Entertainment For Lively Minds
Tom Waits - guidance appreciated
Posted by Red Umpire on 5 November 2009 - 12:20pm.
The massive's advice would be appreciated.
Following Gatz's recent post on his favourite album, Tom Waits' Rain Dogs, I finally took the plunge and bought said item and it's hardly been off the iPod since. I have also purchaed a copy of Swordfishtrombones, which is what's been on the iPod when I've been giving Rain Dogs a breather.
So the question is: in what order should I tackle the rest of his output?
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I love
Mule Variations and Bone Machine and there's some great stuff on Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards
It depends on what your looking for
Sword.. and Rain Dogs were the transitionary albums betwen his early piano balladeer recordings, of which Looking for the Heart of Saturday Night is my favourite, and more rowdy experimental noise albums. Other than Rain Dogs and LftHoSN I would point you towards Frank's Wild Years and Alice.
If you like what Waits is about then most of them are a fairly safe bet, so long as you don't play a bar-bum piano album expecting ecelectic Weimar caberet or vice versa.
purchase in this order
I did
Please Note: Not my favourites in order, but the order in which I purchased his releases. (Though that sounds a little sick...)
Rain Dogs
Swordfishtrombones (you're good so far)
Blood Money
Alice (two similar albums in style of SFT & RD)
Blue Valentine
Small Change
Frank's Wild Years
Nighthawks At The Diner
Mule Variations
Bone Machine
Real Gone
The Black Rider
Closing Time
After that its up to you. I have bought the rest, but they're more filler in my opinion.
Heart Of A Saturday Night
Is definitely not filler. Worth it for the title track alone. The other one worth investigating if you like the jazzier side of Tom is One From The Heart. It is the soundtrack to a Francis Ford Coppolla film (I think) and is brilliant. Most of the tracks are duets with Crystal Gayle and the mix of her clean voice and his throaty sound makes for a perfect combination. In fact I'm going to play it right now.
'Closing Time'...
There are plenty of reasons to love it, but perhaps the most significant is that it contains Ol' '55, one of the most beautiful songs you'll ever hear.
Surely
Surely Martha is the best song on Closing Time?
I've got no time for the old goat once he stopped singing properly and became a drunken hobo.
Martha...
... is one of the best songs ever, never mind just on that album. Some people will undoubtedly scoff, but Hue and Cry's version is even better (it's on Piano and Voice - sadly not available for me to link to on Spotify).
As for TW albums, Blue Valentine is an absolute must.
sorry, but his singing back
sorry, but his singing back in the day was no more "proper" than it is now. And no less drunk, now I think of it.
Mule Variations
This is a great album and would definitely be a good next album to get. It has Big In Japan which to me is one of the best openers for a Waits album. And Hold On which is up there with anything off Rain Dogs.
Closing Time is also excellent, although his voice doesn't quite have that "just gargled with razor blades" sound that he has in later albums.
Rain Dogs is my favourite Waits album too.
On certain days it's probably my favourite of all time.
"Nighthawks At The Diner" is a (supposedly) live album so you get some stories in between the songs.
If you get "Franks Wild Years" then you'll have his mid career trilogy. The albums before these 3 are mostly jazzy, bluesy, country type ballads and are all on Asylum records. You can't go wrong with any of them really but my least favourite is "Foreign Affair".
Hopefully not incurring the wrath of Big Guxy here but my least favourite of all his stuff is "One From The Heart". That's not to say my least favourites aren't any good (cos they are good) , it's just that I like the others better.
You have about 20 to choose from. Get something from the Asylum years. You've already got a couple from the Island years. The Black Rider can be hard work so I'd get that last. He's been with Anti for the last few years and I'd recomend "Mule Variations" or the triple cd "Orphans".
Of course you can go the easier route and get the compilations "The Asylum Years" and "Beautiful Maladies - The Island Years".
He's got a new live album "Glitter And Doom" coming out this month. You can download at least half a dozen of the new songs from his website for free!
