Tom Waits

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A small pie will soon be eaten
Member Since: Aug 26, 2004

A reference from CtpTripps inspired me to have a cheeky google for Tom Waits.

I know very little about him but i'm very keen to learn a great deal more.

I can really see a lot of Heath Ledger's 'joker' in him. Obviously an insperation.




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A small pie will soon be eaten
Member
Since: Aug 26, 2004


Oct 12, 2009 07:41 am

Dead set next video is





As an Aussie i'm stunned! Great Interpretation.

Is Waltzing Matilda a known song in the US?

http://www.unitedmusicians.info
Contributor
Since: Nov 11, 2007


Oct 12, 2009 10:52 am

I like Tom Waits quite a bit...and I like Frank Zappa even more. Which is why I love this:




I am not a crook's head
Member
Since: Mar 14, 2003


Oct 12, 2009 01:11 pm

The "Waltzing Mathilda" song is actually called "Tom Traubert's Blues". It was somewhat of a hit in the '70s. I think that "The Piano Has Been Drinking" was his biggest hit, other than when Rod Stewart covered "Downtown Train" and made a gajillion dollars with it. Tom Waits wrote that song for his 1985 album Rain Dogs.

I love Tom Waits, I've been a big fan for a long time now. He has a few distinct phases to his career, each with its own interesting aspects.

There's the 1970's late-night diner troubador, the 1980's found-sound experimentalist, and the modern-day incarnation that's a little bit of everything. I love just about all of it. If you're adventurous, I'm sure that you'll find lots of stuff in his catalog that'll make you laugh or cry.

I'm pretty familiar with his entire catalog (except a few spots in the late 80s) so let me know if you would like some pointers to some gems in his catalog.

And here is my absolute favorite Tom Waits interview ever, right after he performs "Eggs and Sausage":




Czar of Turd Polish
Member
Since: Jun 20, 2006


Oct 12, 2009 01:45 pm

Love the waits :) Rain Dogs is my favorite, his songs have the power to bring you elsewhere when your eyes are closed. When I was trying to mess around with vox on that last song I kept hearing something familiar, it was the "singapore" song on that album.

I am not a crook's head
Member
Since: Mar 14, 2003


Oct 12, 2009 01:47 pm

If you like the type of music posted so far in this thread, then you'll enjoy his earlier works (1973-1980). It's all boozy, bluesy, jazz-influenced beatnik poetry set to a chamber pop backdrop of upright bass, trap kit drums, some sax/trumpet/strings, and Tom singing and playing the piano and occasionally the guitar. The lyrics are all about the people he meets and places he frequents between sundown and sunup...bars, all-night-diners, strip clubs, city streets, back alleys. He really paints a pretty vivid picture of the American metropolitan scene after dark through his early albums.

Here are his albums from this period, with original release dates. He put out an album every year for 6 years start off his career, so there's lots to choose from (* means I own it and recommend it):

- Closing Time* (1973)
- The Heart Of Saturday Night* (1974)
- Nighthawks At The Diner* (1975)
- Small Change* (1976)
- Foreign Affairs (1977)
- Blue Valentine* (1978)
- Heartattack And Vine* (1980)

Closing Time was his debut, under a crummy producer that wanted him to become the next Billy Joel. His voice is quite amazing on that album (the "Ice Cream Man" song that Quincysan posted above is from Closing Time). There's none of that gravelly, gin-soaked buzz-saw of a voice that he's known for. He actually sounds like a baritone choir boy. There are some great songs on this album, but it lacks the style points of his later works.

Heart Of Saturday Night really starts his streak of nailing the American night. Great lines are all over this album: "Fishing for a good time starts with throwing in your line", or "But you've packed and unpacked/So many times you've lost track/And the steam heat is drippin' off the walls", or one of my favorite verses "And a Wisconsin hiker with a cue-ball head/He's wishing he was home in a Wiscosin bed/But there's fifteen feet of snow in the East/Colder then a welldigger's ***". And who couldn't love the title track's nostalgic tales about cruising the main strip in your hometown "And you got paid on Friday/And your pockets are jinglin'/And you see the lights/You get all tinglin'/cause you're cruisin' with a 6/And you're looking for the heart of Saturday night". Just classic.

