Foreign Affairs

So this marathon still is not going as I had originally planned. In cany case, I don't have much to say about this particular 1977 album. It is good. It does have some great lyrics, but right in there in the middle of his discography, it feels redundant and even a little boring, despite the surprisingly sweet duo with Bette Midler. Maybe it's my mood today. It is nice and loungy, and I suspect it would be quite nice on a lazy Sunday morning in bed, or not so lazy Saturday night in front of the fireplace. Ideally, with someone special, of course (well, like most of this discography so far anyway). For my Sunday morning workout, it did not work all that much.

And off we go to Blue Valentine.

Closing Time

So I had been hoping to make this marathon a weekend thing, and make a post on each album after listening to each of them, but turns out some some of them are "betcha can't eat just one" album that I had to put on over and over again.

And by Monday afternoon, I was freaking depressed (some recently acquired Neil Young albums did nothing to help my mood, might I add). Small Change is still amazing album, despite how gloomy some of his topics are. It came out in 1976, still on Asylum with Bone Howe as a producer. Seems Tom gets wittier (and grittier, I suppose) with each album, and "Step Right Up" (a list of advertisement slogans, some of them quite hysterical) and "The Piano has Been Drinking" (an artist insisting that everything that is going wrong is someone else's fault?) are perfect example, but the melodies are just as striking as on the other previous albums. "I Wish I Was In New Orleans" and "I Can't Wait To Get Away (And See My Baby On Montgommery Avenue)" come to mind.

This time around, my favourite track on the album is "Pasties and a G-String (At the Two O'Clock Club)". It's just another brilliant (and this Rockpalast rendition may even beat the studio version) piece of work, and the lyrics just leave me speechless, so... yeah. Speechless.

Nighthawks At The Diner

Tom's third, from 1975, still on Asylum, still with Bones Howe.

This was my first Tom Waits album, and it certainly did not sound like what I had expected, so I probably ended up shelving it for years before I really got into him (via Mule Variations), but after having starting this marathon, I certainly like it more than I used too.

The interesting thing about it was that it was recorded in front of a live audience. The band is in great shape and nicely tight, yet mellow and smooth (for lack of a better word). The whole album usually gets tagged as jazz, although I feel odd about tagging him as such. Good music, great lyrics again, and Tom, quite a storyteller and certainly a fascinating performer already, provinding the listeners with amusing anecdotes and his delirious introductions to almost every songs.

I still don't think that after having listened to it over three times today that I know it well enough to discuss it more than this, but this record must the best way to get a sense of what Tom was like as a live performers in the 1970s, and I can not wait to compare it more closely to the last album of this series, the new Glitter and Doom tour album.

The Heart Of Saturday Night

Now, for Tom Waits's second release, which came out in October 1974, still on Asylum, and was produced by Bones Howe this time.

So this album has not left as strong an impression on me as Closing Time has, but it's nonetheless quite an exciting piece, with a string of beautiful songs and melodies. It is slightly more bluesy, jazzy (well, and there's the obvious Frank Sinatra reference), and has that irresistable smokey club feel. We can still feel the Tom from the debut album, yet he's rapidly evolving as a song-writer. His vocals are already getting grittier on a few tracks. There's less string, more upright bass, a nice amount of electric guitar, and some piano tracks are electrified too.

I'm not sure what to make of his lyrics yet, but I like them quite a bit, perhaps even more than on Closing Time. They still create all these images in your mind as you listen, and they feel a little less personal, but they sound better, as he seems to increase his use of alliterations and other stylistic devices, which makes to songs seemingly flow better. Who could resist a song with lyrics such as "I'm a pool shooting shimmy-shyster shaking my head"? (Fumblin' With The Blues)

What stuck out to me is firstly San Diego Serenade, the second song on the album, which of course is about the town he grew up in, yet you wonder listening to it if he is not talking about some woman he knew back there, "never felt my heart string until I nearly went insane". The melody of course is haunting, and the strings are back, so it's easy to think of that first album again. Shiver Me Timbers has that same kind of feels, and then, stretches sweetly into Diamond Into My Windshield, which has brilliant, brilliant lyrics, and finger snapping mood.

