Tiggerlion on Swordfishtrombones by Tom Waits
There’s only so many albums you can make sitting on a bar stool, staring at the bottom of a glass of whisky. By 1980, Tom Waits had stretched out a good run with Asylum to a full seven albums, developing his performance character as he went along. Daniel Durchholz described his distinctive voice best; “like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car.” He made a name for himself as a writer of intriguing songs, a great raconteur and an occasional thespian. Who could fail to be moved by Tom Traubert’s Blues as it stitches Waltzing Maltilda into its forlorn fabric? He thought The Eagles cover of Ol’ 55 had secured a good income and Bruce Springsteen’s adoption of Jersey Girl had added a little more. However, it turned out he didn’t own the publishing rights to his own songs. He wasn’t making much money at all. Disillusioned, he left Los Angeles and moved to New York.
Then, Francis Ford Coppola came knocking, the greatest film director of the time. He’d been drawn to the duet I Never Talk To Strangers and the contrast between Bette Midler’s knowing naivety and Waits’s world weariness. How could Waits say no to the offer of a Coppola soundtrack and film appearance, even if it trapped him in the straight jacket he’d designed for himself, a low-life barfly playing the piano in the corner, observing the characters passing through and adapting beat poetry for lyrics?
If he felt any reluctance, you can’t tell from the product. One From The Heart is a summation of everything good he had done to date, drawing a very satisfying line under the past. Bette Midler was unavailable, so Crystal Gayle stepped in, her voice as clear and as luxuriant as her first name, an ideal foil for Waits’s own ravaged baritone. Writing for another voice made him take care and focus more. There are only four duets but all are complex and intimate. He coaxes Gayle to the most emotional performances of her career in melancholy songs like Is There Any Way Out Of This Dream and Old Boyfriends. Waits, himself, seems more committed on I Beg Your Pardon and You Can’t Unring A Bell. Even his musical interludes are beautifully poised. With a big film budget, he was able to hire the best lounge jazz musicians he could find, but it’s his own gentle caresses of the piano that cut through.
On set, he met the love of his life and collaborator for the rest of his career, who introduced him to Captain Beefheart and gave him the courage to reinvent himself. Kathleen Brennan was a script analyst and a writer herself. She had an imagination that Waits wanted to live in. In a blink of an eye, he was married, at the Always and Forever Yours Wedding Chapel at 2am, and had sacked his producer, manager, and record company. It was sink or swim. The number one priority was to break free of the persona he had developed and presented to the public for years. That meant changing his sound palette radically.
Throughout his Asylum years, Waits had been inspired by the Beat Poets, including Charles Bukowski and William Burroughs. He was especially impressed by Jack Kerouac and avidly read everything he wrote. His fascination with the wandering hobo living the harsh reality of The American Underground, the antithesis of The American Dream fantasy, led him to Harry Partch. Partch was a self-taught musician and composer. He rejected conventional musical theory, created a 43 note octave and built instruments from found objects to play his pieces, objects found on the road, when he lived nine years sleeping rough and travelling from town to town. He used shell casings, bottles, tanks, string, wires, boxes and bits of wood. His pieces were theatrical and ambitious, incorporating mime, dance and rituals. Francis Thumm participated in Partch’s ensembles and witnessed his working practices first hand. Waits recruited him to assist in the making of Swordfishtrombones and, besides playing angklung and harmonica, he adopted the mysterious role of arranger.
Underground introduces us to an entirely new community. This is a strange, dark place full of noises alien to Waits’s loyal following. Fred Tackett’s guitar blinks tentatively in the light. Its rhythm staggers uncertainly until a rap on a snare snaps it into a march. Victor Feldman’s bass marimba creeps around the bass drum. These two musicians, plus Waits himself, make up the so-called ‘junkyard orchestra’ responsible for the fecund soundscape of Swordfishtrombones. In fact, Feldman’s versatility with percussive instruments is the album’s secret ingredient. Larry Taylor on bass and Stephen Hodges on drums provide sterling support and there are a variety of horns. It’s a sound untainted by eighties production, sepia-tinged and difficult to pin to any particular era, a sound that suited Waits perfectly.
