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- [00:06]
A
Hello again everybody and welcome into another edition of Political Beats, a presentation of National Review. You can find us on X at Political Beats. We're also on Facebook. Find us there. And we ask you to subscribe to our feed for new episodes given through Apple Podcasts or elsewhere. You can find them@nationalreview.com as well. Listen there, leave reviews where possible, help others find the program. We also direct you to Our Patreon page patreon.com politicalbeats Little uptick in activity over there. Support us and help the show stay ad free as it has been entry level support for, well, support and voting privileges here and there. And a few questions mid level for early access to our programs and at a higher audio quality and our upper level best friends early access, higher audio quality monthly exclusive content shows. Just did one on our favorite songs about New York. You also get remastered episodes in the middle of releasing our two part Elvis Costello episode episodes there playlists and much more. You can find all of that@patreon.com politicalbeats now the part of the program where we say thank you specifically to some of our Patreon supporters. Andrew Meyerson, Kyle Kutassi, Simon Rask, Robert Ea, Robert Knudsen, Eric Cohn, a former guest Joe, Steve Heineman, Paul Wheeler, Jim Grant Atkins and Jeff Wood. Thank all of you for helping us stay afloat and keep producing these shows here at Political Beats. You can do so too@patreon.com My name is Scott Bertram. You can find me on X. Scott Bertram, my tag team partner. Standing by as always, Jeff Blair. Jeff, how are you?
- [02:08]
B
Well, Scott, seems I'm in a bit of a situation here. I've been drinking from a broken cup, two pairs of pants and a mohair vest. I'm full of bourbon and I can't even stand up.
- [02:20]
A
It's a good attempt. It's not bad. Well, you'll have to change that.
- [02:24]
B
Hear me do the singing version of it.
- [02:26]
A
Yeah, change that throughout the show at various points. That'd be fun. You can find Jeff on X at Esoteric cd and thankfully because it's very hard to do a two parter with different guests. Though we have in the past our guest returns from part one of our Tom Waits episodes. He's Damon Linker, senior lecturer in Political science at the University of Pennsylvania, also publishing a substack newsletter titled Notes from the middle ground@damonlinker.substack.com find him on X at Damon Linker. Damon, welcome back for part two.
- [03:03]
C
Thanks so much, Scott. And hello, Jeff. Great to be here. Part two of Tom Waits, that's. That's a big. A big mountain to climb, but we're going to do it here with you.
- [03:15]
B
It's a. It's a movable feast.
- [03:16]
A
Scott, I was just going to say, you know, last time, you know, Damon introduced himself, told the story. So we checked that box. He told us why he likes Tom Waits, how I got into him, why people should care. Check that box. So, Jeff, that means we can start part two off and running. Yeah.
- [03:32]
B
And there is. There is a lot. A little backstory here to tell. So where did we leave off last? We left off with one from the Heart. That was that, you know, soundtrack that the rather misbegotten Francis Ford Coppola movie. And even Tom Waits at the time when he recorded it, he was a little bit reluctant to do it because it felt like he was. It was going backwards. It was a retrenchment for him back to that jazz balladry style that he was trying to move on from with heart attack and vomiting. So he's a little bit reluctant, but, hey, when Princess Ford Coppola comes knocking at your door, you do not say no, especially if you have a side gig doing acting. This is, you know, and in fact, proved to be a real ticket to a side gig for him later on throughout his career. And also, I mean, you talk about happy endings, there was one other incredibly fortuitous thing that happened during this album, during that. That film, which is that he met Kathleen Brennan, who was Kathleen Brennan. Kathleen Brennan was the woman who was, I think, the script supervisor for One from the Heart, maybe script editor or something like that. She met Tom Waits, who was there, like, you know, routining his stuff, seeing if it would work with the film, working, working with sequences. I think that's when they first became, like, you know, acquainted, when he had to, like, soundtrack music to the way the film would be played. And they fell in love almost immediately. They were married a year later. And when you talk about love at first sight, well, they're still marri present day. And Kathleen Brennan was more than just, you know, the person who gave Tom Waits, it would seem, enduring happiness and a settled life. She elevated his artistic game in ways that make him one of the most singular artists of the 80s.
- [05:26]
D
Old. Tear the promise from my heart Tear my heart Today you have found another opener. I must go away Hang down your head for sorrow Hang down your head for me Hang down your head for me.
- [06:03]
B
She is I I and, you know, it's funny, the mysterious working relationship between them is never entirely spelled out. They share credits on many of these songs, but you never know, like, well, what is she contributing? But what you absolutely do realize is that she's contributing something. Because what happens next from, from, from that moment onwards in Tom Waits, his career is like a leveling up. It's like all of a sudden he becomes the man he was always supposed to be, maybe was searching for, but now he's finally found his place. And his place is as weird and outsider a place as has ever existed.
- [06:39]
D
In American rock and roll. For Silver, well, don't ask for nothing Go on and put your head in the crown. You know you'll be hearing that sound. Falling down, you're falling down Falling down, Falling down, Falling down, falling down.
- [07:46]
B
And with all of that said, I'm gonna throw the floor open here if anybody wants to make any other choices. But I officially designate Kathleen Brennan to be the anti Yoko Ono. And that it's a comparison that has to be made, right, because you think of John Lennon, right, and you know, such a talented guy. And then he meets Yoko Ono and they're like, oh boy, does that affect his music, his politics, but his music too, like all sorts of unfortunate trends and stuff like that throughout. But now here's the opposite. Here's a person who actually finally becomes what they were always. Now in retrospect, it feels like they were destined to be. And it was just because, yeah, she. He found a person who could focus him and maybe challenge him, elevate his work and take him to a new level. And that brings us to 1983's swordfish trombones. This is a complete sea change from complete sea change for Tom Waits, especially if you go back and you listen to some of the rhythmic ideas on Heart Attack and Vine. But certainly from the moment it begins with the song Underground, Tom Waits is declaring that he has left behind the sort of jazzy beer soaked ballads and now he's doing something far more perhaps European or global in Orient and maybe uncharacterizable. Swordfish Trombones is the beginning of Tom Waits turn into the avant garde. But his version of the avant garde somehow miraculously never managed to me to leave the mainstream. It's been influencing all sorts of artists that I've gone on to listen to for years. Here's where we begin. Hey Damon, do you want to add any thoughts before we start?
- [09:52]
C
Well, I'm. My only thought kind of builds off something I said about weights in the last first part of this, is that he sort of set himself up in those first few albums as a guy who is writing a sort of soundtrack to a hobo musical. And, and so he's playing jazz, he's doing these, these sort of string soaked ballads, he's doing upright bass kind of scat rap songs he's doing in the later part of that early phase of his career. He incorporates the blues in there, but in every case he's sort of piggybacking on pre existing genres and kind of turning them into the vehicle for this kind of down and out guy who's drunk and his life's a wreck. He's waltz and Matilda with his backpack, all his belongings on his back, and he's in the gutter. And what Kathleen Brennan somehow got him to do. And I'm going to credit her, even though we don't know like how much Tom Waits himself was already trending in this direction. But it's like she said, you have a form and content problem here. The, the content is, as I've just described it, this kind of outcast hobo aesthetic. And then it's wedded to forms that are often really well done, but they are pre existing. They're a kind of piggybacking on something that isn't that original. And what you hear on sardfresh trombones and going forward is the form totally matches the content in a way that it never did before.
- [11:47]
D
I pulled on troubles braids not hitting the briars out by the quick mud Staying away from the main roads Passing out wolf tickets downwind from the bloodhounds not pulled on troubles breeds I lay by a cypress as quiet as a stone Till the bleeding stopped not blew the weather vane off some old road house not blew the fire in the skeleton backseat of an old tucker not pulled on trouble's breeds I spank cool red mud with a hornet stung deep not tossed in the ditch in a restlessly now put on triple sprees Content.
- [12:20]
B
Doesn'T really necessarily change that much, which is a great observation. It is the sound. And that's why, of course, sonically, I'm so attracted to this part of his life.
- [12:29]
C
And, and the amazing thing is Brennan, like, again, I'm sort of making this up, like extrapolating from the evidence, but we're all guessing.
- [12:37]
B
Yes, I know.
- [12:38]
C
Yeah, it's like, it's like she was like. Have you listened to Captain Beefheart, perhaps. Basically, if you incorporate a kind of junkyard percussion based sonic palette where you'll have a list of 57 instruments being played on the album and 20 of them are different forms of percussion and detuned guitars and out of tune pianos. And you wed that to your voice and the lyrics. You're going to create a kind of sonic world that is perfectly honed to the distinctive Tom Waits aesthetic. And that's what he, he finally hits on with swordfish trombones and, and I'm, I'm excited to keep talking through all of them. I'll, I, I, I don't know if you want me to launch into the album itself, but that's sort of my intro statement about what we get in this turn in his career.
- [13:35]
B
I want to let Scott actually add something too, but I also just want to respond that it reminds me of a thing that, like around this time, Tom went, said he had a dream, really into a used record store and he found like one of his old albums, like the Heart of Saturday Night or something like that, you know, being sold for, you know, 10 cents or something like that. And then he realized, well, man, I could have been something. This is depressing. Like I had this thing, but it became a cliche. We'll talk about that as we go along. I just, I sort of started repeating myself. And then I went nowhere. And he said, I have to, I have to break free of that groove. And that's what, that's what you hear here. And like the introduction of these weird sounds. The focus on arrangements is going to be critical. In fact, you'll see him sort of playing with arrangements to the song on, on the album multiple times just to show you that these are rock songs if you'd want them to be. But they're far more interesting the way he plays them.
- [14:41]
D
Pluck 16 shells from a 30 I'm 6 and the black car stuck to our in the sky so I spin on my button on a no peg meal I made me a letter from a bunch of rimb now leaned up.
- [15:21]
B
You know what? When I first sold Scott on doing Tom Waits, it's like I thought he'd like the early stuff, but I thought he would know what we was, what was going to be like the heart of Tom Waits's career. I want to find out if he actually does.
- [15:33]
A
Yeah, so you're wrong, as usual. The stuff I dislike the most, I think I've made very clear on part one. And there's nothing here. There's a few things here or there. Look, I certainly have critiques. There are things from a listener, from my point of view, I don't find myself attracted to. But by and large, here's what I'LL say about this era, this part two we're covering today is genuinely. I find it far more accessible than actually a lot of the stuff from part one. And I think part of it is that I would say renewed or new, depending on the point of view, focus, and sort of the application of all sorts of rhythm and how he uses rhythm and the instruments used to create that rhythm vary from album to album and will vary from decade to decade as we walk through this Part two. But there seems to be this focus on rhythm. And I'm a rhythm guy and a percussion guy, right? And so how he gets it changes. But I think there's a renewed sort of sense of rhythm here on a lot of these records and a lot of the songs that provide a little more structure. You know, there are some songs in that first era that we talked about in Part one where you have a vocal and a saxophone and maybe a piano, right? And you don't have sort of. And certainly there are still those songs here. Let's not. Let's not forget about those. But I think that that sense of rhythm. And even on Swordfish Trombones, which we'll launch into here in a minute. Jeff, I understand why you think I would find it hard to get into, Hard to love. But even on something like, first track, Underground, it's so sparse. It's a drum and guitar and a faint horn. But the construction of it, and to your point, the arrangement of it, to me, is so much stronger and more interesting than some of the stuff in Part one. I didn't have, you know, by and large, a problem finding ways to be attracted to this music that we'll cover in Part two.
- [17:54]
D
Swing from town to town There are marching around down under your boots all the trucks unload beyond the go, fellows There's a world going on underground.
- [18:25]
B
All right. Why, Unless you have anything to add, Damon, I think that brings us to Swordfish Trombones, which is the beginning of this incredible period. Now, as we've already explained why Waits wanted to change everything up, and he does it with a bang. I mean, it's not like we really slide slowly into the second year of Tom Waits. It begins again with Underground, which we've referenced countless times already on these two episodes, which just this incredible. Like, is it a pirate shanty? I actually think of that song, that song as being. Does anybody remember the rank in the bass version of the Return of the King? The old animated version, like where the orcs are all, like, slaving away and they're saying, well, there's a whip There's a Way When I was a kid and I first heard this song, I was like probably 17 years old. I immediately related to that because it sounds like the sort of like field march or the field hollow holler that people like start like saying when they're like, you know, maybe like, like digging a ditch or like, you know, like doing road work or something like that. It has that completely alien sound that you had never heard before in Tom Waits's music. And I'll start maybe with this one global statement about Swordfish Trombones. The first half of this album is the best span of music Tom Waits has ever recorded. And if the second half of this record were anywhere nearly as good as the first half was, this would be his greatest album. Problem is, the second half is kind of a bit of a letdown. It's not bad, but it's just a little bit folded, but the Run From Underground to shore Lee, Johnsburg, IL 16 shells all the Way that Ends within the Neighborhood. And I want to talk about each of those songs in one way or another. That is some of the best music Tom Waits ever made. And he made it right at the.
- [20:04]
D
Start of this part of his career. Vic Grail decided the canteen was no longer necessary. There no spirits, no bills Water native dry locals and a high noon sun beats a hundred and for There's a hummingbird trapped in a closed down shoe store.
- [20:44]
C
Yeah, I mean I. I agree. The side one and I and this is an. An album from the era of sides. I had this album on LP as a teenager and side one is. Is just stunning. Like jaw droppingly stunning. I mean, one little observation I'll throw in right at the top here that persists through this whole period with weights is Scott's point about rhythm and how much more interesting rhythmically this music is. His voice is now a percussion instrument. He's using it like a shaker. It's like a bark. And that is something new and just fascinating. I mean, that's where you really get the kind of. The copyrightable. I talked in the last episode about how he sued a German conglomerate conglomerate for violating copyright by. By mimicking his voice with another person. Like, this is where he truly becomes the guy whose voice is basically like the equivalent of a marimba or, or like an African talking drum or sort of.
- [21:53]
B
Hey, I want you to pot up the weights on channel five there, okay? But put that up a little bit higher so we can get that in the mix.
- [21:58]
C
Yeah, all you gotta do is listen to 16 shells from a 30 odd six. I mean, that song as a song on Heart Attack and Vine, but the way it's done here, it's like some.
- [22:12]
B
Seven different exotic percussion instruments, right?
- [22:15]
C
Oh, it's like some, it's like some crazy machine kind of chugging and belching smoke and, and like limping down the street and yet has a good clip to it. You just gotta applaud as it goes by. Like you're like, what is that? Street cleaning. Whatever thing it is. And, and Tom Waits's voice is those instruments on there. It's not really a vocal and it's just fascinating. It's an amazingly original kind of music.
- [23:07]
D
Wow. I'm gonna wheel you in a killer black girl 60 jail trauma daddy outfit Wheel you in a killer rat cross 60 jail from a daddy optic.