Happy hunting!
Definitely no wrath
From me. I got into Tom Waits through Blue Valentine and Heart Of A Saturday Night so One From The Heart feels like a natural progression and as I said, I love the way the two voices work.
Cheers All
I think I'll try Frank's Wild Years next, but am looking forward to dipping into the entire back catalogue.
I should also have said that I've got hold of a copy of NPR's really rather wonderful free download of his Glitter and Doom show in Atlanta, Georgia on 5 July 2009.
Good choice
"Frank's Wild Years" has got some superb songs on it.
My favourite being this mixture of sadness, exquisite lyrics and pained performance.
Also brightened up the film "Domino" for me as well.
Rain Dogs
I had this on vinyl pretty much the week it came out, and thought it was absolutely fantastic - played it once a week or so for years before it got put away.
Replaced it on CD a few years (maybe 10...) ago, and it's never sounded right. Something in the '80's production really niggles.
These days, whenever I require a Tom Waits fix, it's always Closing Time. Probably the most underrated singer-songwriter album of the early '70s
I'd recommend Bone Machine and Real Gone
plus Mule Variations as well, I'm a huge fan of SFT and onwards.
I've always had less of a soft spot for his stuff before that, maybe I should take another listen...
You're pretty safe with 'Tom Waits'
(in inverted commas)up until 'Franks Wild Years'. All of those albums, more or less, are part of the same body of work, including the 2 'Early Years' CDs. 'Blue Valentine' is his archetypical album, my personal favourite, however, is the S/T 'One From The Heart' .From 'Bone Machine/Black Rider on, he's been criticised in some quarters for endlessly repeating the same two songs - the clanky weird one and the sad ballad. It's a justified criticism to some extent. Favourite song? 'Kentucky Ave' off 'Blue Valentine' Still reduces me to tears on occasion.
I disagree
There aren't many artists with two records as different as Bone Machine and The Black Rider. And one listen to Orphans shows that the man can still make a range of material - your categories don't cover the spoken word tracks, or the gospel outings, or the rockabilly, or a whole range of other stuff.
If you don't like a period, it's SO easy to just say "this is kinda all just piano ballads". After all, couldn't you make the exact same statement about the early years, except, er, without the second genre to beef it up?
Love it all.
It's never ending.....
....you've caught the bug. There's 20 or so albums, then there are many hundreds of bootleg shows/tv appearances/radio appearances to collect. I never tire of the VH1 Storytellers show. It can probably be found on youtube. There are a few books too!
I often wonder what would have happened to Tom if The Eagles and The Boss had never covered his songs way back when. That must've given him the money to carry on, as I can't imagine his early work sold all that well.
Anyone...? Anyone...?
No one has mentioned Heartattack And Vine!
I remember when I first heard it - I'd never heard of him and presumed he was black. It was released around the same time as Bruce's The River, if I remember well, and while all my mates were raving about Brooce, Tom became the man for me. I still listen to Heartattack and reckon it's one of his most easy albums to get into. Not a duff track. Then I went back to Blue Valentine (superb), then bought the brilliant One From The Heart (up there with Krall and Plant for voices blending beautifully) and thought he was utter genius. Then I went further back and hated what I heard! Then I bought his newer albums on release, but they just got more and more pretentious and self indulgent so, after the appalling Bone Machine, I gave up on the man. Mule Variations, though, did re-ignite my interest again being similarish in style to dirty ol' Heartattack And Vine.
Tommy Waits
Not one mention for the great "Foreign Affairs" ! Jeez!
What's he listening to in there?
Start with the Asylum stuff. It's the best. Cherry pick after that, as advised up above. There is some wonderful, wonderful music to discover on those Asylum albums. Eschew the 'Best Of The Asylum Years' comp if you can, and buy the albums they plundered for it instead.
Blue Valentine
Is the essential Tom Waits album. All the others were either striving for it or variations of it.