Tom Waits

(ribot in the back there!)

Ribot good enough that he gets to sit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVVDrPEQZt4&feature=player_embedded

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiJ2E0xGOv8

http://www.tomwaits.com/news/article/146/Peek_At_A_Lyric_From_New_Tom_Waits8217_Album/

never seen this before
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCNDZY4vXPs&feature=player_embedded

also finally getting around to the brawlers box set thing. some amazing stuff! kind of frustrating that the info about when the tracks were recorded / who played on them is so vague, but oh well.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kunmz1iWzo1qz6gpyo1_500.jpg

I'm not a huge fan but I really enjoyed the Boxers set, especially the third disc with the spoken word stuff. The poem about the boy waiting at a diner during a bus ride stopover is particularly great.

aw that's nirvana by bukowski. but yeah what a beaut. what a beaut.
there's some real gold on this that used to live on bootlegs, i think a long series called tales from the dimestore?, vols one to nine or something. almost wonder if they might theoretically hold a little more info about what's what. i like never let go, & lie to me a bunch.

Thanks to Chuck Tatum for:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5X4N2exOsU&feature=player_embedded#!

HAW!

http://www.somekindofawesome.com/journal/2011/8/22/listen-tom-waits-bad-as-me.html

I like it

was that actually taken down within the last 9 minutes?

Woah! Yes, I guess it was!

It sounded much like Tom Waits FWIW. Brash, honking, stompjng Tom Waits rather than sad Tom Waits. U know the drill

anti ppl be lurking ilm

I'm anti-ppl

You guys are right about Nirvana upthread. It's been on every Christmas compilation I've made since I first heard it.

The poem about the boy waiting at a diner during a bus ride stopover is particularly great.
yeah! almost wish there was a whole album of this sort of thing. he has an amazing speaking voice, even when he's not hamming it up.

I made a compilation of many of his best spoken word pieces, stuff like "What's he building in there". A bit disjointed in feel but it captures that incredible side of his work. I wish I flat-out loved his singing but I just don't.

U know the drill

yeah it's funny how much this is exactly what you expect a new tom waits song is going to sound like, but, you know, nice also. spoken bits are v wolf.

am i totally reactionary if i prefer his pre-swordfishtrombones stuff?

nope, otm.

it's like loving the complex human sprawl of a man but remembering the innocence of the child he was

thanks, i feel validated!

you're all wrong.

Nah, I'm kidding - you can like what you like, you don't have to ask me!

There is something quite devastating and melancholy and genuine about a lot of early Waits. Albums like Small Change are gut-wrenchingly desperate while Heart Of Saturday Night is so wistful and starry-eyed. I have a lot of time for this era. He had a tendency to go from genuinely affecting to full-on hammy, but by reinventing himself in the early '80s he managed to hit a happy medium through pure theatre.

I love that cartoon "The Street Tom Waits Grew Up On" upthread. Who did that?

So, the new album is out. Ilxors?

Was listening to Rain Dogs yesterday and I think that was definitely his peak. Franks Wild Years and Bone Machine and Mule Variations all have a couple of good songs, but it's been diminishing returns since '85.

I like "Hell Broke Luce" because I'm feeling sympathetic to his groanin' and moanin' this week but so far the album sounds like it won't convert any skeptics.

the kinda auto herk-&-jerks didn't grab me when i streamed this one time, but a bunch of the others did. it's weird how his records somehow sound very 'tidy', in spite of the unruliness therein, like maybe they're put together a little too neatly. he has some great players. guitars are lovely, a beautiful fiddle came in halfway through a song.

Hell Broke Luce is amazing - ultraviolent shellshock crunk-metal.

Still can't get behind the Mule Variations. A few good songs, but loads of slow, repetitive clunkers - those first four tracks are a real hurdle.
(I really like this new album on the whole).

Maybe two tracks aside, I think Mule Variations is pretty unfuckwithable!

Gimme the ballads and "What's He Building?" and you can have the rest. But the ballads are amazing.

it's weird how his records somehow sound very 'tidy', in spite of the unruliness therein, like maybe they're put together a little too neatly. he has some great players. guitars are lovely, a beautiful fiddle came in halfway through a song.

― mid-song laughing elvis (schlump), Friday, October 21, 2011 8:51 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah i was listening to bone machine and i remember thinking it was so "weird" when i was younger but he's really a classic songwriter type

but he is ultra-violent shellshock crunk-metal do u see

i find tom waits ultra classical-definition Pretentious i.e. a lot of to-do about not much. i like some of his ballads because i like ballads and his sad clown is more palatable to me than his grotesque clown.

yeah i was listening to bone machine and i remember thinking it was so "weird" when i was younger but he's really a classic songwriter type

i think that's true, and that there's a lot of interesting ways in which his weirdness reinforce his normalness (like i remember hearing that he wrote a lot of real gone on a drum, & you can kinda see how that might encourage the kind of very straightforward melodies that you are limited to if your palette is a drum and singing, making the record v melodic if in a roundabout way). i was really talking about his production though; i think i wish that he was recorded kinda 'off mic' so you got more of an idea of the sound and scale of his voice than the kind of very literal and throaty recording of how bluesy and fucked it is.