- [23:32]
A
Notice from the beginning that there's new and different instruments here. Banjo and accordion and harmonium and marimba. Marimba is going to come back time and again. Harmonium will too. And so there's a different feel, different feel to these songs. And you guys both mentioned this, the sort of clean break, by and large, especially from what had happened on Heart Attack and Vine, which has that, that break, real, you know, kind of gut bucket, bluesy sound. It's, it's, it's, it's something different. Yeah. 16 shells is probably the first time it comes to fruition that that marriage of voice, voice as instrument, voice as percussion, and, and the rhythm, and pushing the rhythm of that song forward. And Jeff's right too. I, I, I just, I note on my notes how they sort of fall off after side one. There's a few things on side two I have thoughts on, but. Really? Yeah, it's that run on side one that makes Swordfish Trombone so interesting and special. You know, something like Time with no Cheer, which is in the middle of a string of great songs on side one. You know, I note that not only is the instrumentation sparse, like there's not a lot of things playing, but even what is playing is barely there. And here you have the synth in this harmonium and they're barely there in the mix. They're just, they're so far behind the vocals that they add color and texture, but they're not driving a song like Tom with no Cheer. And the one that I really love from this album and likely is going to make its way onto my five songs at the end of this, Part two is in the Neighborhood. And I know Jeff loves it a lot too. This is, this is really a tremendous achievement. This sketch, each verse this sketch of something happening in a suburban neighborhood. Serving breakfast in the first verse and taking the garbage out and there's dogs and construction. And I love the phrase newspaper sleeping bags blow down the lane I was a newspaper boy and when it's raining out Plastic bags on the paper and these bags blowing in the lane and the flatbed that's pinned me in Again, you can't get out of your drive all these very normal, everyday suburban family concerns Married to this big swell in the chorus where he really brings his voice and brings it hard under different.
- [26:06]
B
And that Salvation army beat underneath. It's like the neighborhood band. Right. It feels very local and small town.
- [26:15]
D
Yeah.
- [26:15]
A
And what I want to say about the songwriting itself is under different circumstances, you could see this being a Billy Joel song like Allentown or a Randy Newman song where he has these sharp observations about what it's like on the suburban street instead of Tom Waits doing it in a very different way musically, in a very different arrangement, with that same sort of empathy toward the people he's describing. It's a really fun. It's a really fun song. And I think the highlight of this entire album.
- [26:48]
D
Well, Friday's the funeral and Saturday surprise Got a pistol on the register side Putting the gun in Delivery trucks that make too much noise and we don't get our butter delivered no more Unable.
- [27:29]
A
The other thing I'll mention quickly from side two, before I turn it over to Jeff, I like Down, down, down had this, like, very Jimmy Smith style organ riff, this romper on side two. And I'll also mention Rain Birds quickly because in a point, Jeff will like. And I don't know if it's just because he's so recent on my brain that we just did a Brian Eno episode, but I hear Rain Birds. It's this very elegant, gentle way to end the album. And I. You know, I hear these repeating patterns inside and the use of space and the use of silence that encourages your brain to do some of the work. And I think about all these songs I just heard from Brian Eno, too.
- [28:07]
B
It's a little bit like Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy. Right. The ending of that song. Right.
- [28:16]
D
Sam?
- [28:48]
C
Okay, boy.
- [28:49]
B
Well, as I said, the first half of this album is it kind of rearranged my face. I think I'd already heard Raindogs by this point. This is the second Tom Waits album I ever bought. And this is the point where it confirmed me as a fan. Underground was not. The song that did was actually Shore Leaf, which is an even weirder song. Than underground. Now, here's the funny thing about Rand Swordfish Trombones. Is that you. I take this album as a who. It's almost like a declaration of purpose from the COVID on down, where you have Tom Waits posing with the guy from Todd Fleming's Freaks. You know, one of us. One of us. You know, he's saying, he's declaring who he is. He's found his voice, he's found his Persona, all right? And it goes all over the world. And what you get when you listen to Shore Leaf is one of the most deranged. Like weird hoodoo, like jungle stomps. The rhythm at the end of that thing just deteriorates into howls of like, sure le sounds like Gollums screaming for the ring or something like that. It is precious. It's so deranged. But when you actually listen to the lyrics, what is it about? He's actually talking about missing Kathleen Brennan. He says, like, I'm talking with the lieutenant over at Singapore Sling. And I wondered how the same moon outside over this Chinatown fair could look down on Illinois and find you there and you know I love you, baby and yet the way it's sung sounds like it's a deranged howl of madness. But the sentimentality is all there.
- [30:15]
D
I can't make it by Love it.
- [31:04]
B
And then it's all the. It's. It's more nakedly revealed on could it be my best favorite song on the album? It's Close in the Neighborhood does compete, but maybe Johnsburg, illinois. It's a 1 minute and 30 second song, 30 seconds long song. It's that brief and it's. It's weights. Returning actually to his sort of 70s piano balladeering style, but only for a moment. And who is he writing about? He's of course writing about Kathleen Brennan, who people say she was born in Ireland, but she was really raised in like the middle of nowhere, northern Illinois. I looked up Johnsburg, Illinois, because how I've never heard of it, how could I know? It is literally located next to not nothing. It's like an hour away from Kenosha, and that's the closest town in Wisconsin that it's near. It's not near Chicago. It's not near anything. It's not even near Rockford. It is just in the middle of nowhere. But that is where Brennan grew up. Where did she grow up? She grew up on a place that's outside of McHenry in Johnsburg, Illinois. And it's the quietest, softest little thing on the record. But it's also in its own way would prove to be a declaration of purpose. That is the man Huey was and that's who we fell in love with.
- [32:31]
D
She grew up outside mc.
- [33:01]
B
You already mentioned in the neighborhood. But I'll just point out the. That even the instrumentals on this album are really fun. Dave the Butcher is the one that I actually was thinking of when I was thinking of something that would just make you want to like turn the CD off.
- [33:12]
A
I can't say it was my favorite.
- [33:14]
B
Right. But then again this like just another sucker on the vine. You know where he's working with the harmonium there. The harmonium is actually a gypsy instrument. It's important to realize harmonium for those who don't realize it's an instrument you've heard on We Can Work it out by the Beatles. It's also going to be used heavily by Radiohead. There's a lot of radio connections we're going to be talking about later in this episode. Episode. But it's kind of like a. A hand operated it. An accordion in concept but you play it sitting down with your hands. You don't carry it the way you would carry an accordion. Has a lower tone to it and it works. And it's also more exact. So that's where you get those nice melodic lines on Sucker on the Vine. But yeah, this is the album that. Were it not for the fact that some of the songs on the second half, including the title track, are just a little bit more generic and jazzy than what was going to come next. The first half of this album alone is enough of an argument for Tom Whites. As important as an artist as far as I'm concerned. I love this record and it. It's only a shame that it was followed by Much Better that would. And that's the only reason it's not going to be making my top two at the end of the episode.
- [34:21]
C
Yeah, I don't have much to add beyond what I said earlier and what the. The two of you have put in. I agree with pretty much everything, all the judgments. The only thing I guess I'll put in because I'm m. Side two, I agree, is much weaker than side one, but Soldiers Things Right in the middle of side two is a beautiful Weights ballad. Lovely imagery of exactly what the title says. A series of artifacts of a missing soldier. His clothes, his weapons, his badges and medals and boots full of rocks. Very moving. And it's a jazzy ballad from Weights that could have fit on his earlier work but it's Very, very spare here. And his use of the really complex, meaty jazz chords is really, really effective and well done. Lots of dissonances in these chords, including the. Often the melodic line that he sings against the chords. Really, as a, as a ballad, it's as good as anything Tom Waits, I think, has ever written and a really great song. And the album is just extremely strong as a whole.
- [35:52]
D
The brakes aren't so hot Neck death boxing gloves this jackknife is rusted you can pound nothing out on the hood A tinker tailor A soldiers things.
- [36:27]
C
This.
- [36:27]
D
Rifle is boots full of rocks well.
- [36:31]
B
You know what, Damon, you know, while we're at it, why don't we. Would you appreciate the opportunity to introduce the next album we're going to cover? Because I know it's certainly one of your favorites. It's one of mine. I'm pretty sure Scott's gonna say he likes it a lot too, but this is really the one that cemented Tom Waits's legend. This is two years later and very much of a pair. These two albums are just like, you know, know, left hand, right hand. When I think of them, it's almost hard to listen to the one without listening to the other. Swordfish Trombones is inevitably followed by Rain Dogs, 1985.
- [37:04]
D
And it's time, time, time and it's time, time, time and it's time, time, time that you love and it's time.
- [37:27]
C
Well, I mean, I'll go slightly autobiographical again, as I did in the first, first half of the, of our Weights show. I mentioned at the beginning of, of Part one that I was introduced to weights by my father, you know, around 1977. And so as I was growing up, up, I sort of was always aware of weights even as I was getting into other kinds of music and not paying attention to them too much. I got actually, as I mentioned earlier, Swordfish Trombones. Didn't quite know what to make of it in my 13 year old year watching MTV. Although there was a video for in the Neighborhood, which really was something on 1983, MTV. But then, but then Rainbow Dogs comes out and I'm now 15 years old, I get it on cassette and I put this thing in and I have to say, you guys know again, Mr. Ballad, like they're only really like three ballads on this album out of, what is it, 17, 18 tracks or 1919 tracks. And yet it totally gripped me from the first notes on Crazy Singapore through like the opening of this album, Singapore into Clap Hands, into Cemetery Polka, into My Favorite Jockey Full of Bourbon which is one of the catchiest songs you will ever hear in any genre. It is so insanely catchy.
- [39:02]
B
And David lynch in Mexico is what?
- [39:05]
C
Oh, yeah, yeah, totally. That's a good way to describe it. I just. I immediately got what he was doing.
- [39:12]
D
The captain is a one armed dwarf. He's the throwing dice along the wharf in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king so take this ring. We sailed tonight for Singapore we're all as mad as hatters here. I've fallen for a tawny moor, took off to the land of naught, drank with all the Chinaman, walked the sewers of Paris I drank along a colored wind I dangled from a rope of sand you must say goodbye to me.
- [39:52]
C
Suddenly those experiments I didn't quite absorb when I was a little younger on swordfish, suddenly I was like, oh my God, this guy is doing. He's doing something no one has ever done before. It's just a mix of different kinds of sounds, melodies, styles, percussion techniques, the use of electric guitar. Mark Rebo, who. I pronounced Rybo his name last time and was corrected from one of our listeners. So thank you.
- [40:24]
B
You know what? I've been pronouncing it Rybot my entire life.
- [40:28]
C
Well, see, who. Who really can say, right?
- [40:31]
B
Let's say don't feel bad, Damon is all I'm saying.
- [40:34]
C
All right, well, all I can say is his guitar work on this album at least a lot of just amazing. Just like revelatory, weird, like something I had never heard before. Just angular turns and phrases. It's not very distorted at all.
- [40:54]
B
Economical too.
- [40:56]
C
Yeah, it's. He just. I mean, again, listen to jockey full of bourbon and the way he just winds himself around this very simple minor key vamp that they're playing. It's. It's just genius.
- [41:33]
D
16 men on a dead man's chest and I've been drinking from a broken cup. Two pairs of pants in a mo.
- [41:56]
C
And then of course we have have hang down your head time and downtown train, which are three of the grandest ballads the guy ever wrote amidst this feast of crazy funhouse, mirror circus music kind of chopped up with a piece of broken glass. It's just a true work of genius, this. If I had to make a list of my top 10 or 20 albums of all time, this would be in very serious contention to make that list.
- [42:25]
B
It's funny that you characterize downtown Train as a ballad. I don't think of that as ballad. That's a rock song. Of course, I first heard it with Rod Ser I told this story on the first episode where I was like, this is, this is the tune that my friend used to swindle me into first exposing myself.
- [42:39]
C
Wait, no, no, I, I, I get what you mean. It is so technically the third ballad.
- [42:46]
B
That I think of on this album is Anywhere I lay My Head, which is the way that album ends. And that is thinking is wild. I just want to point out that you mentioned this earlier, Damon, about how he's sort of gotten his voice under control. That's another thing you really want to emphasize here when, when we talked about how Tom Waits was singing on Tom Trobert's Blues or like, you know, the entire Small Change album. Like on our last episode, we pointed out sometimes it's a little bit false, it's overdone, it's overly theatrical. Like he's just, oh, come on. Nobody even could ever sound like that. But on this album, he is singing in voices and he has learned to actually tame his voice to the point where he can sound like an authentically wild blues man. He can sound like a delta blues man howling. Or he can sound like, you know, this sort of down and out guy he's always been. He can rock. He can do all sorts of different things with that burr of a voice, despite the fact that he never actually comes close to having anything remotely commercial about it.
- [43:51]
D
In the value. You got to do the story with the old Jones. Got a wooden con that Bo never. Here come the biggest. Here come the big round. Here come the big back. I see that bigger back four cut through break.
- [44:33]
C
I mean, like, I mean, hang down your head is a beautifully sung song. Anyone you know, it's as good as anyone in rock. And then time, which follows it, he's like singing like bass baritone, super low and really no hoarseness at all. So, yeah, you're right. He has turned his voice into an instrument and it can do seemingly anything.
- [44:58]
A
Raindogs is really good, and I have to say something about it that seems incomplete but is a compliment, which is this is a, this is a really dense album and I feel like I could have spent another four weeks with it and still not, not explored or appreciated all the corners that lay inside. I think, as Damon said, 17 songs, 19, 19. Each of them are worth investigation and exploration. And there's a different sound here. And I think the best way I'd say it is this is, I think, his first album. To me, that sounds, sounds like a, a band album. It sounds like people are, are together. Not in a jazz lounge, but maybe in A studio or somewhere playing at the same time. And not on every track. But. But there are. There are points here. And Damon mentioned to Mark Ribo, whose tone means a lot to this record, and the way he explores and Waits explores the use of guitar and places on this record. But it sounds. It sounds like the work of a band. It sounds like guys who are interplaying with each other at times. So I want to start with Clap Hands, which is my favorite song on Raindogs. And I just have so many. Okay, there's Marimba on Marimbas, right? And that version of his voice, which you guys made the great point, like, he's got it tuned, he's got it under control. And there's a point. I was going to make a few albums from here. I don't know where that note is, but even though he is. He's limited, right? It's a low, gravelly voice. Even, even, even.
- [46:42]
B
But he's got that growl under control.
- [46:45]
A
And he can turn it in different ways depending on what's needed for the song. Like, the version of his voice that he used for Clap Hands is the exact right version of his voice for that song, and he can identify that from song to song. Rebo Unclap Hands is where I first notice him playing, as Damon said, like, his angular, jumpy solos. And it was triggering something in my brain, and I'm not sure it's right. As I said, I could use another month with this record. But it reminded me a lot of the way Stevie Ray Vaughan played on David Bowie's stuff on let's Dance, where like, he's just sort of like popping in a few notes, little angular, like, really, like, piercing through the song. And that's what I hear in a lot of places, and especially on Clap Hands from Reboot.
- [47:47]
D
Clap hands, clap hands, clap hands, clap hand.
- [48:28]
A
Hang down.
- [48:28]
B
Your favorite guitarists never insist on themselves. And Revo is exactly like that. He makes a moment just quickly, and then he just ducks out and like, you remember it.
- [48:37]
A
Yep. Hang down your head is a beautiful track. I wrote down it. It feels like a. Like a Billy Bragg and Wilco song from that era. It's just a really well put together song with a great set of lyrics. And that guitar lick that I imagine.
- [48:55]
B
It'S Rebo, but it's present and this is one of my notes. Scott is like that, to me, is his greatest moment on the album. The guitar solo he plays on that is so. And what is. What is it? I specifically wrote is like. It's such economical guitar It's a masterpiece of simple, expressive brevity.
- [49:11]
A
It just.