The album’s apogee is reached early on with Shore Leave, a beautifully constructed song, written in the first person. The verses are strings of wonderfully evocative phrases, capturing the thoughts of a sailor ‘squeezing the life out of a two day pass’ as he explores Singapore. Thumm’s exotic angklung makes its appearance and Waits is credited with playing a chair, but the eerie and disquieting atmospherics are provided by a simple shaker, a banjo and rice
scattered on a drum. The heart of the song is the chorus, the letter he writes to his wife back in Illinois. Waits’s vocal aches with loneliness and longing. It feels like the real Tom talking to his new wife. The anguished cries of ‘shore leave’ towards the end bring a chill to the spine.
Dave The Butcher is one of three instrumentals. Waits stabs away on a Hammond organ while Feldman adds bass boo bams. It’s deceptively dissonant and random. Scratch the surface of the piece and you hear it tell its story. You can picture big Dave smearing blood and guts on his apron, wielding his cleaver, his fingernails short and his left hand scarred.
In the space of a few lines, Johnsburg Illinois speaks volumes. It’s personal and universal, lasts but a moment and yet is timeless. At only ninety seconds, every word and every note is chosen with extreme care. It is composed in a major key but sung as if a lament. Its simplicity disguises its complexity. It’s an extraordinary love song. Plus, is there a note as beautiful and poignant as Greg Cohen’s first pluck on his bass?
16 Shells From A Thirty-Ought-Six is the album’s blockbuster. Waits turns his holler up. Hodges’s drumming is relentless and enhanced by Feldman whacking a bell plate with a hammer, as well as trilling on a snare. The strangest sound is Joe Romano’s low moaning trombone, deployed as a background texture, almost like a locomotive passing by in the near distance. The lyrics may as well be in an alien tongue. Waits is in the character of a farmer, angry as hell, living as far from the city as it is possible to be, repurposing the junk around him, losing his mind over a crow and raging at the sky. At least he’s not alone. Lionel, Dave and The Butcher are there too.
There are then two songs about communities that live on the fringes. The first, a Town With No Cheer actually exists in southern Australia, so isolated that Victoria Railways stopped providing a service. The clanging bell captures the breeze blowing tumbleweed along the street, too weak to unsettle a thick layer of dust. Anthony Clark Stewart’s bagpipes wheeze wearily. Waits impresses with his homework; Paterson’s Curse is a violet wild flower indigenous to the area. In The Neighbourhood is as peculiar and as mind boggling as Penny Lane. Soundtracked by a mutant Salvation Army Band, it’s a place where the market has burned down, newspapers are used as sleeping bags and a jackhammer is forever digging up the pavement.
Just Another Sucker On The Vine provides no real respite to the misery, an instrumental that gently nurses a hangover, bruised ribs and the loss of a week’s wages. Frank’s Wild Years is a spoken word piece of beat poetry reeking of Bukowski. An entire life is summarised in less than two minutes. The details shine vividly. Sometimes, the words trip over each other. A cough is timed with devastating precision, punctuating the irony in ‘They were so happy’. Ronnie Baron’s Hammond playing is exemplary, especially jaunty as Frank drives off onto the highway listening to the radio. There is a bit of Frank in us all. It just takes something minor and any of us could break.
There are three further songs featuring men on the edge. Swordfishtrombone is about a Vietnam vet with shell shock, Down Down Down a deadbeat in a pact with the devil, and Trouble’s Braids a convict on the run. Feldman is the lead musician with just a bass for support: marimba, congos, dabuki and bass drums on the slinky title track, and magnificent talking drum on Trouble’s Braids. His tambourine and snare drive Down Down Down but it’s Eric Bikales’ uninhibited organ solo that really gives the relentless momentum a push. Gin Soaked Boy could be a throwback to the spit and sawdust of the bars of Asylum Waits, wherein a man discovers his wife is cheating, except Tackett’s guitar transforms it into a dirty blues played out in a remote, rural setting.
The emotional crux of the album rests in Soldier’s Things. The mournful piano suggests there has been a funeral. The lyrics are a simple list of possessions being disposed of in a yard sale. Each object is weighed by what it meant to the old soldier and what it says about his life. He had a couple of musical instruments. His boots were probably never worn again after he left the army. They still contain the rocks to keep their shape. Even his car, with its dented hood, is for sale. The voice strains under the burden of the medals. ‘This one’s for bravery. This one’s for me.’ At least the narrator wants to keep a memento. Otherwise, ‘Everything’s a dollar in this box’ as Taylor’s bass taps into a well of grief.
