines of songs like “Singapore” and “Rain dogs”. Good though. Also relatively short. Great title too. A slow, weaving horn section drives “Another man's vine” (nod back to “Just another sucker on the vine”?) with a very Franks Wild Years vocal. “Knife chase” is an instrumental that manages to conjure up that very image as it shuffles along, something (castanets?) making a sound like someone out of breath. Genius.

“Lullaby” is a beautiful little gentle ballad with cello and violin backing up Waits's acoustic guitar, and it leads into “Starving in the belly of a whale”, which jumps along with fiddle and bells, and the sort of vocal that, again, we hear on “Singapore”, the deep, gruff, ragged one he often uses. Almost a lullaby in itself, “The part you throw away” is a gentle cello-led ballad with a low, husky vocal and a sort of folky slow swing to it, and things slow down further for “Woe”, less than a minute and a half with a passionate slow vocal from Waits backed by cello and violin before we head into the last instrumental, “Calliope” which, rather appropriately, is played by Waits on the calliope, with the album closing on “A good man is hard to find”. Running on a slow organ line with trumpet and trombone backup, it again has a certain twenties feel about it, very slow jazz mixed with big band, ends the album okay but maybe a little of a damp squib to some extent.

TRACKLISTING

1. Misery is the river of the world
2. Everything goes to Hell
3. Coney Island baby
4. All the world is green
5. God's away on business
6. Another man's vine
7. Knife chase
8. Lullaby
9. Starving in the belly of a whale
10. The part you throw away
11. Woe
12. Calliope
13. A good man is hard to find

Meh, it's not as terrible as I remember. Maybe I just needed to give it a fair chance. Certainly no Black Rider, but equally no Mule Variations either. There are good tracks on it certainly, and it's a lot less rooted in the experimental than I had originally remembered. Given a few more listens I might actually come to like it, though I'm not promising myself anything. I suppose it must be accepted that the tone of the songs would have to be tied in to the theme of the play, so perhaps if I knew more about that, I might appreciate the album more. But German expressionist film and theatre is not my thing, so I won't be going there.

Does make me wonder though whether I'll have the same semi-change of heart about the other album released on the same day? Speaking of which...