- [49:11]
B
It doesn't be. It doesn't say too much. It says exactly what needs to be said. It reminds me, actually, most sort of spiritually of Robbie Robertson playing something like.
- [49:20]
A
That's a good comparison too. Yeah, you're right. That's a. That's another good comparison.
- [49:41]
D
Push my love Rain hush my love was so true Push my love A train now but it takes a middle with you so hang down your head for sorrow Hang on.
- [50:19]
A
I like Gun Street Girl, which. Which follows in a pattern. Jeff and I were trading notes. How many songs are the references to Illinois? Like, accurate geographic references to Illinois? And we already had one. John Waukegan's mentioned in Gun Street Girl as they're gone from Waukegan, gone to Indiana. There's a rockabilly field on Union Square, which will pop up here and again on subsequent records that I like a lot. And then, boy, I think Damon mentioned a lot of stuff. The only other one, I'll say Blind Love has a steel guitar and fiddle. This country feel to it. There's just so many different aspects, specs. And in some ways it's. In some ways it's the least Tom Weights record to date, which makes it the most Tom Weights record to date. Because he's always so unpredictable and malleable with his sound. Considering what the songs need, as I said, I had three, four weeks with it. I probably could use another month. There's just so much depth to. Rain Dogs.
- [51:27]
D
Sat washing the wine with all the raindogs Taxi we'd rather walk huddle a doorway with the raindogs For I am a raindog tube I've had.
- [52:15]
B
What at this point, 25 years with it. Probably a lot. Little more than that, in fact. Actually now it's more like 29. And I've still not fully wrapped my arms around it. But I think of this as. It's a global travelog. In a way. It's an album of beautiful oddities. There's these carrots, eggs, little rough hewn curios. And every single one of them needs to be there. All these weird, strange things. Plus Downtown Train, you know, the one that of course I got it for. I guess actually I should probably. We should talk about Downtown Train. The funny thing about it, it's the one song on the album whose totally different from everybody else. Okay, so he got. He got slick with the production for that. When he gives him Robert Quine, I think, you know, who at that point had been playing. He Would go on to play with Matthew Sweet, but of course had already played with Lou Reed on the Blue Mask, but then also he gets a G.E. smith. And Tony Levin of King Crimson is playing on the base. King Crimson just broke up. He's like, all right, I want. I'll do a Tom Waits session. And they come up with this wonderful, wonderful track where, of course, Waits is singing, you know, doing his When I see you tonight. I did my version on the first episode, so. But I actually still do like Rod Stewart's version. But this one is so much more quiet and restrained. And those little guitar, those filigrees, the little fills they play. There's no theatrics, there's no sparks, but that is very weights. It's like we're doing sentimental ballads from around the world. Maybe you're going to Singapore. Maybe you're going to clap hands. Maybe you're a drunk taxi driver with full bourbon. Maybe you're just, you know, in the big black Mariah playing with Keith Richards on the way to, like, your execution. And this is the version of New York York City. This is Downtown Train. And there's that little bit of sweeping romanticism that you. That you associated with Jersey Girl. And it probably is no, no secret that, you know, this was another. The next big one that became a famous song that he wrote that was covered by someone else.
- [54:17]
D
I climbed to the window and down, down to the street I'm shining like a new D Downtown trends of food follow those Brooklyn girls They try so hard to break out of their little worlds now you whip your head in the scatter like nothing will ever come capture your heart they're just thorns without the rules Be careful of them in the dark oh, if I was the one you chose to be your only one oh, can't you hear me now? Can't you hear me now? I see you tonight.
- [55:26]
B
I guess the one thing I do want to focus on is the weird radio head connections on this album. As a longtime Radiohead fan, I. I was really thrilled when Amnesiac and Kid A came out in 2000 and 2001, these albums that I've been waiting for for a long time as a Radiohead fan. And then I realized that listening to another album that I was already a huge fan of, which is Raindogs by Tom Waits, because they steal so many ideas from this one album. There's that line from Clap Hands, you know, where they all went to heaven in a little rowboat. That's Directory directly stolen by Tom York for Pyramid Song. Oh.
- [56:05]
D
Salvation armor seem to wind up in know they all went to heaven in a little room Clap hands, clap hands, clap hands There was nothing I.
- [56:30]
A
Fear.
- [56:38]
D
There was nothing.
- [56:48]
B
But then you know you've got the harmonium on Hang down your head, which Tom York's in. Tom York admits he stole from Motion Picture soundtrack, which ends Kid A playing on that little harmonium. He's like, I. I was literally listening to Raindogs. I wanted to do something like Tom Waits was doing. And then finally, anywhere I lay my head, which of I already mentioned once, but what an incredible way to end the album. You know, he hits those notes, he's. He sounds like. Like a wild blues man from Louisiana or the Delta. He's got that funeral brass playing behind him. Some people will never get Tom Wait's voices, but it actually, to me, punctuates the beauty of this song to hear him sing it the way he sings it. And then that jazz band outro might as well have been what Tom York was listening to as a prototype for Life in a Glass House, the last SO song on Amnesiac. So it's just funny, you would never imagine Radiohead and Tom Waits to have that much in common. They have a lot more in common than you think, because the guys in one of my favorite bands was listening to one of my favorite singer songwriters. And I guess that means we have to now transition to the third in this trilogy. And this is a point, I think Gaiman made it a mention to me a couple of times when we were doing our pre show notes and I think he's really onto something about this and I'll let him explain his theory of the case, but basically it's that Tom Waits has a tendency maybe to dwell a little bit too long on a premise that works for him until he finally, you know, gets diminishing, returns, and then it's time to change things up again. And that's what Frank's Wild Years represent, represents to me even in its narrative conceit. It's supposed to be like the story of the guy in Frank's Wild Years, the song from Swordfish Trombones. And like, again, there was a stage play which I have never seen, never will, and these songs were sort of like, you know, half adapted to them. I will never know about that. I will only know about this as an album. And as an album, it's about half of a great album. And half of it finds him spinning his wheels.
- [59:45]
D
Hang on. St. Christmas got an overhead township and a two dollar grip got an 85 cabin on an 85 hill hang on St. Christopher on the passenger side Open it up at night the devil could ride hang on St Christopher with a barrel house door.
- [60:14]
B
What do you think, Damon?
- [60:16]
C
Yeah, I mean, I. I would even be even a little less enthusiastic even than that. I mean, I think there are at.
- [60:22]
B
Least six great songs on this, for sure.
- [60:24]
C
It was strange when again, I've just recited How I got Swordfish and then Rain Dogs and I loved it. And then this came out, and it came in a very assumptious gatefold cover on the lp. And it's sort of the way the art on it worked. It felt like this was a big statement, like he was doing kind of his version of a concept album in a way. And so I was big into concept albums. I love the Wall and Rush concept albums and all that stuff.
- [60:58]
B
Right.
- [60:58]
C
And. And so I was like, this is cool. I'm. I'm into this. And I put it on and it just never really grabbed me. I think it's less than the sum of its parts, partly because it raised those expectations for me. There are good songs on it. The opener, Hang on, say Christopher Innocent when you dream way down the hole Cold, cold ground. There's good stuff on here, but there's also a of lot, lot. It's. It's this time. It's 17 tracks, as you'll notice if you go back to the last two albums before this. There are a lot of songs, but there are also a lot of very short songs on this one. They're not long, but they're like three and a half minutes or more, many of them. So fewer one and two minute little ideas that don't fully get developed but sort of given nice almost musical narrative arc to the sides. Whereas this one feels like it gets sort of lost. And a lot of the stuff that he's doing feels like, oh, I heard. I've heard this before on one of the last two albums, and I liked it better the first time. And that is sort of how I felt with his second album after its first, and then with Foreign affairs and Blue Valentine after small change, sort of that he does. I think he sort of hits on a great idea, works it up to as great as he can get it, and then hasn't figured out where to go next. And so does another one sort of in the same vein, and it's never quite as good. That's where I get the feeling of spinning wheels. So that's sort of my take on this album. And again, I do think a little of it had to do with, you know, he got a lot of praise for Rain Dogs and even some airplay. There was a video for downtown train 2 even before the Rod Stewart cover. And so I bet he was thinking like, wow, like maybe I'm actually going to be like successful as an artist now while I'm doing my very Tom, wait. See artsy thing. And I thought, I think he probably wants. Wanted this to be like a big. A big thing. And I. I just don't think it really. It really hits it. It's a misfire.
- [63:21]
D
It's like I count it sorrow Put on Franken down Then for tomorrow I found you I'm gonna step to the top oh yeah up right here Fresh and clean I just know I will never stop oh no Until I know I'm wild and free.
- [64:07]
B
I, I agree with you completely. And you know, if you've. All those who have listened to the show know that Scott and I have a long running conversation about how like the CD era was not kind to most artists because they. They were tempted to throw on far too much material when they would have been better served by editing their ideas. But the funny thing about Tom Waits is that before the CD era, he was still pushing the limits. It's like this album, it was, I think, you know, it was 1987, so it was probably on CD at the time, but it was conceived as a vinyl thing. It's way too long for vinyl. Anything that 55 minutes or something like that, that's going to be an ongoing problem with weights. You know, most people weren't immune to this. In fact, it's always singular to me when I notice artists who remember that, hey, you know what, we still work better in like 40 minute bites than we do in 70 minute bites. So yeah. But I will say this, that you know, there are some fantastic weight songs on this. There are songs on this that to me are my quintessentially like what I think of when I think of Tom Wa opens with Hang on St Christopher, which I think his greatest hits album actually also opens with, which is, you know, to me as Tom Waits as they get. But the one that always grabbed me was this very weird ballad called Temptation. Temptation, which sounds like a madman singing on the record, was later covered, I think to much more like Easily audible Virtues by Diana Krall. I don't know if anybody's heard Diana Crawl's version of Temptation. Just wondering. I think she did it when she was Elvis Costello's wife. I suspect that's how the still, by the way, oh, there you go. With Elvis you can never be sure, but like, yeah, I think that's how the Tom Waits seeped into her music. And it's a really good cover. But the funny thing about Temptation is that I listen to that and for all the world. I hear an old kraut rock band called Can. I don't know if Damon is familiar with the band can, but Sky I am not. Oh, there. Well, they'll one of the best damn bands of all time. But I despair of ever getting Scott to agree to cover them because they're German, they sing in half understood languages. Their first lead singer was an American black guy by the name of Malcolm Mooney. Okay. And he sang in this incredibly hoarse voice. He very much prefigured Tom Waits. We're going to drop a clip in here because Temptation is really little better than an appropriation of the exact same vocal approach that Mooney used on the song Soul Desert from the soul.
- [66:31]
D
Soul desert from. From the soul. Soul Desert from the soul. You may think you know something, you.
- [67:05]
B
It's just hilarious to hear the same idea come back 10 years later. And by the way, I'm 100% certain that Tom Waits was listening to Can. That is exactly the sort of band whose percussive approach they were all in all into weird percussive instrumentation. I can just guarantee you that just like Radiohead was listening to to Can, Tom Waits too was listening to Can. And it shows up on all things a ballad like Temptation in the vocal approach.
- [67:50]
D
But I lost my way. She know.
- [68:05]
B
One last thing I do want to say is that as a. An honorary Baltimore on. I went to school in Baltimore. I'm from Potomac, Maryland, but I went to Hopkins. And then of course everybody else started asking me when I would tell them, hey, you went to Johns Hopkins. You must be a big fan of the Wire. At that time I had never seen the Wire. But when I. I finally found my way to that show, it turns out that the theme song was Way down in the Hole. And they did five different versions of it for every season, different covers. And then the second season was Wait's original version from here from Frank's wild ears. Way down in the Hole is just him at his blues shouting best. That song is in its own way like a dark gospel song. It is authentic. You could hear that sung by a church choir, like a black church choir. You. In fact, this is the proof of Wires can see you can hear five different versions of it. It still sounds authentic, it still sounds real. But I guess I'M always going to come back to Tom's original, where it's just that bowed string, just such minimal instrumentation, just like, you know, thumps and then, you know, a string base and the string and then him, you know, wailing when you walk through the garden, you know, like, you got to keep the devil Way down in the hole. Tom Waits always plays characters he's never sounded less like, like a California kid from San Diego who dropped out because he wanted to be an artist than he does when he sings that song.
- [69:58]
D
All the angels sing about Jesus. Mighty sword and they shield you with their wings and keep you close to the Lord Lord, don't pay your temptation for his hands are so cold. You got to help me keep the devil Way down in the hole? Down in the hole.
- [70:29]
A
Well, you guys have said just about everything I need to say about Frank's Wild Years. I am more toward Damon's perspective on the record. What I like, I like the way it sounds, and I have another point about this for the Future album, but this. There's a lot of songs on Frank's Wild Years that sound like it was recorded in the corner of a very warm room, and these instruments just start to appear from the shadows, and there's reverb and echo and the vocals, and it's a very, like, very comfortable listening. You just plop right down inside these songs. But to Damon's point, I had this written down. I think it was just. I think it was on Frank's Theme. But it's about a number of songs here that. Look, Weights is constantly playing with arrangement here. But to me, too many songs on this record sound like they're underdeveloped or they're fragments or the things you might see on a box set. They're kind of trials or experiments with arrangements before you actually finalize what they're really going to be. And there's a few places where they. That sounds more prevalent than it had been on past records. Jeff talked about a number of songs. My favorite is right near the end. Cold Cold Ground is my favorite thing on this record. And this sounds like a finished product. Like all those trials and tribulations of. All right, we'll try it this way and try it that way and take this out. Put this in marimba. Higher, whatever it is. Cold Cool Ground sounds like it actually is finalized. He gets it to exactly where he wants to be. He gets guitar, upright bass, accordion. I think is. Is in there. And. And so at the end of Frank's Wild Years, you have, like, this finished Product of all the. The labor that had gone into songs throughout. Throughout the. The record. That's my favorite thing here. I do think there's more. More Mrs. Certainly than there have been of the past two records. That. That drags it down a bit.
- [72:25]
D
There's a ribbon in the willow There's a. Your bearers taking over the slope the cattle sleep in the mailbox and will never go to town do we, Barry. Every dream in the cold, cold ground in the cold, cold ground Cold, cold ground in the cold, cold ground in the cold, cold ground.
- [72:59]
B
I think I'll point out that you can identify the fatal indulgence on this record pretty clearly with the two repeated songs. And they're both good songs. Straight to the top is a great song, and Innocent when you dream is a fine little ballad, but we really didn't need two versions of them. And I use. I suppose they were just trying to make a point about how you can arrange a song a different way and it can come on to represent a different thing. That's all true. True. But, like, you know, when he's doing the. The last. The last song on the record is a 78 version of innocent you. When you dream. And by the way, that doesn't mean it was recorded in 1978. That means he wants it to sound like one of those old 78rpms. So it's like, hissy and scratchy, and he's kind of obsessed with the sound that came out of, like, bad speakers, like, in the 1930s. And so that's reproduced for you on CD, I guess it's sort of a verite effect, but kind of unnecessary. Like, the song was nice as itself.
- [73:53]
A
I make that exact point later, Jeff, which is. It's too on the nose. Like, when he. When he. I'm gonna put this effect, like, record scratchiness effect. Like, it doesn't need that at all. It's. It's too much. It's too on the nose. This is. We know that's the sort of feel the song is going for. You don't have to. You don't have to put it on it, too.