+ lol @ sad clown

BM was my first Waits album too, and it took a few listens to ballads like "Who Are You" and "Whistle Down the Wind" that the guy has a sentimental streak a county wide.

*to realize that

Amazing to have that ever being in doubt, having started with Waits with FRANK'S WILD YEARS and giving everything before that a listen before long after.

Goes all the way back to "Grapefruit Moon."

yeah, the dude is sort of a walking sentimental streak. i think he makes it work though.

First album is mostly sentimental ballads, no? "Martha" etc

the new one is really good! kinda surprised i thought he'd jumped the shark and tipped into self-parody on real gone

LOVE the recession ballad in his falsetto (!)

lex you liking tom waits is quite incomprehensible to me.

I mean, I believe you obv, but I'm a bit shaken too.

I learned the title track on guitar recently. Really love that song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbktJytZvTY

thanks for that.

i find it a little strange (and disappointing, if i'm honest!) that his old-man singing voice is so similar to his young-man similar voice!

saw that posted elsewhere, love it

Tom Traubert's Blues was the first Tom Waits song I ever heard. Played on KZON in the 90's as I was driving around in the central AZ desert trying to sell process control equipment. I was hooked for life.

Waits' Spotify top 10 seems evenly divided between his romantic standards that are often covered and clanky tracks which must syncs from edgy TV shows.

I've really enjoyed the Song by Song podcast which works through his entire discography, discussing each track. Really reawakened my appreciation for his depth and empathy, makes him seem less like an artist with distinct phases and schticks - there is a broad vision there.

Oh this podcast is great! Must have been challenging to cover absolutely everything including live tracks and instrumentals etc

New compulation, Waits songs covered by beginning artists like Bruce Springsteen and Pete Seger

https://officialtomwaits.store/products/where-the-willow-and-the-dogwood-grow-compilation-cd

surprised they couldn't fit Scarlett Johansson in this

Bob Seger! Which given the track covered, seems preferable to Pete Seeger. These are all existing covers, right?

yea i saw this and thought this was just a compilation of existing covers

yeah, nothing new as far as I can tell indeed (+ apologies for mentioning the wrong Se(e)ger)

Surprised Rod Stewart isn't on there, he covered at least a couple of Waits songs that became hits (and paid for a swimming pool as Waits joked). They sound pretty MOR, but so are a few others on there.

That compilation is not being marketed to Rod Stewart fans.

i don't know, I kind of love Rod's "Downtown Train"

His version of Tom Traubert's Blues is excellent as well. I'm agnostic on Waits but I certainly prefer Rod's covers to the originals.

Shawn Colvin's version of "Heart of Saturday Night" is the first way I heard it

Wolfgang Ambros recorded a Tom Waits covers album with all of the songs translated into Viennese dialect. Think I prefer a couple of them to the originals, such as 'Groß in Kagran' ('Big in Japan').

Ace does tons of these songwriter comps, I own the Randy Newman, Paul Williams and Willie Nelson ones. Don't think they usually get advertised on the artist's website tho.

Shawn Colvin's version of "Heart of Saturday Night" is the first way I heard it

When I I saw Jonathan Richman years ago, he opened with it, and that was the first time I’d heard it. Holly Cole’s version soon after.

Dion did a great version in the 1970s too.

Collab with Massive Attack

https://tomwaits.ffm.to/bootsontheground

I love Tom and I love Massive Attack but that's a lotta money for one song and a spoken word thingy.

Will wait for it to show up on a benefit CD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-57FrioeuE

When asked about the collaboration, Waits said:

"One day many years ago, I accepted an invitation from Massive Attack to collaborate. Their long release delay never worried me. Today, as in all of mankind's yesterdays, guarantees this type of song will never go out of style. Man's folly of fiascos is a feast for the flies. Hence, the B side of Massive Attack’s upcoming 12 inch "The Fly" features my appreciation for the winged nuisance."

Massive Attack is embracing an eco-conscious vinyl pressing and packaging process for this record to leave a smaller carbon footprint. This ‘EcoSonic’ edition will be 180g vinyl in colors, red, white and blue and are packed at random.

I thought I had misheard the lyrics on first listen but it really is "big titties, big titties, holler and burn down cities" which frankly is better then 99% of the chants I've taken part in recently

just in case not everybody noticed it, the song is built with a slowed down sample of The Earth Died Screaming (from 1992's Bone Machine)

okay thanks now i've got the Scorpions absolute banger Big City Nights in my head but its got Titties.

welcome to my 12 year old brain