Tom Waits

The spoken word disc of orphans is really great

agreed, that 3rd disc has some great weird digressions

yeah i ignored Orphans at first, but most of it is great.

The Alice musical demos are the best. Alice recut as an album 10 years later is less so.

my alice demos are on a DVD-R of MP3s that has suffered sea-change and cannot be mounted in ye drive any longer, alas

I've never heard the Alice demos, but I like the album a lot. It and Blood Money are closer to European art music than the junkyard-folk-blues stuff he'd been doing on Mule Variations. Plus I probably have a soft spot for those albums because that was when I got to interview him.

Mule Variations - other than 1 or 2 tracks is a bit straight and bluesy-woosy for me. Not my favourite style of Tom Waits
Real Gone - Also straight and bluesywoosy but I kinda like it more? Bit too long though
Orphans - Yeah the third disc is a keeper. Enjoy some of the ballads on the second disc. Can't really get into much on the first disc as, again, it's a bit hoary tin-can blues and not my thing
Bad As Me - kind of a nice crystallisation of the previous decade. It's not a cool, conceptual album at all, and it's really just Waits being Waits and not giving a fuck. Some ideas are rehashed from previous albums, but it's got some great moments

Here's a playlist of later Waits stuff (no Alice or Blood Money stuff on here) https://open.spotify.com/user/1153731601/playlist/39Hr6Cn4EkRtYbJnmZgWZl

someone who has those Alice demos should upload them (assuming they are not officially online)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3PFsJaE39A

of course, YouTube :-)

All the remasters (so, everything except the Island albums) are on Bandcamp now.

https://tomwaits.bandcamp.com/

When I was in my twenties and worked in "the biz," I misspelled his name in a letter ("Dear Mr. Waites"). My boss discovered it after it had already gone out, and was (understandably) quite pissed off, ha ha.

so... is he doing the Island albums next?

Appears on the new ribot record

I think I don't need the remasters. Does anyone have any of them? Does one or two stand out?

heard the real gone one was great, perhaps ilxors can comment

Is that one simply remastered or remixed as well?

I've only heard the Real Gone one. it's good and there are a couple of differences but I wouldn't say it's essential

All female covers album out Nov. 22

https://www.spin.com/2019/08/tom-waits-covers-album-phoebe-bridgers-aimee-mann/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oncg1WJP8uU

Man, they really fucked up "Hoist That Rag" on the remaster
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orxPuV06jgM

WTF? Are all the tracks remixed/rerecorded like that?

One of the best guitar performances of Marc Ribot's career, sure, why not turn it way down until its barely audible. What a baffling decision.

Nothing else is that egregious but the original mix/master sounds better all the way around

i pulled up hoist that rag on spotify a couple of weeks ago because i was in the mood and i honestly thought it was a cover for a minute. so weird.

whoo, that is a serious downgrade.

Ah, better times for the Real Gone songs (but with Judah Bauer instead of Ribot)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR5SHuJDlUQ

^^I love that version so much, incredible performance.

Been thinking about Waits again lately. I have that Real Gone remaster on vinyl and it's quite jarring.

I put together an extensive career-spanning 'Best of' playlist here https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4FbY20jZVLSCXvfI4W1rvr?si=lMeXBmuATlWtgaNsbFfNww

This is a timely revive for me. Honestly cant remember the last time I put any of the records on, its surely been over 10 years. But just in the last couple weeks he's randomly been on my mind again (apocalypse? nostalgia?) and I've been thinking its time to revisit

it is kind of weird. Someone I know posted an interview with him a couple of days ago, and I got so excited I almost posted the same interview here, until I noticed it was maybe 20 years old. When this thread popped up again I for some reason figured it was someone else posting the same interview, like it had just been unearthed or something, but no, just a bunch of unrelated folks just thinking about Tom Waits.

^^^^ this.

A "press conference" from 10 or 15 years ago kept appearing on my Twitter feed this week.

This is the one I saw:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojX3ef2Gfgc

LOL Josh I totally watched that within the last week as well! Looks like it was just uploaded in June, it must be making the rounds of peoples YouTube recommendations. Its a neat interview, its fun to see him in such a good mood.

He should name his next album "Algorithm."

I've suddenly found myself enjoying his 21st century records much more than when they came out. A major correction after Mule Variations, which felt like the Swordfishtrombone persona was tapped out.

I went back to Bad As Me yesterday and it was better than I remember. I did enjoy it at the time but it didn't seem to have its own 'character' like most of his other albums, more a distillation of previous work. Still, it's a real solid hoot anyway

I'm sure he's fine, personally and financially, but I file Tom Waits near the top of the list of artists who right now probably wished they toured a bit more.

I've heard that the early alcohol consumption and later theatrical distancing were there because of serious stage anxiety.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Psk3rmjonQA

That's what i saw a few days ago ^^

I will absent-mindedly find myself singing "God's Away On Business" while doing a mindless chore, it's like having a song stuck in my head for the last ~17 years.

Xxxpost: it’s been a while since I heard “hoist that rag” and that remaster is so alien to me. Where those horns added in? I don’t remember them being there before unless they were way back in the mix. I like how those horn sound but without the guitar it’s missing something primal about it. It was the heart of the song.

Is this more of a remix then? Are all Waits recent remasters like this where it’s more of a second version than a real remaster?

I think it's just Real Gone that sounds significantly different.

From Waits' Bandcamp page:

Grammy nominated and featuring an entirely new mix that better fulfills the dynamic musical soundscape Waits/Brennan envisioned from the beginning. To accomplish this they returned to the multitrack session tapes and enhanced certain instruments or a vocal arrangement to create a sound that better represents the full bodied more sonically vibrant and jagged edges that Waits and Brennan were originally going for but lost.

It's the Iggy Raw Power mix of Waits releases

damn

it sounds like a lot of elements in the mix are

real gone

The horns are definitely new.

Tom Waits: "Ima fix Hoist That Rag"

Ribot's playing on that reminds me of his Cuban band, he must have really been in that mode at the time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0IPcqI3NH8

listening to the Real Gone remaster again, tbh if you didn't know what the OG "Hoist That Rag"sounded like there would be no issues. the album sounds great.