- [74:11]
B
Okay, Scott, you want to hear something really hilarious on a later album that I bought on CD and ripped to my computer? I have kept that file forever. I finally pulled it up, and I was listening to it in preparation for this show, and it has a weird skip in it because I ripped it badly. But at first I thought that was an intentional time lights effect. I. I literally was going to talk about it on this show until I Went back to double check and I found out that, no, I just had a bad rip. That tells you something about the way I've started thinking about the way he inserts those things. And you're right, it's just a bit too forced.
- [74:42]
D
I made a golden promise Promise that we would never part I gave my love a lar and then I broke her heart and then I broke her had such a settled feeling of fear so soft and green it's memories that I'm stealing But you're innocent when you dream when you dream you're innocent when you dream Innocent when you dream.
- [75:33]
B
It's just a bit too forced and the seams are starting the show. And I guess that means that it was probably time to wrap things up and. And go. There's a live album that comes out immediately after this called Big Time. I've listened to it maybe three or four times. I have it, but it's just one of those things that I've never felt the need to come back to. It's okay. There's some weird. It's funny, they actually, like, lowered, believe it or not, as hoarse as Tom voice, Tom Waits's voice is. They decided to artificially lower it in post production to make it sound even more, like demonic and weird half the time. But beyond that, it's not really, you know, that important. Neither, I think, is it important to talk about the soundtrack to Night on Earth, a Jim Jarmusch film, which is just mostly instrumental. There's like one little vocal song, but it's not really, you know, something we need to pay too much attention to. What we do need to pay attention to is the fact that, I mean, frankly, much like the Pixies, Tom Waits Bones got a little machine bone machine in 1992 comes out. And I guess I did not at that point realized Tom Waits could get any weirder. This is probably the fifth or sixth weights. Oh, my God. At that point I'd gone back to his 70s. Now I'm going forward, and this one threw me for a loop in a way. It still throws me for a loop. This one has never been one of my favorite Tom Waits albums, despite the fact that it is one of his most highly praised. This one Gets like was critically just, you know, it's like A pluses, five stars, you know, like all the awards. This one's just a little bit too aggressively rhythmic and unmelodic for me. However, there are wonderful moments on it.
- [77:25]
D
Pale Face said to the eyeballs, kiss. She just goes clank and boom and Steam a halo Wing horns and a tail Shoveling comb inside my my dreams all along she's made a scream she's such a scream.
- [77:58]
B
But we're not getting any more acceptable. We're just only journeying further and further outwards into the avant garde.
- [78:06]
C
Yeah, I mean, I actually like this album a lot. It's not Raindog's level, but it is, you know, given my feelings about many songs on it.
- [78:16]
B
I love.
- [78:17]
C
But I mean, yeah, I mean, once again, it's 16 songs. There's a lot of material here, but it is to my ear and kind of the way I envision the arc of his career. This is another one of these.
- [78:33]
D
Okay.
- [78:33]
C
He spins his wheels for a while and now he's. He's back. And this is sort of like. I see it as a return to Raindogs, but, like, amping it up even more in the direction of, as you said, Jeff. Rhythmic, really experimental arrangements, like some of the songs. The opening, Earth Died Screaming. That is a terrifying song, right?
- [78:58]
B
That one. That one actually puts me off. I love his weird opening moves. Like, underground, right? Very. Kind of a challenge song, this one. I get the challenge. I just don't know if I like.
- [79:08]
C
The song, but I can't say I like the song because it's so aggressively ugly. But for that, there aren't a lot of. There aren't a lot of artists where, like, I will go that far with them that, like, as a piece of art, that song, it. It scares the crap out of me.
- [79:30]
D
Hell doesn't want you and heaven is full Bring me some water Put it in the skull I walk between the raindrops I weed in bug house square and the army hands I believe nothing but the bones.
- [80:18]
C
Like, in a compelling way where I. I can't help but, you know, kind of bow down and say respect. Like, that's a statement to open your album like that. And they're. They're. You know, it's a. It's a very diverse album. You have songs like that. You have Going out west, which is similar, but. But much catchier, sort of. It's sort of like. I see it as like the. The jockey full of bourbon from this album, with lots of really interesting, kind of snaky guitar licks in it and very aggressive rhythm.
- [80:56]
A
I love the lyrics there, Damon. Just so. Enough to come back. Like, this guy just bragging about himself. He's too good, too cool for anyone here to understand. Like that high school kid. Like, you guys don't understand me. I'm going to go out west they'll appreciate me. I know karate and voodoo. I got hair in my chest. I look good without a shirt. They'll like me out there.
- [81:19]
D
I'm gonna make myself available to you. I don't need no makeup. I got, I got hair on my chest. I look good without a shirt. Well, I don't look like a poser in a high speed chest. When my friends think I'm ugly. I got a masculine face. I got some drag strip courage. I can really drive a bit. I'm gonna change my name to Hannibal. Name it just Rex. Change my name to Hannibal. Maybe just Rex. I know karate, voodoo too. I'm gonna make myself a fool.
- [82:09]
C
Yeah. And then in some ways that's a kind of like return to some of the stuff on small change. Like step right up. Kind of kind of salesman pitch line kind of ad copy approach to lyric writing that he can be very, very good at. I actually, I don't love many of his spoken word experiments that begin around this point in his career that we'll maybe have occasion to mention later. But I have to say the little two minute long the Ocean doesn't want Me On Here is really powerful to me. Like. Like kind of an image of trying to kill yourself by drowning yourself in the ocean. And it keeps buoying you up to the surface and you're like cursing it like that. That is really effective in a way that like no one else does stuff like that. Really far out experiments and then some lovely background ballads.
- [83:09]
B
It's.
- [83:09]
C
I will say there's something a little rote by like the pacing of the album that it's like ugly screaming song, weird rhythmic experiments. Beautiful.
- [83:22]
B
Such a scream. And then who are you?
- [83:23]
C
Right, right, exactly. So like looking down the track list you have who are you? Which is a beautiful ballad. It's track five. Track eight is A Little Rain. A beautiful ballad. Whistle down the wind. Track 13 is beautiful. That feel which is. Can't call it beautiful. Beautiful. Exactly.
- [83:41]
A
With.
- [83:41]
C
Co written by. With. With.
- [83:44]
B
You know, we didn't even mention that Keith Richards played like on Raindogs. He played here and he co wrote this one too.
- [83:50]
C
And he's singing backup. And, and, and when you hear Keith Richards you realize, yeah, he is a kind of the only other guy who could do a duet with Tom Waits.
- [84:02]
B
That's a voice compatible voice.
- [84:04]
C
Exactly.
- [84:05]
B
They're both just as atotal it.
- [84:09]
D
You can lose it in a fire. You can leave it at the altar. It will make you out alive. Fall down in the street. You can leave it in the L where you said it's gospel, but I know that he's already ch. There's one thing you can do.
- [84:53]
C
It's fantastic. So, like, those songs are all beautiful weight songs, great melodies, very moving. And his singing, as you, as we've noted on the last few albums, you know, much more modulated than it used to be. Sometimes on a song like A Little Rain, it's actually a little delicate. He has control over it. So, you know, there is filler, especially the second half. Like, there's a stretch of. Of a bunch of songs toward the back end where I'm like, all right, 16 songs. Could have been 13, maybe 12 would have been even better. But it's a solid album. I don't have any of my. The misgivings about Frank Wilde's years as I do about that. I don't have those misgivings for this record at all. It's a strong statement and showed in the early 90s he was still firing on all cylinders as an artist, I think.
- [85:46]
D
Are you still leaving nothing but bones in the world away? Did you bury the carnival with the lines and all? Excuse me. Why a sharpen my nails and just who are you? Who are you this time? You look rav. Are you pretending to love Will I hear that?
- [86:31]
B
Okay, I will. I will say that earth died screaming like he does this. It's obviously a pattern. He has these very kind of, you know, rhythmic songs. I love that the. The bone clanking introduction. It does feel like skeletons rattling. Kind of like the Nightmare Before Christmas. I think of when I think of the Earth died screaming. It's sort of like, you know, you know, you know, you know, the skeleton guy, like, you know. But the thing about it is that I don't love the melody. And I think it. It's far improved on the later song such as Scream, which is really kind of like frightening. There's that Latin rhythm, but it's also the Southern. The sudden percussive rhythmic fires that come out on that track. They're like gunshots, like wailing in the background. And I guess you know that feel. You already mentioned it, Damon. What a great song and a great sign off for the album. The other one, I actually, I'm. If I want to mention or if I want to leave it to Scott, who was shocked to find out that I Don't Want to Grow up comes from Bone Machine of all records. It's a great rock song. And then my joke here, my line was that you don't even realize it's A great rock song until you hear the COVID version of it. Scott.
- [87:35]
A
That's true. It's. To me, that song, the way it's constructed, is very much the way that Downtown Train is constructed, Meaning it's, it's. Waits knows he's got something, but still doesn't want to go the whole way. He's not going to be on the pop charts. He's not going to get a song that's going to be played. So I'll give it to you this far. Someone else finish it. Someone else have a hit with it, that's fine. I'll still get the writing credit and the royalties, but that's what it feels like to me. And I had no idea whatsoever that that was a Tom Waits song that the Ramones had done and had a minor hit with later in their career.
- [88:14]
D
I don't want my hair to fall out I don't want to be filled with doubt I don't want to be a good Boy Scout I don't want to have to learn to count I don't want to have the biggest amount I don't want to grow up well, when I see my parents fight I.
- [88:36]
C
Don'T want to grow up.
- [88:40]
D
Out there thinking all night that I don't want to grow up I'd rather stay here in my room Another out there with Santa Clue I don't want to live in a big old tomb on Grand.
- [88:54]
C
Street.
- [88:56]
A
I think you're both right on this one, too. So we're largely in agreement so far. This show, I think. Yeah, it's aggressive, abrasive in ways I spent a of time, lot, lot of time while listening to Bone Machine, you know, trying to figure out the timing on when we had that sort of industrial rock wave crash in the 90s.
- [89:17]
B
You can hear him listening to Nine Inch Nails.
- [89:20]
C
Yeah.
- [89:20]
A
So, like, Nine Inch Nails is a couple of years before and 89, I believe. Yeah, yeah. And bands like Filter and others are just after this. So he's kind of. He's just, he's near the beginning, but. But certainly Nine Inch Nails have already established a sort of a sort of tone and, And a feel that I think he's sort of not grappling onto, but certainly is aware of. I'll mention the production here again. Bone Machine. I listen to all this stuff with headphones on, and I can't tell you how many times. Such a spacious kind of production. I keep thinking someone's next to me or behind me because it's these little noises that sort of plop in Various places and songs like, is someone there? Not that it's scary, but, like, is someone behind me? Do you need me? Do you have to talk me to me? And it's just. It's just on. On the track. It's on the song. It's funny.
- [90:08]
B
Tom Yorker Radio had noticed that too. He was asked to contribute his thoughts about Rain Dogs. He said the thing that gripped him the most, like, when he was a kid listening to it, is like, all the weird close miking and, like, drum sounds. Like the drum sounded like it was being played down the hall, but then you hear somebody cough in your ear or like. Like you hear the twitch of, like, you know, some instrument, and you're like, wait, wait. It's right next to me. He's right next to me. It's almost like there's a ghost in your ear or something. Something like that.
- [90:33]
A
Yes.
- [90:33]
B
Yes. The Tom Waits has that way of just sort of seeing, like, a little more present than he ought to be.
- [90:45]
D
We'll take an eye for an eye, a tooth for tooth. Just like they say in the Bible Will never leave a trace or forget a face of any man at the table. Any man at the table. When the moon is a cold chiseled dagger and it's sharp enough to draw blood from a stone. You rise through your dreams on a coaching horses and the fence posts in the moonlight look like bones.
- [91:40]
A
My favorite track on this record is. I don't think it's been mentioned. I. Dirt in the Ground. Just early in the record, it again, sort of has that odd vocal performance that Jeff had mentioned previously. Obviously, he's very up. Up in his register. What I like about this is, if you listen, the style is. Is kind of like a soul song, especially. Just pay attention to the horns and, like, it's a soul horn style, yet the song is slowed to a crawl. And instead you have these piano chords that are sort of pushing it forward, forward with this very dark, sort of unsoul, like, you know, repetition. We're all just gonna. We're all gonna just be dirt in the ground and still this. The clanging on pipes for the percussion. But if you just pay attention to those horns, you almost hear a different song. I really like the way that, that it's.
- [92:45]
D
Somewhere I want to know am I the sky? Hell's boiling over Heaven is full we're chained to the world and we all going to pull and we're all going to be yeah I said we're all gonna be yeah, yeah I said we're all gonna Be. Yeah, I said we're all gonna be just dead in the ground now the killer was smiling.
- [93:35]
A
I like Jesus Gonna Be Here, which is sung like gospel song, blues song. I already mentioned Going out west, which I really like from this record too. That's probably my second favorite track here. In the end, it's.
- [93:50]
D
It's.
- [93:51]
A
You know, there are some quieter moments that work well. I think maybe Damon had mentioned Whistledown, the Wind, which. Which I like. And. And the. Richard's contribution is good. You know, the feel, the. The agreement, aggression, the clanging is not quite what I love about him or this particular era. But there are enough solid songs here to sort of elevate it past. I do think it's probably a better record than Frank's Wild Years. Maybe not by a lot, but by enough. And, you know, he's got to take a break here for a while and perhaps retool by the time we hear from him next.
- [94:31]
C
Well, can I just say, like, hearing Scott talk about Dirt in the Ground, just the thing that occurred to me and thinking about that song, which I didn't mention, is just how cinematic this music is. It's like. It reminds me of like, old radio shows where, like, one guy would be narrating a story and he'd have like 18 different little instruments around him that like. Like someone knocked the door, door, and you'd hear the knock and then. And then like, and they open the window and you hear a. No, like, it's like an old time radio show, but with like, instead of 16 things, it's like 75 different sounds, including on the song in the Coliseum, an instrument that he invented, a percussion instrument that he called a conundrum, which.
- [95:26]
D
He credits himself for playing on that song Satan.
- [95:57]
C
As we were. As we were talking, I looked it up and he invented. This is an instrument that he built. And it's on that song. And like, that's the kind of music he's making right now where he's.
- [96:08]
B
And by the way. Yeah. I'm sorry, you were talking about the lateral Radiohead, like, you know, deaths. I mean, Radiohead was inspired by that, by what Tom Waits did there, to create their own percussion instrument and use it on the. There's a song on Amnesiac called Packed Like Sardines In a Crushed Tin Box that basically is based around a percussion instrument that Johnny Greenwood invented in his backyard with all these, like, clanging on tin cans and like, different things like that that sounds like this. And the inspiration was taken directly from this album. From this.
- [96:42]
C
I can totally See that.
- [96:48]
D
Sam?