My personal favourite is surely The Ghost Of Saturday Night (After Hours At Napoleone's Pizza House) which has a sweet, simple melody, some double bass and piano, but some of the most playful lyrics on the album:

"A cab combs the snake,
Tryin' to rake in that last night's fare,
And a solitary sailor
Who spends the facts of his life
like small change on strangers
Paws his inside pea coat pocket
for a welcome twenty-five cents,
And the last bent butt from a package of Kents,
As he dreams of a waitress with Maxwell House eyes
And marmalade thighs with scrambled yellow hair.

Her rhinestone-studded moniker says, "Irene"
As she wipes the wisps of dishwater blonde from her eyes

And the Texaco beacon burns on,
The steel-belted attendant with a 'Ring and Valve Special'...
Cryin' "Fill'er up and check that oil"
'You know it could be a distributor and it could be a coil.' "

I mean, that says it all, right?

Closing Time

All right, so here begins the Tom Waits marathon. I actually started going at it last night, trying to get ahead so I would actually have time to listen to his whole discography by Sunday night, but I got side-tracked... by Tom Waits. I put on Closing Time, then just had to listen to it 3 times in a row, and again this morning. Yeah, it is that good. I mean, the guy was seriously starting his singer-songwriter career with a loud bang, and this is certainly one of the exciting debut album I can think of. It is usually just him playing on the piano and singing, with some upright bass here and there, acoustic guitar, and quite a few songs with a neat and pretty string orchestration. It's only after listening to it now that I realised just how lovely the trumpet parts are too.

So, what you need to know about it is that is was released in March 1973 on Asylum, and was produced by Jerry Yester (a good name in my book, since the guy also produced Tim Buckley's Goodbye and Hello and Happy Sad). Tom must have been around 23-24 at the time, so yeah, he would have had some amount of life experience, but yet, I can't help but feel that the songs on that album showed a lot more maturity and insight than one would expect from such a brand new artist. If it was one of the last album I got of his, it was actually a cover of a song from it that got me into him. I had heard his name (and I think I already had Nighthawks At The Dinner too by then), usually whispered in quiet admiration, but it was really once I realised that Hootie & The Blowfish's I Hope That I Don't Fall In Love With You on Scattered, Smothered and Covered had been written by him that he really struck my curiosity.

Most of Closing Time are love songs, which makes me wonder how come, despite all the respect he gets from different artists, why he never made it into the mainstream realms. It starts with Ol' 55, a bittersweet song about leaving the one you love in bed in the morning "wishing the night would stay a little longer". The sort of song that should speak to anyone who ever had to hang up or kiss goodbye the person they love. I Hope That I Don't ... is a sweet little thing of beauty about falling in love, well, feeling a connection with a complete stranger, in this case, a patron of a bar you're frequenting, yet being too shy to do anything about it.

Old Shoes (& Picture Postcard) is also about love, but leaving one behind because the road calls you. So is Martha, a wonderful piece about a man calling back a woman he loved 40 years ago when "all (he) had was you and all (she) has was (him) when there was no tomorrow. Rosie, which has a dash of a country feel, is more about being left by a girl with only "a melody", and is followed by Lonely, an echoed piano thing about feeling even lonelier than one would think possible. Little Trip To Heaven, with its star and skies allusion reminded me of Blue Moon, in which the trumpet really shone.

There's also quite a few songs with a bit more of a jazzy feel, which sort of lead the way into the follow up album. Closing time is a particularly satisfying way to end an album. If I remember what I read about it correctly, it was just basically a song they wrote in the studio just for the cheer pleasure of it, to add an extra song to the record, yet it is one of the most delightful moments on the album for me personally. "Let's do this for posterity" Tom says just as they are about to start playing it. Hell yeah.

Change Of Plan

So instead of discussing those previously listed albums (although I have been listening to The Handman's Beautiful Daughter a lot,planning to write about, and I took me a few listens to really get into it, but it is pretty neat), I'll will be indulging in the entire Tom Waits discography this weekend, since I finally acquired The Black Rider, the only album I was missing (won't be going into the soundtracks albums though, since I don't have those either yet).

So, Saturday morning, I'll be putting on Closing Time, and hopefully by Sunday night, I'll have reached the new Glitter & Doom Live.

Next Stops

Hopefully, the next things I'll be discussing soon...

Sorcerers - Jan Dukes De Grey
Discesa agl'Inferi d'un Giovane Amante - Il Bacio Della Medusa
The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter - The Incredile String Band
The Black Rider - Tom Waits