The Tom Waits question (1 Viewer)

[Hector Grey]

still, yid murder people and mortgage your future just to see it. maybe i'll start riding mr purcell just to be on the safe side.

 

[simp]

Post for me - especially the versions on the live 'Big Time' album... Class.

For the record, the new albums are based on the scores that Waits did for two operas with Robert Wilson - the songs on 'Alice' drawn from 'Alice'(1992), inspired by Lewis Carroll and the Alice books, and 'Blood Money' drawn from 'Wozzeck'(2001) based on the Georg Buchner play and seen in Dublin last October.

Nice covers...

 

[Unclealo]

Hector Grey (28 Feb, 2002 12:04 p.m.):
still, yid murder people and mortgage your future just to see it. maybe i'll start riding mr purcell just to be on the safe side.

Q. What do they call Daragh Purcell's carefully trimmed locks in Mountjoy?

A. Reigns!

(well that probably funnier when it was told about Ming the Merciless and his platted locks..)

 

[Pantone247]

where does Heart Attack and Vine fit in??

thats the only one I have and I likes it so I guess its my favourite.

oh and Hector, yeah my photo is everyones favourite landlady murdering speed freak Joe Meek...hurrah!!

 

[Hector Grey]

i fort so. i never realised he was purple. are all things purple your heroes?

 

[nlgbbbblth]

Pantone247 (28 Feb, 2002 12:50 p.m.):
where does Heart Attack and Vine fit in??

1980 isn't it? Pre-SFT. Great album

 

[nlgbbbblth]

Hector Grey (28 Feb, 2002 08:30 a.m.):
then it'd be post sftb. but i reckon he does things in threes....
as for closing time, the man himself hates that record. he did all that billy joel bruce sprinsteen crap to get the leeway to do the stuff he does now. but he wrote some smashing toons. as a musician and a visonary.. i think swordfishtrombones is one of the greatest albums ever, cos of it's, shall we say, colour? but!!! i think small change is the best pre sftb.... but bone machine would be the best post.... i fink swordfish is the pinnacle of the mans career. so there.

it's early. i'm hungover. i wish tom were here.

I think "Closing Time" is a lovely record - Leonard Cohen disowns "Recent Songs" now and that's a killer album.

As for Bruce Springsteen - that man's first four LPs are really good. After that there isn't too much good stuff save for half of "Nebraska" and "The Ghost of Tom Joad".

 

[Hector Grey]

i still quite like closing time, tho i havn't listened to it in ages... but it's like a very different tom waits, like they'd play hope i don't fall in love with you on ally macbeal. imagine vonda trying earth dies screaming instead....

anyhoo, that's what the man thinks. closing time: great break up music. in fact most of tom's work is great break up music...

 

[nlgbbbblth]

Hector Grey (28 Feb, 2002 03:40 p.m.):
i still quite like closing time, tho i havn't listened to it in ages... but it's like a very different tom waits, like they'd play hope i don't fall in love with you on ally macbeal. imagine vonda trying earth dies screaming instead....

anyhoo, that's what the man thinks. closing time: great break up music. in fact most of tom's work is great break up music...

The *nice* Waits is "Closing Time". I could see that on AMcB.

Chris Bell's I Am The Cosmos album is great whiskey music.

 

[nlgbbbblth]

I'm listening to it now. It's great to have a week off work.

 

[snakybus]

Methinks Hector has broken up to a Tom Waits song?

Some of those sentimental songs were great, like "Martha" or "San Diego Serenade", for example. But I remember listening to those as a kid, because my brother liked Tom Waits, and finding them hard to listen to. Even his ballads are not immediately accessible, because they have a certain depth, subtlety and even darkness to them. There's no way Billy Joel would write songs like that. And probably not Mister Springsteen either. They (Billy & Brooce)appealed to a wider audience who also liked Meat Loaf and Bonnie Tyler, even though they were probably better than those fuckers.

Anyway, there's another side to Tom Waits: the alco-bluesman-raconteur-stageman-storyteller. Listen to Nighthawks at the Diner if you ever get the chance. It's Tom in flying form, throwing out one-liners and great songs mixed with piano jazz.

One of Tom's great lines, when asked about some song in an interview:

"I could eat a bowl of alphabet soup and shit better lyrics".

ha ha

 

[Hector Grey]

yeah, nighthawks. i used to listen to that and sit up on balmy summer nights drinking whiskey and playing cards. doesn't really stand up to the scrutiny of time, me fears.

small change anyone? small change. didn't rod stewart do tom trauberts blues? ninny.

 

[pete]

Hector Grey (28 Feb, 2002 04:20 p.m.):
didn't rod stewart do tom trauberts blues? ninny.

yep

and downtown train

 

[Hector Grey]

yeah. bruce did jersey girl. tim buckley did martha. someone covered soldiers things recently... no idea who. screaming jay hawkins did heart attack and vine whihc made tom a very rich man cos they never asked him and he sued them to pieces.

you think he'd be over here more often, what with the wife being irish and that.

oh, and snakybus, many times. many. times.

 

[rumpus]

heartattack is Tom blues album - he made it because wanted gruff and simple after the first experimental stuff he did...

also I think he was drunk for the whole thing.

nighthawkes is great

so is raindogs, which along with sft and franks wild years forms a loose trilogy - which pretty much culminates in Big Time.

Big Time is like a portrait of frank, flicking playingcards at a glass on the floor and hiding behind his pencil mustache and a miner's lamp

christ I love it!

another quote:

"It's much harder to make it in this business if you're your own idea instead of somebody elses"

another

"Chuckie Weis is the kind of guy who'd sell you a rat's ass for a wedding ring...and I'm just the kind of guy who'd buy it."



he's the only musician who I really will feel sad about when he's gone

 

[egg_]

Mule Variations made me sad. Sounded to me like a man who has finally run out of steam and is coasting (possible exception: Big in Japan)

 

[Unclealo]

egg_ (04 Mar, 2002 10:48 a.m.):
Mule Variations made me sad. Sounded to me like a man who has finally run out of steam and is coasting (possible exception: Big in Japan)

Ah, Its not that bad! What about 'What's he building in there?'. The chicken noises in Chocalate Jesus are deadly!

Someone summed up that album quite well saying it was like he was taking stock of all the high points of his 'career'.

 

[Burgerbarbaby]

Someone earlier said that Waits albums seem to go in threes, style wise. I totally agree with that, although looking at the discography now, it could be fours. Mule Variations is at the end of a set, and I have to say I think it's the weakish transitional album of the last three. Black Rider is a magnificent, dark, scary, Berlin cabaret album, then his best work, Bone Machine, more or less the same vocabulary but starting to get hillbilly, then Mule Variations, still bitter and angry, but then you have Git behind the Mule and all that stuff...he's moving on. I totally wouldn't say that he's past it though, I mean apart from One From The Heart (Yiiiich), I don't think he's made a bad album at all. I left all my Waits stuff at home, and I have't been able to listen to any of it in weeks, ArSE.
Did anybody get to see the thing he did in the Gate? What can we expect from the albums?
Is that story about him and Shane MacGowan busking together true?
Many questions.

True facts:
He said he wanted to call his child Senator.
He also said the only thing an Eagles record is good for is keeping the dust off your turntable. After having written a song for them.