- [97:28]
B
All right, well then, now, how do we deal with the opera part of Tom Waits's career? Yes, that's right. And this is important to set in proper chronological order, actually, because what proceeds next is a series of. Of Tom Waits working on Broadway or and maybe in the London East End Theater working on stage productions. Stage productions that would result in albums. But it is incredibly important to understand these albums all originally spawned from stage productions. These were things where there were casts, there were plots, there were narratives, and then there were songs written to go in between them and to illustrate their conceits. And. And the first time he did this was in 1989, and he was working with a guy named Robert Wilson. This kind of emphasizes to you, by the way, how much Tom Waits had managed to nestle himself into the New York City avant garde scene, sort of avant garde art scene in America, that he was able to take his talents, which of course a lot of people had appreciated, and then take them into very different non pop, non rock places. Maybe at that point he decided that, well, downtown training was nice and it gave me me a bunch of money in my wallet, but I'm never going to be a rock star. Why don't I expand my horizons? So the first album he puts out, and it's going to be interesting how we deal with these because the stage plays and the productions that they were meant for came out at different times during the 90s, but the albums actually, for the most part, only came out later. The first one of these is the next album in his actual discography. It's called the Black Rider and it's based on a 1989 play that he'd started staged, based on like a German folk tale called Dear Fre, about a guy who sells his soul to the devil for six perfect bullets that will hit whatever target that they're aimed at. It's kind of a. A very weird concept to choose. A fian bargain is a nice, like, you know, theme, but it's certainly not the kind of thing you would have ever expected from Tom Waits. And I gotta tell you, I don't like this album very much at. At all. I consider this maybe to be the weakest thing he's done. There are three of these albums, and I'm not really a fan of any of them. But the Black Writer is as European as Tom Waits ever got. We are. Have already talked about how there are accordions and polkas all over Tom Waits's records. Those, of course, are essentially European sounds. They come from the old Country. Well, now you're going to get a record that's composed primarily of all of them, including the plain, you know, to the point where it has songs called like Russian Dance. And you, you know, it's going to make you feel as un American as any Tom Waits album ever has. It's not a bad record, but it's a conceit. And I'm not sure Tom Waits has ever really been demonstrated at his best when he's working in service of these scripts, when he has to like, write songs to order, you know, this. This one is very weird because it has a strange William S. Burroughs crossover that I'm not even going to bother to explain. But the black writer has always been the least of his albums. And to me it represents the far end of his artistic experimentation and maybe the dangers of it. The place where he carries himself over into a sort of self indulgence that might work for the people who are always going to love this sort of, you know, transgressive music, but it just has never done much for me.
- [101:12]
C
Yeah, I. I have so little to say about this. I'll just.
- [101:15]
A
Yeah.
- [101:15]
D
Quickly.
- [101:16]
C
I mean, I don't. I literally have pretty much nothing to say about this album. It's never done anything for me. Although I will say that Alice, which we will get to in a little while, is another one of these.
- [101:28]
B
A different proposition in some ways that.
- [101:31]
C
That album I actually like quite a lot. But this one, it just doesn't. Doesn't work. It's sort of Neither Fish nor Foul. It's. Is it a Tom Waits album? It. It feels almost like he's writing to order for something where his heart isn't in it.
- [101:50]
B
It's the closest I think he's done in a decade to the one from the Heart soundtrack, which is similarly him writing to order from a style that like. Well, at that point moved beyond. He hadn't moved really beyond this. This was an experiment he wanted to do, but I think it doesn't work in the same way.
- [102:06]
C
Yeah, yeah, I agree.
- [102:08]
A
I. I listened once. I could tell I was not going to be great. I decided to spend my time on more interesting and valuable content. Of the. Of the three of these opera albums, I think, yes, it's the worst.
- [102:22]
B
But there are things on it that are worth, like remembering. I think November is a fine song that makes wonderful use of this instrument that I was, for the life of me, when I was younger, I thought was a theremin. You know, the kind of spooky sound that you get from that it turns out it's a bowed saw, like literally like an old style saw that you would like, you know, saw a log with. But it turns out you can, if you strike it the right way, you can bend the saw to create those sorts of notes. And, you know, it goes back to the way Tom Waits likes to self produce and work with very interesting organic sounds. And the song itself is fine as well.
- [103:03]
D
November seems odd. You're my firing squad, November.
- [103:30]
B
But yeah, I mean, beyond that, I. I just feel like it's the Briar and the Rose, that's another fine little ballad, but it's like a minor tune that would have probably fitting better on the Orphans, Brawlers, Ballers and Bastards. We'll talk about that later. That really brings us to what, 70 years later, on his own time, not as part of one of these artistic collaborations where he's working for the stage, which is as the next Tom Waits rock album comes out. And we're in. I believe this is 1999 now. Yes, I remember I bought this record the day it came out. And this one is one of those weird miracles because the Mule Variations may well be one of the two best Tom Waits albums ever released. It will make my top two at the end of this record. And yet it does everything wrong. Theoretically it's 70 minutes long when it should be 50. But you know what? Turns out all the songs work. It's very gut bucket bluesy when you know Tom Waits is working for the avant garde, but all of a sudden he finds a new warmth. This record actually in a weird way feels like a summation, a climax. The Mule Variations, in the strangest way. We've talked about the genius of swordfish trombones, of Raindogs. We've gone all the way back to Small Change and Blue Valentine, Heart Attack, Hack and Vine. The Mule Variations is kind of like. If I were going to say, what's the most pure Tom Weights album of all time? This is it.
- [105:15]
D
My hair. Japan. I'm big in Japan. I'm big in Japan. I'm big in Japan. I'm big in Japan. They love the way I do it.
- [105:55]
B
This is it. You can start right from Big in Japan. That weird beat, that vocal percussion beat that opens it to like the great song, which is like one of these stomping, clapping openers that he's familiar with, but it's just so funny too. Biggie Japan, Japan sets the tone for an album that again, should fail because it's overlong and it is late, late, so late into Tom Waits his career, but it is so assured. I, I consider this record kind of like one of those late career miracles. I don't know how he did it and I still don't think he's topped it.
- [106:33]
C
Yeah, I, I, I agree. I mean, this is, this is definitely up there. And will be in contention for one of my top two from the latter half of his career. It is a really strong collection of songs. I still think it's. You said it's 70 minutes. Part of that is because there's some really long songs on here.
- [106:52]
B
Yeah. He could edit his own songs. The songs are good. But he should shorten the song.
- [106:57]
D
Yeah.
- [106:57]
C
And a couple of them could go and I wouldn't really miss them. But there are a lot of really strong tracks. It's also a. These are subtle differences because there are certain continuities across so much of his music, but there is a more rural flavor to this record. It feels like where he's. His normal sonic palette is like an urban junkyard or sort of like out back behind a circus tent.
- [107:27]
B
This is more Americana written right above my notes here.
- [107:30]
C
Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's definitely more of a kind of, I don't know, like, kind of. It's like the 30s and it's the Depression and we're, we're wandering bring into, you know, one of those novels about picking up and moving across the country together.
- [107:51]
B
John Dos Passos. Yeah.
- [107:52]
D
Ram Agent, Sons of the Widow, James, Jack the Cutter and the Pockmar Kid. They had to stand naked at the bottom of the cross and tell the good Lord what to do. Tell the good lord what they didn't. Got to get behind a mule in a m. Get behind a mule. You got to get behind the mule the morning and get behind the view the morning. And.
- [108:36]
C
And, and I, you know, there are any number of songs I could highlight on here. I, I'm going to. To stick with. Well, one thing I'll quickly highlight is another spoken word thing. What's he building Is. Is that takes the cake. That's. This is the greatest spoken word thank you song ever done it. You just have to hear it. It's. I, I won't even try to describe it. You play so many clips.
- [109:01]
B
I want to attempt to try to describe this massive.
- [109:03]
C
Okay, you go ahead, go ahead. You describe this. It is one of the funniest things you've ever heard. And also terrifying.
- [109:10]
B
Have you ever seen the film Rear Window? Okay. Have you ever seen like any one of those stories about paranoid neighbors who are just always looking at One another and they don't know each other because nobody knows each other anymore. So there's that weird guy who's moved down the block into the old house. What's he building? What the hell is he building? Why is he always wandering in and out of his house late at night? I heard he was on the roof last night. What's that song he's always singing? It's like the way a guy.
- [109:38]
A
Just the boobs.
- [109:40]
B
That's a great analogy. That's perfect. It's a Joe Dante film is what it is. Okay.
- [109:45]
C
And I. I think I can do this. Listen.
- [109:47]
A
Ready?
- [109:48]
C
What's he building in there?
- [109:50]
D
What's he building in there? What the hell is he building in there? He has subscriptions to those magazines. He never waves when he goes by. He's hiding something from the rest of us. He's all to himself. I think I know why.
- [110:18]
B
He took.
- [110:19]
D
Down the tire swing from the pepper tree. He has no children of his own, you see? He has no dog, he has no friends, and his lawn is dying. What about all those packages he sends? What's he building in there?
- [110:42]
C
That's what he says over and over again as he's reciting all of these paranoid fears about what's he building in there? And it just works so well. It is so spooky. It is. It is a little work of genius. I don't know where he gets this stuff.
- [111:01]
B
It has not aged for me. I could hear him go through that entire rant the whole time, like, you know, endlessly. He. It's the character of his voice. You know, you talk about how he's learned to control his singing voice. Well, his speaking voice. This is an acting term. This is an actor's monologue, basically, is what this is, right? Sets a really great background music. But that's where Tom Waits draws on the acting talent that he has. Gosh, it's so fun.
- [111:25]
D
I heard he has an ex wife in some place called Mayor's Income, Tennessee. And he used to have a consulting business in Indonesia. But what's he building in there? He has no friends, but he gets a lot of mail. I'll bet he spent a little time in jail. I heard he was up on the roof last night signaling with a flashlight. And what's that tune he's always whistling?
- [112:07]
C
You know, the. The two other songs I want to mention here, not not surprising, are more ballady songs. One is. Hold on, track three goes on too long. It could be three and a half to four minutes instead of five and a Half, but it's a beautiful song. Amy man does a great cover of it on one of the. They're like a million of these, you know, like, artists cover Tom Waits albums, anthologies of things, and she does one. You can find it by Googling it real fast. But then the real one that just, I had to say, just breaks my heart is Georgia Lee, way deep in the record. And there is a cover by Phoebe Bridgers of this song that is really beautiful as well. This song is so simple, and the fact that he can pull off writing a song this lovely, so deep in his catalog and career, it just. It's amazing. I want to read a little of the lyrics here. Cold was the night and hard was the ground they found her in a small grove of trees and lonesome was the place where Georgia was Was found she's too young to be out on the street Then the second verse. Ida said she couldn't keep Georgia from dropping out of school. I was doing the best that I could. Oh, but she just kept running away from this world. These children are so hard to raise Good. And then the chorus. Why wasn't God watching? Why wasn't God listening? Why wasn't God there for Georgia Lee? It's such a simple statement of little. A lament at pain, loss, suffering. Looking to the heavens and wishing for some consolation and wondering if there even is a God who would let this happen.
- [113:54]
D
Cold was the night and hard was the ground they found a small grove of trees Trees and lonesome was the place where Georgia was found she's too young to be out on the street I wasn't girl watching why wasn't God listening? Why wasn't God there for Georgia?
- [114:50]
C
It's classic. It's. It's like what I said this in the first part of our Tom Wait show. He can write songs that you feel were, you know, were made a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago that you kind of unearthed in some archive of primordial music. And that song is at that level. It is that great. And I again, very much recommend the Phoebe Bridgers cover, which is lovely, because she has a very, you know, very thin girl, like, girly voice. And hearing that voice sing these words, it's almost as if it's being said, sung by best friend of Georgia Lee, or maybe by Georgia Lee from beyond the grave about herself. It's. It's just brilliant. So great, great song and a really strong album by late, late era Tom Waldo Flowers.
- [115:55]
D
Across by the road and somewhere oh, babies CR for as the hills turn from Green back to gold. Why wasn't cold watching? I wasn't good.
- [116:34]
B
Okay. The funny thing is, Damon, this also returns to a point that we made back on our first show. This is one of the. The great gifts of Tom Waits being kind of a character actor throughout his career, because he's never been like the confessional singer songwriter. Remember how we talked about how he sounded a bit like Jackson Brown back in the early days? Well, he never took that path. Instead, you know, the sounds aside, he. He chose to write as anybody. He chose a literary affect, which means that on a song like this, there's no need for ironic distance. There's no need for anything except the absolute immediacy and the pain of that emotion and that sentiment. And he's free to do that. He's free to. This is why sometimes people accuse him being, quote, sentimental, that drunken sentimental guy. Well, it's because he's always writing characters. He's not writing about himself. He's writing about, you know, these. These sorts of characters that he chooses to depict. And maybe he was, you know, always talking about the same kinds of barflies early in his career, but with. That's that approach that. That writerly approach you can come up with with a song like this, which is just heartbreaking. You stole literally everything I was going to say about that song. But you know what? Before I get to the things I want to mention. Scott, what do you have to say?
- [117:51]
A
George? Only based on a true story, a real story. Missing girl in California that was found dead in a grove of trees, which provides a little more resonance to it. Damon's talked a lot about. Hold on. One of my favorites, George Lee is great, but to Jeff's point, this is 70 minutes of music. And generally the time a problem. It's not necessarily one here. There are a couple things I would have cut. Sure, I'll mention them, but the. The winning percentage, the success percentage here is. Is very high. And I like that. Seems to me there are more sort of character sketch type songs, which I really love. Love when he does. The ballads here are extremely strong. We know why Damon likes it. There's just all sorts of really good stuff here. Yeah, hold on. And George Ali. Let's see. House where Nobody Lives. And this is a song that sounds to me like his cleanest, clearest, actual speaking, singing voice in a while. And you see an abandoned house on the side of the road, and there's, as he says, there's. There's all sorts of weeds and papers, and you think about who lived there. And how did it come to disrepair? And was it a family? And what makes a house a home? That old Line and Waite says a house is just made of wood. What makes a house grand is the love inside the house. Once it had laughter and once it held dreams and now it's something else altogether. And it's this beautiful, beautiful song.
- [119:36]
D
Once it had laughter Once it had dreams did that throw it away? Did they know what it means? Someone's heart break? Or did someone do somebody? Well, the paint is all cracked. It was P.E. off of the wood. The papers were stacked on the porch where I stood and the wheel had grown up just as high as the door.
- [120:32]
A
And the other just gorgeous track from later in the album is one called Picture in a Frame. And it's one of those that almost won an album at this point, I guess, which you can almost certainly read as being about Catherine and Tom. I'm sorry, Kathleen and Tom. Wicked Waits. This is just a beautiful ballad about. And Willie Nelson's covered it about that point when. Well, of course I come calling in my Sunday best. Ever since I put your picture in a frame like the person, the relationship that makes you be a better person, that makes you turn your life around and Tom Waits's sense. Turn his career around, at least in a. In a creative. Creative sense. I'm gonna love you till the wheels fall off. Like, it's just this gorgeous ballad that Tom Waits really sells effectively.
- [121:28]
D
I love you, baby and I always will I love you, baby and I always will you. Ever since I put your picture, you're free I love you, baby and I always will Ever since I put your picture in free.
- [122:14]
A
Stuff like black market, baby I love the line. She's a diamond that wants to stay cold what a. What a great line that is. And I think Brennan wrote most of the lyrics for that one. That's a great, great line. Take it. Take it with me. Late. Okay, so you guys talked about what he's building and the voice.
- [122:35]
B
I love this song so much. Take it with me.
- [122:37]
A
Right? So take it with me is the same way in a song, meaning this. Like, he is. He is singing so close to the microphone, and it is. It is ravaged, it is craggly, and it is all directly in front of you. The stark and real contours of the voice with no tricks whatsoever. And this is where I had that note despite, you know, I guess we'd say limited range of the voice. It's amazing how many twists he can create inside of that instrument. And here's another One that. That we see inside Take it with.
