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.
You are a brave soul to try a Waits marathon. And I have to say, I'm not surprised you're depressed, though I guess it wouldn't be fair to blame it entirely on ol' Tom. I do find that most of his albums take some time getting into. Rain Dogs and Mule Variations are such splendid achievements, I get impatient with his other albums; at any rate, I can't listen to them all the way through, I have to cherry-pick. It's not that the other tracks aren't good, it's just that they're not AS good as the really topnotch tracks, and I'm too greedy for the best stuff. Even back in the vinyl days, I found myself setting the needle down on certain tracks and leaving others alone...
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