Nighthawks At The Diner is one of his albums that got the worst critical reception, but it's one of my absolute favorites. It's half stand-up comedy, half beatnik jazz/poetry. This album, to me at least, marks when he first hits his stride as the cool-as-hell beatnik barfly you'd see at the end of the bar, watching everything happen out of the corner of his eye. His lyrics are densely packed into each song, bursting with ideas, imagery, interior rhymes, pop-culture references of the day, and resurrected catch phrases from bygone eras. If you want a crash course in Americana that stretches from the 1920's to the 1970's, then definitely give this album a listen.

Small Change is undoubtedly where Tom has completely undergone the transition to the gargling-hot-road-tar, voice-as-an-assult-weapon phase of his singing career. Just listen to the difference between the last words on Nighthawks to the first syllables of "Tom Traubert's Blues" on Small Change. It's downright startling. It's immediately apparent that Tom isn't interested in writing hits for the chicks in the front row. Instead he's intent on becoming the spokesman for the blue-collar, high-functioning alcoholic that's awake and drinking way too much, way too late on a weeknight. He's dedicated to doing quality control on every strip club, dive bar, and all-night diner in the Los Angeles metropolitan region. This is the album that has his most well-known original "The Piano Has Been Drinking". There is some great stuff on this album, and his songwriting and lyric writing have strengthened considerably since Nighhawks.

The next couple of albums I'm not too familiar with, although I have listened to them. They're very much in the same vein as Small Change both musically and lyrically.

Heartattack And Vine marks the last that we get to hear of Tom during his barfly persona phase. He's obviously gotten bored of the whole drunk beatnik schtick by this point, and his own alcohol and drug abuse have started to catch up with him. This album also marks the first apperance of a distorted electric guitar on one of his albums (on the title track). There are still some gems here, with some more awesomely quotable lines like "Don't you know there ain't no devil, that's just God when He's drunk".

After this album, he did a soundtrack for One For The Heart, a rather forgettable album for any fan of his 1970's output. It does contain a servicable duet with Crystal Gale though.

It was shortly after Heartattack And Vine that he met his wife-to-be and main creative collaborator in Kathleen Brennan. She really changed his life, got him clean and sober, and his music drastically changed as a result. The word "drastically" doesn't do this genre shift justice. I'll consult a thesaraus and get back to you with a word big enough to describe how sharp of a left turn Tom Waits took between his album in 1980 and his album in 1983. It was so radical that his label refused to put it out. He had to issue the album on a thrash metal label called Island Records.

Starting in 1983, he put out a trio of albums that totally changed the way that I thought about music. The 3 albums Swordfishtrombones, Rain Dogs, Frank's Wild Years are an odyssey through a very creative yet deranged mind of a musical genius. You'll either love them or hate them, but either way you can't deny their incredible departure from any sort of popular music of the time and their innovation in their use of pawn shop instruments, found sound, hand-made do-it-yourself instruments, and whatever happened to be lying around at the time.

Even I have a tough time with some of this material, but these albums really really changed my whole perception of what the goal of music is in my life. It's about looking INTO the song, seeing the guts, the nuts, the bolts, the core ideas and how they're dressed in the accessories of instrumentation. It's about the imagery generated by not only the lyrics, but the sonic "rooms" that he builds around each song's idea and the odd characters and decorations that inhabit these rooms.

The opposite seems to hold true for pop music, it's all about the outside of the song, about the shiny, polished exterior like the paint job on a car. But if the drivetrain and suspension are shot, no shiny paint job can make the car a classic. The same goes for music, and Tom's music taught me that. A primer-grey 1975 El Camino might look rough around the edges, but if you open the hood and there's a pristine 454 straight 8 in there, you know you've got something special. And it's almost like a secret you know? Not very many people will look past that rough, abrasive exterior and give the car a chance at growing on them. But the ones that do are rewarded with something very powerful. OK so enough with the car metaphor but I think it actually got my point across pretty well :-)

Sorry about the long post, but I get really excited when I get a chance to talk about Waits. And I don't get very many chances.

I actually got to see him live last summer. It was truly awesome. What a showman, and not a pyrotechnic display in sight. Just pure talent and personality in front of a crowd.

http://www.unitedmusicians.info
Contributor
Since: Nov 11, 2007


Oct 12, 2009 03:55 pm

Wow, from this video, I definitely see what Bleak was talking about regarding the influence Waits must have had on the Joker's character. Also...you've sparked my interest in Waits enough to go find some albums.

I'll try the Half Price Bookstore in Westport...

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