- [123:10]
D
Me Far far away Train with who blows Wherever you're going Wherever you're waving goodbye the end of the day you're up and over and you're far away Always for you for forever yours it felt just like the old days. Fell asleep on bu porch. I'm gonna take it with me when I go.
- [124:13]
A
And then come on up to the house. I love that. That huge drum sound, that pop.
- [124:17]
B
You just pilfer in all my notes. Sorry.
- [124:19]
A
And Damon took the rest. I know. But the gospel construction of the song to end Mule Variations. The world is not my home I'm just passing through Come on up to the house. It's a beautiful way to end this record. I don't know if it's his best ever. It's probably going to end up on my list of two. I was very surprised that, considering where we came from.
- [124:42]
B
Where.
- [124:42]
A
Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of Bone Machine. And. Yeah, we're almost 20 years into this second era of his career that you have 70 minutes worth. Oh, I said I'd mention the stuff I don't like, so I will. So I don't want to be completely laudatory. I don't like Eyeball Kid. I think it's just distracting arrangement that doesn't help the song. And I don't like Chocolate Jesus for a very particular reason, which is. I don't know what the point is lyrically. And almost everything that Tom Waits does has a point or a story or a character or. Or something. Even the oddball stuff. Like, there's one that's coming up that I'm going to like to talk about. Like, there's a. There's kind of a point to it. This just. I don't under. Ga can have a throwaway thing here or there if he wants. He deserves it. But I just like, lyrically, it's usually deeper, better. I just didn't. Didn't love the lyrics in that song. Okay. That's what. I don't like the rest. Pretty darn good.
- [125:41]
B
Well, what do I do when Damon and Scott have taken everything I wanted to say about this album out of my mouth? I guess I will add that there's at least one song Pony, which no one mentioned, which to me is the one that I had, like, check marked. It's like, this is Americana. I've seen it all, boys. I've been all over Been everywhere in the whole wide world. I rode the high line. He's talking about, like, yeah, I want to sit down he walked from Natchez to Hushpakana. He's pulling out these lyrics, but the. The musical arrangement, boy, it sounds like something could have come maybe from the band. There's the harmonium. I think of Garth Hudson playing the harmonium like an accordion. And there's that beautiful harmonica solo in the middle of it. They play like a symbolic pair.
- [126:25]
D
I work for nothing in a bell zone. It's all me. I call a room blind out on the P to l friendly bell. A44 will get you 99. I hope my pony. I hope my pony. I hope my pony knows the way home.
- [127:17]
B
But actually, I know you already said something about come on up to the house, but I have to tell you, that's to me, like maybe the signature song on this record. Because the really overwhelming. This is a surprise. The overwhelming feeling I get from the Mule, Variations of all things, is warmth. This is a very warm, kind of a reconciliatory album. There's actually a lot of comfort to be found amongst these grooves. Even the weird blues howlers like get behind the Mule. I mean, get behind the mule and pull. You know, it. It's too long. It's like a seven minute long song. But, boy, that groove. There's a reason they wanted to keep running it. But on Come on up to the House, that last song on the record, but it's got one line that I've been using ever since then. I don't know if Tom Waits invented it, but I've taken it from him. Which is the line where. Get down off the cross. We could use the wood. Come on up to the house. Which is the idea of like. Do not continue to crucify yourself. Do not cast yourself out. The problems to your. Your. The solutions to your problems are not going to be found out there alone. Just come on back and we'll figure it out together. It's a reconciliatory song and it's such a beautiful, beautiful way to end the record. Well, you're high on top the mountain of woe. But just come on up to the house. You should know, you should surrender. But you can't let go. You gotta come on up to the house.
- [128:42]
D
Oh, you're crying don't do no good. Come on up to the house. Come down, down off the cross. We can use the wood. You gotta come on up to the house. Come on up to the house. Come on up to the house. The world is not my home. I'm just a passing through you. You got to come on look to the house.
- [129:24]
B
This, in some ways, to me, is almost like the climax of Tom Waits his career. There are many albums that come further, and a lot of really good ones. But this, to me, was a shock to have come out when I was a kid, when I was like, a music purchaser back in college, back during the day, and be like, wow, well, this guy from 1973 has still got it. The Mule variation questions is just a great surprise. And I, I've got to think that people who are listening to this show who are unfamiliar with weights are really going to be pleasantly surprised by it as well.
- [129:54]
A
Yeah, it's a really good entry point, too, from this vast career.
- [130:00]
B
So now we got to deal with two more opera albums, and I really do not know what to say about these two. They came out pretty much exactly this.
- [130:09]
A
I think it was the same day.
- [130:11]
B
Same day, yeah.
- [130:12]
A
Yeah.
- [130:12]
B
So he was pulling a Bruce spring scene, Guns N Roses thing. Use your illusions. One and two. Well, I mean, and again, maybe the reason why is that these are sort of leftover songs, lost songs, some of them of more recent vintage, and then some of them from back in the 90s. The first one is Alice. The second one is something called Blood Money, which is from an opera called, like, was it Woja Check? I can't even pronounce it. Don't even remember the name of it. The first one, though, Alice, is about a. A bizarre kind of fusion of Breck file, German, like, you know, expressionist, you know, street theater with a story of Lewis Carroll and his weird, semi pedophiliac obsession with Alice Little turned into an opera. And, and, and the funny thing is that there are some beautiful songs on this record and there are some fine songs on Blood Money. I just don't have time for either of them because I've come to believe that, as I mentioned already, I see why Waits liked writing in these situations. He loved being given a prompt and say, okay, well, what do you have lying around? What can you compose on the spot? How can you fit this into a framework? It's a challenge that I think he liked meeting, but he's restrained by it. To me, I don't want to hear, like, five songs about, like, how, like, you know, about freaks and about, like, strange people. I don't want to hear about these things. All four into a narrative sequence. Weights's work is better when it's more diverse as opposed to forced into these narrative grooves and channels. I, I, I don't know if you guys feel differently. I think we all agree that Alice is the better of these two records. Is that correct?
- [131:55]
A
Nope.
- [131:56]
B
Nope.
- [131:56]
A
But Damon thinks that. So he should.
- [131:58]
C
Oh, yeah, I sure do.
- [131:59]
B
Because I agree with you, Damon Scott, once again, you're wrong.
- [132:03]
C
Yeah, not necessarily. But yeah. Alice is an incredible collection of ballots there. There are eight of them I could list on.
- [132:14]
B
This one in particular, I think is glorious.
- [132:17]
A
Yeah.
- [132:17]
B
Well, shortest of them all.
- [132:19]
C
What? I'm still here.
- [132:21]
A
Yeah.
- [132:22]
C
That is one of the most beautiful little. Yeah. I mean, just to describe that song, it's like a minute and a half long and it's just variations.
- [132:33]
B
You can describe it with that line. You haven't looked at me in that way in years, but I still here.
- [132:39]
C
Exactly. And. And the. The harmony, like the chord chart of the song is very unsettling, very not. There's no resolution or even forward progression as the chords come along as he sings variations of. You haven't looked at me that way in years. You know, things were good, now they're not. You're not here. And on it goes for about a minute and 20 seconds until the last line. You haven't looked at me that way in years, but I'm still here. And it resolves to the tonic, to the tonic chord on here. And it's just. Your heart just breaks listening to that. It's so nicely done and miniature.
- [133:25]
B
That's what it's so good about it too.
- [133:27]
D
Your watches stopped in the palm is clear. Someone turn the lights back on. I love you till all time is gone. You haven't looked at me that way but I still you.
- [134:12]
C
The other great songs, the song Fish and Bird is like a total throwback to Tom Traubert's blues with his singing. It's like the most Louis Armstrong gargling gravel kind of vocal performance from that we haven't really heard since the 70s. But it is a gorgeous kind of sea chanty song with a very. It's almost laughable when you think about it. But he makes it work with the lyrics that. Like a. A fish or who's a whale? So it's not even a fish, really. Mammal and bird, it should be called, but there's a whale that falls in love with a bird. And the. And the fish can't go in the sky and the bird can't go in the water. And they love each other, but they. They can never be together. And. And it's. It's one of these very modeling big, syrupy tom weights ballads that I just. I will always love to my grave. And that's a very Good one. There's some very good covers of it in many different styles. If you Google them.
- [135:14]
D
I'll never sail back to the time All Always pretend your mind oh, I know that we both must fall. You can live in.
- [135:46]
C
But how they're in the title track alone. Ellis Flowers, Grave no one Knows I'm Gone. Poor Edward, Lost in the Harbor, Barker Roll, all of them really high quality weights ballads. So if that's the side of his. His songwriting that you like, they're here. The one thing I will add is a very mild criticism of it. Despite Loving, I love it because it reminds me of the best of his 70s, these ballads. And what that means is that all of the kind of vitality artistically of this second half of his career is gone. It's as if it never happened. And we're right Back to like 1977 again. And as much as the nostalgic in me loves that part of his career, you have to admit that, like, all right, this is not him at his most vital. He's sort of replaying the old stuff here.
- [136:45]
D
And in that.
- [136:46]
C
That respect, I think we were all entitled when hearing it to say as much as we might have liked it, like, well, let's hope this isn't where his career ends because that would mean he sort of gave up trying to do like, new pathbreaking stuff as an artist.
- [137:02]
D
Set me adrift and I'm lost over there and I must be in sea to go skating on your name and by tracing it twice I fell through the ice of Alice.
- [137:35]
C
Blood Money. There's some good, good stuff on there. Coney Island Baby is a nice ballad. A few others are. Are solid. I'll let Scott talk about that since he likes that one better. It's. It's not like in his top echelon for me, but it's a perfectly respectable record. And I have to say, back in 2002, when these two both dropped, you give me use your illusion 1 and 2 and then human Touch and Lucky Town and Lucky Town. I'll take these two as a pair release on the same day as better than both of those other ones.
- [138:11]
B
It's funny, actually. I'm thinking I might actually have to hand it to Use your Illusions one and two. I mean, I still dig November Rain a lot, I guess. Oh, sure.
- [138:20]
C
November Rain's a great, you know, pulpy, pulpy. One of the great power.
- [138:24]
B
We've already gone.
- [138:25]
A
We've.
- [138:25]
B
We've already. We've already done a full exhumation of the Guns and Roses discography on it.
- [138:31]
C
Like, human. Human Touch is like the Nader of Springsteen, his career, in my opinion. And so, like, that. That ruins that maybe.
- [138:38]
B
Okay, that's the parallel. I think maybe Tom Waits to this is like, okay, so the guy who, like, uses my music and sounds like me, he tried this and failed. I'll do a better job.
- [138:47]
C
Yeah. Well, it is weird because these are. These are all songs that he had written, like, a decade or more in the past, and he's now re. Recorded them and is releasing them, and that makes this distinctive. But I. I'd still say, you know, they're solid albums. They're good stuff. It shows he's still writing good songs. But it did leave a question mark on my mind. Like, all right, what comes after this? And we'll get there. But, Scott, I'm eager to hear it. What you think of these records?
- [139:13]
A
Yeah, I don't think either is great by any stretch. My problem, I guess, with Alice is something that Jeff mentioned way back at the. Near the beginning where. Where the scope gets more worldly. Like, this is. This is a little too worldly for me. A little too, like, dramatic for me. In. In a lot of ways. There's a couple good, good tracks. I. I think Blood Money could have been an album, like, could have been just a straight Tom Waits album. Not, you know, not. Not connected to any sort of play or musical or any of those things. And I, I, well, obviously, I just think the songs are. Are better, stronger. Everything Goes to Hell is one that I like a lot. On Blood Money, all the World Is Green, this love note from a soldier to his wife that is always kind of game you play. Like, what is that thing that I hear and get? Marimba. Yeah. I think it's a clarinet playing a solo on that track. Knife Chase is a very fun instrumental. You'll see those instrumentals pop up from album to album, I think start. So Starving in the Belly of a Whale is one where.
- [140:22]
B
That's my singled out song.
- [140:24]
A
Yeah, like. Like the game you play to identify. Identify what you hear. There are so many things happening in this song. Musically, I think it's like a tack piano. There's floor toms, there's saxophone. All these elements come together to really make. And then there's Oompa beat to the whole thing.
- [140:41]
D
Starving in the belly Starving in the belly Starving in the belly of a whale oh, you're starving in the belly Starving in the belly Starving in the belly of a whale don't take my words Just look skyward Pay the dancers Play the K Sky is darkling, don't stop parking.
- [141:18]
A
And then the other one that I liked a lot is at the very end, Good man is Hard to Find, which sounds like him croaking out something from a 19 from 1940s film. Like it's not Scott Joplin, but it would have fit alongside, you know, the Joplin rags on the Sting soundtrack. You can see Paul Newman and Robert Redford running around the streets of Chicago. To A Good man is Hard to Find. I just like the styling's better on Blood Money. I don't think it's a great album, but I do think it's better than Alice, if that's the comparison we want to make.
- [141:50]
D
Good man all that stranger Keeping my bill in my favor. First dark I. My favorite color is red.
- [142:42]
B
Well, I mean, I don't really like either of them. And I think that's probably the right time to transition onto the last few records of this episode, because right after that we went back to Real Tom White's albums. And that brings us Real Gone. 2004 is Real Gone. It's an album qua album. It's not a stage project. It's been adapted. And the other big thing about it is that there is no piano whatsoever on this record. You know, for a guy who started his career as a keyboardist and usually featured those, whether it was in piano or it was in harmonica or something like that, none whatsoever. There are some very good songs on this album, but this is the place where I stood. I suddenly start saying, you know, 71 minute CD running times are a real problem for weights. And by the way, I'll point out the difference in contrast between Real Gone and Blood Money and Alice can be shown by those last two were categorized on Wikipedia. I have it pulled up right now on Wikipedia. Blood Money is categorized by genre as jazz slash cabaret. Meanwhile, this is experimental rock slash alternative hip hop. If you want any idea for how different Real Gone is from what came before, it's probably pretty obvious from the first song, top of the Hill, which is one of my least favorite Tom Wade songs of all time. This sort of Jamaican reggae beat thing they're going for there does not work.
- [144:15]
D
Big sky and Ford coupe Old maid and the dry bones A red rover and skinny bones Jones 47 mules to pull this train you get married in the pouring lane you need the differential plenty of earliest you load the wagon till the end of the world Stop and get me on the lineup Stop and get me on the line up Stop and get me on the lineup I'm only going I'm only going I'm.
- [144:48]
C
Only going to the top of the.
- [144:50]
D
Hill I'm only going to the top of the hill.
- [144:53]
B
But there are a lot of other good songs on the record that, again, this is a very raucous album. Hoist that Rag is a fantastic one. That, to me, is classic weights. Again, I've referred to this in passing a couple times. These smoky juke joint sounds, I always think of them as the songs that would be playing in a roadhouse in a David lynch film. You know, like one of those places, like in Twin Peaks, that you're not supposed to go after 11 o' clock at night. Hoist that Rag has that feel to it. And the other one actually really always stood out to me was don't go into that barn. Which is a fascinating little thing. He pulled it out of a newspaper article, I think, that he read in the New York Times, of all places, about, like an old Kentucky. A barn that used to be like a slave jail house. And so, like, you know, the people around there, still African American, would say, like, yeah, you can play around that barn, but don't go in. That place is haunted. That place has got some bad vibes and bad memories associated with it. And the funny thing is the song actually carries all of that off. It still sounds. It's like a spooky, kind of a haunting little stomp, but it's also kind of playful. It feels kind of like a scary story to tell in the dark. The kind of thing like your grandpa would say is like, yeah, so that's where they beat the mean people. That's where they beat, you know, slaves. You don't want to ever go in there. And. And the funny thing is, you hear it background. There's these clanks, these percussive, like, you know, whips and wails that sound like people being abused. It's auditory. It's music. Concrete almost, in a way, it's like a very. An auditory evocation of what he's trying to go through or to get to with that song.
- [146:28]
D
A big blue moon with three gold rings A cold chip into the wind no, I pointed up above the trees that's when I heard my demon scream coming from the woods out there. I let my dog run a half of the chain I left my door real good with a tail down Go into them vine yeah Said don't go in the damn mind.
- [147:08]
B
But I think at the end of the day I will say real gone bugs me for the simple reason that I misses piano this, they, you know, this is an artist who really deserves that shading and needs that shading. And just as you could have accused some of his late seventies albums of being made maybe monochromatic, too focused on that jazzy style, this one actually is a little bit too bumptious, a little too much, you know, percussion and noise on it. And there. There are no moments of beauty. I'm wondering what Damon will think about it as Mr. Balladeer. As Mr. Balladeer, I've got to think this is going to want to be one of his least favorite Tom Waits albums.
- [147:48]
C
Yes, you have guessed correctly. I don't. I don't hate it, but it. I guess you could say that when he's like. Like this, which usually isn't the entire album. Usually it's, you know, two third of them. And then they're, They're. They're sweetened by the ballads, which are kind of, you know, pretty thin on the ground. Here, it's a piece. But when he. When he does this. Well, they are. I guess I would describe them as charismatic in their ugliness. That's where I can, like, appreciate a song like Earth Died Screaming on Bone Machine. Like, it's as ugly as music can get, but it's, like, so ugly. Compelling and. And like, oh, sublime in some way. Whereas this album, once again, like I occasionally think happens in his career, he gets in ruts. This is one where I feel like he's, you know, he's done Alice and Blood Money, which were sort of a bit of a. Of a kind of call back to earlier phases in his career, and now he's like, all right, I'm going. Come back to the more experimental, aggressive side. And it feels like everything I like on this, I feel like I've heard before.
- [149:04]
D
I always been told to remember this. Don't let a fool kiss you Never marry for love it was hard to impress. He knew everyone's secrets he wore her on his arm just like jewelry he never gave but he got. He kept her on a leash.
- [149:46]
C
And a lot of it, I don't even like that much because it lacks that kind of charismatic, sublime ugliness that he achieves sometimes. I mean, hoist that rag. Yeah, that's the classic weights. I put that on any weights, mix along with his best stuff. But most of the rest, I sort of just get lost. Sixteen tracks. Sins of the Father. Ten and a half minutes long.
- [150:12]
D
Come on, man.
- [150:13]
C
What are you doing?
- [150:14]
B
You're not Genesis.
- [150:16]
C
I know it's not. This is not. Suppers ready, my friend. What are you doing day after tomorrow at the end is almost seven minutes. It's. It's a little self indulgent in the way that the digital era often encouraged artists to be. You know, my. My premiere. What's the name of that song on. Oh, damn, I shouldn't have mentioned it if I couldn't pull the name up. The Wilco album that has. That was after Yankee Hotel Foxtrot Ghost Is Born. There's that song at the end that's like 15 minutes long.
- [150:53]
A
Jeff loves it.
- [150:54]
D
Oh, oh, yeah, yeah.
- [150:55]
B
Sooner than you. Not sooner you think, Less than you think. Something like that. I remember it's just got all this white noise in the middle of it.
- [151:00]
C
Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, the songy part of it had a lot of potential, but then there's like. Like 11 minutes of just kind of like ambient noise. And I think to myself, yeah, you give that guy two sides of vinyl. He's never doing that like that. That's totally something you only do when you're like, I could go on as long as I want. And I feel a little bit like that about some of this album too. So. Not one of my favorites. Definitely not at the peak.
- [151:27]
B
Okay, Scott, now tell us why this is the best album of Tom Waits's career on your top two at the end of the show.
- [151:33]
A
No, guys, I. Man, I missed part one when we were fighting about stuff and. Very different opinion. No, no, no. I got real problems with Real Gone. And there's this track on here called Clang Boom Steam, which I think is a perfect distillation of what's happening on Real Gone.
- [151:51]
B
It's almost like he's turned himself into a self parody. Clang Boom Steam is Tom Waits sort of like product.
- [151:57]
A
So there's a couple things identified as why I think it doesn't work. One, it's far too long. You guys have covered. Second, there's so much of the. Of the percussion that is man. Man made like. Like it's his voice being looped and turned around into percussion. And so look, Tom Waits voice is always going to be what it is, but now you layer it on top of itself and on top of itself again, and you have to deal with three layers of Tom Waits, like, gruff gruffness on multiple songs on this record. And that's. I gotta tell you guys, that's a bit too much for me. And the other thing that that causes is, Jeff, I think you were talking about don't go into that barn. That one I pointed out in particular, the percussive Patterns get really repetitive again because you're building them yourself and you're building it around like a voice and a timbre that is then looped and repeated in a way. And there's a few songs here where it just gets really repetitive. I like. Okay, so what do I like? I like Green Grass, which is another song where he sings in just about the lowest register he possibly can. It's love song about someone who's passed away. And so, you know, usually you say, lay down in the green grass. You think of a beautiful spring day and he's saying, lay down in the green grass to get closer to me. I'm underground. Stand in the shade of me. Things are now made of me. Lay down in the green grass. Remember when you loved me. This kind of really interesting broken little love song. I do like that.
- [153:38]
D
Stand in the shade of me. Things are now made of me. The weather vane will say it smells like rain today. God took the stars and it tossed them. Can't tell the birds from the blossoms. You'll never be free of me. You make a tree from me. Don't say goodbye to me. Describe the sky to me.
- [154:25]
A
And I will give him credit for Day After Tomorrow, which is basically an anti war song. A letter from a soldier riding home on his 21st birthday. This is at least the third instance of geographically correct Illinois references where he sings, I miss old Rockford town up by the Wisconsin border. Yeah, that's true. But he points out this soldier misses shoveling snow and raking leaves, and he's confused about how he should feel with this death all around him and some of it caused by him, in fact. I'm not fighting for justice, not fighting for freedom. I'm fighting for my life and another day in the world. And the thing about this one that I think makes it sort of interesting and unique is it's a Tom Wade song. And so I'm consistently waiting for the shoe to drop, for the twist, for someone, you know, someone to die, something to happen. And it doesn't. It just exists like this. Life in war is hard enough. You don't need to make it darker at the end. It just exists as this letter home from a soldier who's waiting to return home. Returning home the day after tomorrow. And there's no twist, there's no darkness at the end. It just. It just is. And I. I like that sort of change up from him that he throws us at the end of Real Gone. But on the whole, I've got significant problems with the help of Tell me.
- [155:50]
D
How does God choose? Whose prayers does he refuse? Who turns the wheel? Who throws the diamond on the day after tomorrow? I am not fighting for justice. I am not fighting for freedom. I am fighting for my life.
- [156:56]
C
Life.
- [156:58]
B
We only have one more album in Tom Wade's official discography, but I suppose before we get to that one, to end the show, we should at least mention his outtakes collection. And this might seem like the biggest footnote of them all. Who cares about Tom Waits, his bootlegs? But I gotta tell you guys, Orphans, it's the name of the album is called Orphans, Rollers, Ballers and Bastards, which reflects the fact that it's a 3 CD.
- [157:26]
A
It's not called Boat, Beaches, Bars and Ballads. What? Yes.
- [157:31]
B
Boy, that's a fine pairing, right? You know the Jimmy Buffett box back with the Tom Weights box set. And right. It is divided into three CDs. The brawlers are basically the rock and rolly kind of songs. The Ballers are, you know, Damon's favorite. The ballads and then the Bastards are the weird art rock experiments. I gotta tell you. I mean, this is like 2 1/2 CDs worth of fantastic material. This is actually worthy of comparison to Bob Dylan's bootleg series. Or your can actually a group I mentioned earlier, the Lost Taste, which proved to be just equally as good as, like, the stuff that made it to their major discography, but just never had a place. That first disc with the Brawlers, I I Scott said that he was. He didn't have time to get to this one because he, he foolishly thought that it was just an outtakes album. I'm telling you, that Brawlers disc is as appealing a Tom Waits album as he made since 1990. 90. It is perfect. It's stuff gathered from, like, everywhere, from, like the late 1980s all the way up to, like, yeah, 2005 or thereabouts. And it's all just like that smoky saloon kind of, you know, like danger, like, kind of doom kind of Tom Weights rock that he had perfected, basically from Swordfish Trombones on and that you heard less and less of on those opera albums. And now here's a giant heaping hell open of them, including, like, there are not one, but two different covers of Ramon songs on this record. And they're all great.
- [159:17]
D
Better move on. I love you guys enough to try get home. Let me think you rather take a real man Come with me, baby, now like a dog I really don't care if you do. You got your life in the Baby, you got your life in the baby you got the love.
- [159:44]
B
I have like maybe four songs I love from this record, but before I get to those, I just want to know what Damon thought of it.
- [159:50]
C
Oh, I think Orphans is. Is one of the best outtakes collections I've ever heard. It is incredibly strong, all three of them. I mean the. The Bastards disc is really far out. It's.
- [160:06]
A
It.
- [160:06]
C
There's some interesting experiments on there and. And of course Ballers is going to be my favorite. And I love that when they were working on it before he had come up with the amusing alliterative subtitle for Orphans, he. He was calling the Ballers disc shut up and eat your ballads.
- [160:24]
A
Which.
- [160:25]
C
Which is like perfect for me. It's like it's my broccoli, but now for me it's like lovely candy. Very sweet.
- [160:34]
B
But I love the way. The way that's phrased also. This is like. This is a part of who I am. Accept it. I'm not going to give it up.
- [160:40]
C
I.
- [160:40]
B
Who I am. And I like it.
- [160:42]
C
All the way back to his debut, he has had this dichotomy in his catalog of like about half to two thirds are kind of more upbeat or aggressive, not that tuneful, rooted in. In jazz or blues, walking bass talk, spoken word stuff. And then he's got about one third beautiful ballads. And that's been true throughout his entire career, except reeled on where he largely forgot the ballad part. But to. To put them on these separate discs is actually the most Tom Waits thing you could ever imagine because it's perfect. That's exactly what his career is. And he divides it up nicely. Just. I want to name check a few of these great ballads on that middle disc. Bend down the branches, you can Never hold back. Spring, Widow's Grove, Shiny Thing, Things, World Keeps turning, Never let go. And my personal favorite, a little two minute ballad titled if I have to Go, which is another one of these like sort of like Georgia Lee where you. It's like just a classic song. He's written versions of this at other points in his career. That's probably why this didn't make the cut for an actual Frank's Wild Years.
- [161:59]
B
And I gotta tell you, Frank's Wild Years would have been improved by the inclusion.
- [162:03]
C
Absolutely.
- [162:04]
D
It.
- [162:04]
C
I. When I saw that, that this, this was an outtake from that album, my first thought was like, oh geez, how stupid. Why would you not include this on that album?
- [162:15]
B
Is what he was right.
- [162:16]
C
Yeah, I know, but it's just a beautiful little song. A soldier or. Or someone is about to leave a little bit like Ruby's arms from Heart Attack. And vine is about to leave and he's just singing to. To his lover girlfriend. If I have to go, will you remember me? You know, I hope you'll remember me. You can. You can cheat on me with someone else if you want. Since you can't know that I'll be home and I'll forgive you if you do that. I understand. It's just very tender again. One of those primal primordial songs of his that feels like you found it while doing like digging in the dirt for artifacts from the distant past in humanity. It's beautiful song. So I. I mean, in the scheme of outtakes albums, and I'm not a. I'm not a connoisseur of these, you know, Springsteen's extra tracks are incredibly high quality on the whole, and this shows that. So are Tom Weights's and of course Dylan's. But, you know, he's was always in a sort of a category by himself.
- [163:21]
D
Until I s for you don't wear your hair that way if you cannot be true I'll understand Tell all the others you hold in your arms I said I'd come back from for you I'll leave my jacket to keep you warm that's all that I can do and if I have to go Will you remember me? Will you find someone else while I'm away?
- [164:31]
B
Now, Scott, I know you probably didn't get much of a chance to listen to this, but did you hear any of it? Like I, for example, surely you like the Sparkle Horse collaboration, right?
- [164:42]
A
I.
- [164:42]
B
You like It's a Wonderful Life by Sparkle Horse. You keep mentioning that. That album, right?
- [164:46]
A
Yep, yep. And then there's a song on there that. That Waits co wrote called Dog Door, which is cool.
- [164:53]
B
It's on this album. Right?
- [164:54]
A
Okay. Yeah. That's why. So clearly I didn't get a chance to get to it. I was. I was. I was trying to get through Raindogs again, apparently. But yeah, it was funny. I was. I was texting or was messaging Jeff and saying, man, Sparkle Horse was listening to a lot of this stuff from this era. Listening. Listen to this song Dog Door from It's a Wonderful Life. And I had forgotten and I knew. I knew it, but that was Tom Waits and Brennan co Wright. So, yes, it does sound a lot like Tom Waits, doesn't it?
- [165:20]
B
No wonder.
- [165:28]
D
You ought to walk with me when you can't put your forever.
- [166:07]
B
Okay, I. I love this record. I actually would. It's not quite like the bootleg series, volumes one through three, but by Dylan, which is the comparison. Right. Because that. That box that spit up like a number of tracks that are like, you know, maybe as good as anything he ever released on his actual records. This one has at least one, though, for me, which would be Sea of Love. I consider this to be one of the greatest losses Tom Wade songs of all time. And it's funny because up until not even that, you know, not long ago, I didn't know where it came from. It came from this movie that I'd seen advertised as a kid. I always remembered seeing the ads for this Al Pacino pot boiler from like the late 80s called with Michelle Pfeiffer.
- [166:47]
C
Right, Okay, I saw that. Yeah.
- [166:50]
B
I never saw it. I still don't know what it's about, but it seemed like it was a steamy thriller, right? Yeah. And Tom. Tom Waits wrote the theme song for it, which is on the first disc of this set. And it is amazing. It has got that. That chug. It is. The minute I heard it, I was like, well, this is instantly infinitely more commercial than anything he's done. And it turns out it was. Dates from 1988, so it would be right after Frank's Wild years. Would not have fit on the bone machine, that's for sure. I cannot emphasize enough how you need to find out that he can still sing a pop ballad with a beautiful melody and this thing is emoted. Well, he's not. Not in his like, you know, drunken over the top vocal mode. He just sings it like a gritty blues man. Sea of Love is fantastic.
- [167:54]
D
Sam. Will I see? Oh, yeah. Last night I just knew you were my. I tell you how much I'm down here in the.
- [168:44]
B
There's a couple other. Never let go. You already mentioned that, Damon. There's one though, on that first disc that I also love called Rains on Me. Another one of those effortless melodies he disguises in a bluesy ball. But it feels so soulful when he sings Everywhere I Go I It rains on Me. And it was the moment where I realized that like somewhere Midway through the 80s, Tom Waits spiritually moved half of his brain to the deep South. Like half of his music is based on like Delta blues, New Orleans, that kind of black explicitly kind of like a black bluesy shout that like, you know, no pencil necked white guy from San Diego has got any right to get away with. But man, he pulls it off with such authenticity. All that song. Yeah, this is a great little like, corner of his career again, Unless you're a big fan, you'll probably never find your way here. But if you do, you will not regret it for a second.
- [169:39]
D
The female praying mantis. The vow the male while they are mating. The male sometimes continues copulating even after the female has bitten off his head and part of his upper torso. Every night, wasps bite into the stem of a plant, lock their mandibles into position, stretch out at right angles to the stem, and with legs dangling, they fall asleep. If one places a minute amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death.
- [170:31]
B
And I guess that brings us to the final Tom Waits album thus far. I have no idea whether he's going to do anything after this, but as of now, we end with badass me from 2011, the final tom Weights record to date. What do you guys think of this one? I gotta tell you, it's again, you know, not nearly. First of all, shorter, which I really appreciate. And the shortness, the brevity really helps keep it in focus. This is a great way to end. If this is how he's gonna end.
- [171:04]
C
Scott, why don't you take the lead on this?
- [171:06]
B
Sure.
- [171:06]
A
I like this one an awful lot. And there's a. There's a feel to it, like he might know it's his last. Just sort of get that feel on various songs and in different places. But it's not to say he's not still. Let's try that again. It's not to say he's not still innovating. There he go. Because he's still finding new and different ways. And the way I would describe sort of the different approach or feel on Bad As Me is, he's trying to take that Hollywood and Vine sound and update it for a more modern generation, reinvent it in a way, sort of taking modern blues and pushing it forward, forward a little bit. And that's evident on that first track, Chicago. But you hear it in a bunch of different places all over the record. I really like Get Lost, which is a rockabilly tune. And look, there's. It's fun. There's some joy here that is not always evident on Tom Waits record. Now, yes, there are kind of jokey portions or kind of, you know. You know, funny lyrics. Get Lost is. Is more joyful than funny, though. We don't always get a bunch of joy from. From Tom Waits, when you were. When you wear that real tight sweater, you know, I can't resist. Roll on the windows, Turn up Wolfman Jack to that slap bass rockabilly Beat, Slap bass, rockabilly beat. That is a fun, fun song.
- [172:44]
D
Whatever the well always true. You're never gonna be without me baby I'm never gonna be without you Top it off and fill it with hotels. Think about what you got to tear your balls Think about what you gonna tear your balls Think about what you gonna tear your balls Think about it what you're gonna tear your balls and get lost I just don't want to get I just don't want to get lost I want to get I just want to get I just.
- [173:33]
A
And I mentioned on the first episode, occasionally on these Tom Waits records, you have these companion songs, these companions, compatible pieces. And I think with Get Lost, you've got Back in the Crowd, which is sort of not a sequel, but close Texas mariachi sound. Los Lobos guitarist guests here. And it's this very tender sentiment, like a 50s rock and roll sentiment. If you found somebody new if you don't want my love Throw me back into the crowd but let me know let me go if you found someone new so I like those sort of pair of companion songs. The back half, Last Leaf, is a great song. This is another one with Keith Richards. It's country folk in style and in theme. And it's about that last leaf on the tree that won't fall, that stays despite all reason for it to come down. It's cold, it's rainy, it's windy. And you can't kill that leaf. And somehow Waits and Keith richards are the 1000% perfect people to sing a song like this.
- [175:01]
D
The ambulance le for Jesus they all took the rest but they won't take me nonetheless Leap on the street I fight off the snow Know I fell off the hill Nothing makes me go I'm like some vested I'll be here.
- [175:40]
A
Through eternity and I'll let you guys say more after I point out New Year's Eve, the very last track, which, like, there's all I said, there's all these points where it seems like he knows. So New Year's Eve has bits of Auld Lang Syne in it, and so does that track. A sight for sore eyes. Way back on Foreign affairs, he's throwing it back 30 years, 40 years, whatever it is, to sort of a trick that he used previously on a different record, on a different song. There's so many things to like here. I don't think it's quite as good as, say, Mule Variations. But I really enjoy that he's still finding new and different ways to push himself, himself and the music Forward and also at the same time, look backwards a bit on Bad As Me.
- [176:29]
D
All the noise was disturbing and I couldn't find Irving. It was like two stations on at the same time. And then I hid your car keys and I made black coffee and I dumped out the rest of the room. Nick and Socorro broke up and Candace wouldn't shut up. And Finn, he recorded the whole thing. Great. He said, damn you, and someone broke my camera. And it was New Year's and we all started to sing. Should all acquaintance.
- [177:33]
C
Yeah, I agree. I mean, it's amazing how much in. In Cinco all three of us have been through this whole second part. Here, here. Definitely a return to form from Real Gone, whereas Real Gone really leaves me pretty real cold. This one feels like a solid Tom Weights album. I don't love it at the level of, say, Rain Dogs or Mule variations or even quite Bone Machine level, but it's a solid. A solid album. I think that the back half speaks to me a little bit more than the front half. Scott mentioned. Mentioned Last Leaf. I love that song. Great song. Hell Broke Loose spelled L U C E. Like he's singing about Henry. Loose is. Is. Is good. I like that. New Year's Eve is very touching. Lovely song. And then actually after you die, which is one of the deluxe, like, extra tracks at the end, that's a really strong song too. And speaks again to kind of more technical. And the fact that maybe he knows this could be his last contribution. You know, when you get to be his age on this album, you never know if you're. If you're just being realistic, looking at the actuary tables, you know, you're not sure you're going to get another album out. And now it has been 14 years without anything new. So maybe this is in fact the end. But it's a solid thing, a solid statement. I think he should be proud of it. It's a strong record. And yeah, that's about all I have to say about it. I mean, a solid good from. From Link.
- [179:13]
D
I pride in with the dope Glanced at her shin she said nope. Left, right, left. Dim Rod B. Have you any wool? Get me another body bag. The body bags. My face was scarce scarce I miss my home I miss my porch Porch Left, right, left. Can I go home in March? March. My stance was a chin full of soap that rancid dinner with the Pope and left, right, left Caliper so got his thumbs thrown off. Sergio's developing a real bad puff.
- [180:01]
B
It's kind of funny, by the way. If you go back, like go to Wikipedia, for example, and look at the reviews of basically every Tom waits album since 1983, they're all like five stars, A plus, you know, like, like a B plus at worst. Which that tells you the critics were maybe overreacting, overcompensated.
- [180:20]
C
They also all are like, it's the best thing since Rain Dogs. Every single one will say, kind of like the eoa.
- [180:27]
B
It's funny because these guys who had the same thing they said about David Bowie, right? It's this best since Scary Monsters, you know, it's funny to return to that one for us, but yeah, it's like that. But Bad As Me is a genuinely fine album. It's not, obviously, a great one. It could well be, who knows? But it could well be the way his career ends. And if so, it's not a bad way to end it. It's a fine summation point. And it's a place that. You guys already stole most of my notes, especially Scott with Last Leaf, that was my favorite song on the record. But it is kind of like him settling into a place where I believe he lives on, like a farm somewhere in like, rural New York or something like that. He lives away from the spotlight now with his wife, just does stuff. I have no idea what his creative activities have been since the 2010s.
- [181:21]
A
There's some acting, but not a lot of music.
- [181:25]
B
Fine. You know what he put his work in. He gave us some of the most ridiculously imaginative and sort of visually imaginative sound that conjures images, music throughout the entire 80s and most of the 90s as well. Tom Waits was a guy who, as I. I said right back at the beginning of the first episode of this show, when I. I encountered him, it was like having a door kicked open in my mind. I just didn't know that there were worlds like this. There was music like this. That weirdness could be made to work, could be harnessed. Tom Waits's story, the story maybe in of his entire career, really, is of harnessing a gift, a talent, an affect. It could have been like a quirk, could have made him a minor character, a bit art, a character actor, and turning it into something more like a major career. Tom Waits made himself a star singularly. Well, not singularly, as it turns out. He had real help from his wife, Kathleen Brennan. And that, by the way, also is, you know, just one of the happy ending examples that goes to show you that, like, you know, two sometimes can work a lot better than one. What he's Left us with is something, you know, Scott said it himself. He's like. He really listened to Rain Dogs for over two months now. He needs probably five more years with it to fully understand what's going on with that record. There's a lot more than you could say about Tom Waits than we have ever managed to get to during these episodes. But I'm very glad that we managed to do what we could because this is a guy who is basically influenced in a lot of ways, my own musical development ever since the moment I first heard Downtown Train.
- [183:12]
D
The Lord will give us all we want we carry with us Nowhere I can be found where the rainbow is crowned I'm not alone, I'm not afraid Cause it's burning gold from Escape. This whole Muslim magic we know on this south I would call home with my coat in my. I'll say goodbye to all that. Everything will be better in Chicago. Everything will be better in Chicago.
- [183:57]
A
All right, there we go. Look at the music and career in two parts of Tom Waits. Part of the program where we give you two albums and five songs. Two albums you should own five songs. You've got to hear this from this second era we've covered on this program. Damon Linker goes first, senior lecturer in Political science at University of Pennsylvania. Find them@damonlinker.substack.com Damon, your two albums, your five songs.
- [184:27]
C
All right. I fear that I might be stepping on toes with my two albums because we did have so much consensus. Consensus on here will be a lot.
- [184:35]
B
Of agreement, I suspect, as.
- [184:37]
C
As the. I guess as the guest, I still get to go first. So hands down, Raindogs, like if you had said I have to pick one from the second half of his career, that would be easily the choice. I think it's a true classic album, one of the all time greats. And then Mule Variations, just as a collection of songs, it's just really, really strong. The other ones that were in contention for that, just to get that on the record, Bone Machine and Alice, I love those albums in their own ways too, but Meal Variations is just a little stronger. And then for five songs, Jockey Full of Bourbon from Rain Dogs, Time from Rain Dogs, which I didn't really talk about, but it's a. One of his great songs, I think. A Little Rain, which is one of the nice ballads from Bone Machine. Georg Lee I talked about from Mule Variations and then Fish and Bird from Alice, because I had to have something from Alice in these lists at the end of the show. Just to say one more time that I think that's a very strong record from late era. Tom Weights.
- [185:46]
A
All right. Yeah. My two albums are the same. Not much to say more than Damon did. Rain Dogs and Mule Variations. My songs we go back to early in our conversation. First record we talked about in the Neighborhood makes my list of five. Clap Hands from the very next record, Raindogs. Dirt in the Ground, song I liked a lot. Picture in a Frame, Very sweet, very moving. And then one from Bad as Me to close his career. Last Leaf, one with Keith Richards on that record is my fifth. Jeff, over to you.
- [186:24]
B
Is this the first time. Scott, do you know all three? No of us have agreed on our top two.
- [186:30]
A
I remember it happening at least once before because I remember one of those.
- [186:33]
B
Artists with a really short disguise.
- [186:35]
A
It's possible it might have been like. It might have been Weezer. The answers are very obvious.
- [186:40]
B
It's gonna be. Yeah. The first album in Pinkerton, right? Yeah. Okay. No, but again, the Raindogs and Mule Variations, you both are right, and I cannot disagree. The way I usually do these top fives at the end, though, is to choose songs that don't come from those two albums, because I'm very damn serious people. You need to hear the albums. Those albums in particular work as albums. You know, you could pluck the songs out. There's a good grade of sits out there. It's called Beautiful Maladies that captures this part of Waits career. It's not a bad introduction, but you should really hear the records themselves. So these will come from Not Rain Dogs and Not Mule Variations, which leave leaves us with one from each of the records, which is tough. From Swordfish Trombones. Gosh, I could have picked Johnsberg, Illinois, but I'm gonna go with 16 shells from a 30 06. It's a percussive masterpiece. Just the way he shouts that. This is the moment when Tom Waits really comes into his own. And it's actually, in a lot of ways, the first truly rock song he ever recorded. All the way up until 1983. He never really gotten that crazy the way he did on that song from Frank's Wild Years, which is in many ways a bit of a step down and a disappointment. It still has down in the Hole, which I've already explained has a lot of Baltimore resonance for me and is a fantastic gospel song in its own right. From Alice. You know, it's funny, Damon said, well, I have to mention one song from Alice, but he didn't mention the one from that I would have, which is, I'm still here that is from an album that I'm otherwise not really too inclined towards. That one little ballad is just heartbreaking. It's just, again, he's probably playing a character, but he's capturing an emotion that feels very real. And then Scott really stole my my thunder with this one from Bad Is Me. I'll say Last Leaf. Then I'll say, for one track from that incredible orphan set, I said, you've got to hear Sea of Love. It's a great little outtake. The movie's probably garbage, but that song itself makes it worthwhile. And then, you know, host prerogative. I'll end with a final sixth song. It's got to be in the Neighborhood. I know Scott said it, but I'm going to pick a second one from Swordfish Trombones. That song actually makes me feel happy. It makes me feel warm. And the funniest thing of all is that Tom Waits does it, singing in that weird kind of circus voice of his. But it feels like there's a majestic aspiration to the normality of life that he depicts on in the Neighborhood. And it is captured perfectly in that chorus, which has the horns playing charts that cover chords that are not suggested by the piano. Waits playing himself. It's the rest of the band, the rest of the arrangement that picks up beauty of that song. And that makes it really maybe one of the finest things that he ever wrote.
- [189:25]
D
There's a couple Filipino girls giggling by the church and the window is busted and the landlord ain't home and Butch joined the army yeah, that's where he's better and the jackham is digging up the sidewalks again in the neighbor in the neighborhood in the neighborhood the neighborhood in the neighbor.
- [190:23]
A
All right, there we go. It is the political beats look at the music and career of Tom Waits. And it is now complete. We thank our guest, Damon Linker for joining us. He only does long episodes. He's senior Lecturer in Political Science at the University University of Pennsylvania.
- [190:40]
B
We have to get you back for a my bloody Valentine 35 minute long episode.
- [190:45]
A
Find his substack newsletter notes from the middle ground@damonlinker.substack.com and on X at Damon Linker. Damon, thanks so much for joining us.
- [190:54]
C
Thanks so much for having me. It's been great. I loved it.
- [190:58]
A
And Jeff, I. I don't know.
- [191:00]
B
I don't know what we're doing next.
- [191:01]
A
This ends our great American summer as we've been. We've been touting it for the past.
- [191:05]
B
Which of course, as it always does, with us. Link lingered on into fall, you know, as it will.
- [191:10]
A
Yes, but we'll come back. We'll figure something out. Maybe we'll go to Iceland and find the Do a Bjork episode or something. Yeah, say Bjork. Jeff's on Chef's on X at Esoteric CD. You can find me there at Scott Bertram remember patreon.com political beats to help support the show and keep it ad free, entry level, mid level and upper level. Join us there at Patreon. Subscribe to the feed for new episodes, Apple podcasts and elsewhere. Or right there@nationalreview.com and you can find us on X@politicalbeats. This has been a presentation of National Review. This is Political Beats.
- [191:59]
D
Sam.