The finale, Rain Birds, is another love song to Kathleen, an instrumental. The scene is set by glass harmonicas dispersing the clouds. Waits’s piano and Taylor’s bass duet. As with every track on which he plays piano, any lack in technique is more than compensated for by feel and considerable charm. The loving couple sound so at ease, together at last, enjoying the quiet and a little warmth from the sun. They are so happy.
The cover is a piece created by Michael A Russ who chemically toned, solarised and hand coloured his own black and white photographs in a technique he called TinTones. Waits and Brennan saw his Prussian Blue exhibition at the Los Angeles China Club. The photo features Waits, strong man Lee Kolima and Angelo Rossitto, an actor with dwarfism, the so-called mayor of Hollywood because of the number of films he appeared in, posing just as he did in his best known movie, The Freaks, from 1932.
Swordfishtrombones is an uncompromising album that envelopes the listener in its own world. There are fifteen tracks, each very different to the others, yet all hanging together as one. There are instrumentals, dirty blues, African rhythms, exotic noises, bizarre marches and delicate piano. Without any consideration of commercial viability, its trademark sound catches the ear. It is an album of beautifully burnt bridges, the flames dancing, reflected in the water, an uncertain future full of dreams and possibilities, just like Frank in the song Waits built a whole other album around. Nevertheless, his success at shaking up his writing is the album’s most impressive achievement. Eight songs are less than two and a half minutes long but these aren’t fragments. All of them are complete, their length barely relevant. They say everything they want to say, unhurried, taking up all of the time they need. In some, Shore Leave, Johnsburg Illinois and Soldier’s Things, the lyrics are incredibly concise and hard hitting. In others, 16 Shells From A Thirty-Ought Six, Swordfishtrombone and Trouble’s Braids, the imagery tumbles in a colourful torrent. Tom Waits is a masterful storyteller and these stories are dramatic and theatrical, too strange to be fiction and too powerful not to be true. Clive James turned a phrase until it caught the light. Waits likes his phrases rough, ready, scuffed with dirt and smeared with diesel. The fact of the matter is that this is an album of love songs, strange and wondrous love songs, but love songs nevertheless: love of language, love of making noise, love of Kathleen and love for the unfortunates in the songs. He puts the lonely, the dispossessed, the downtrodden at centre stage. Waits believes in them and feels for them. He’s not observing them with a sly wink. It’s as if he sees something of himself in every one of them. At last, Waits found his family, his tribe, his asylum, his home.
Swordfishtrombones, initially, was like the runt of a litter, unwanted by anyone. It finally found a home on Island Records over a year after it was made and has grown to become Tom Waits’s best and most complete work. It effectively allowed Waits to do as he pleased, alongside Kathleen. By the time it was released, he and Kathleen had had their first child. Coincidentally, his acting career also reached a peak in 1983 with The Outsiders and Rumble Fish. Swordfishtrombones forged its own path, one that few dared to follow. Even in Waits’s own catalogue, there is little as whole and as satisfying. The follow up, Rain Dogs, nearly repeats the trick but doesn’t quite match its diversity and unconventionality, the bonus being Rod Stewart’s cover of Downtown Train that kept Waits in business for several years. Frank’s Wild Years, Bone Machine and The Black Rider are more extreme sonically at the cost of losing some of Swordfishtrombones’s warmth. At the turn of the millennium, he spread its elements across three separate, very fine albums: Mule Variations got the junkyard, Blood Money the rock and Alice the love and affection.
If you have the least interest in Tom Waits, Swordfishtrombones is the one to turn to. Even if you are normally put off by his mannered eccentricity, you will learn more about the man here than anywhere else. Just listen to his vocals. His singing is the best he ever achieved, a pathos and genuine empathy supplementing his signature bellow and growl, its tone and texture perfectly matching the stories of a disparate cast of characters. By creating a unique sonic landscape, Waits found where he belonged as a performer and rejuvenated his career. Swordfishtrombones has a big heart. It’s an album brimful of the best and the worst of humanity, warts and all. Most of all, it glows with hope. It never gets old.
There’s a new remaster of this, Rain Dogs and Frank’s Wild Years
Trouble’s Braids
On reflection, Shore Leave and Soldier’s Things may be two of of my all-time favourite songs…
Wonderful writing Tig. I struggle with much of Tom Waits’ oeuvre, but SFT gets a regular airing and you’ve described it brilliantly.
Here’s Tom Gauld on the great man:
Great review Tigs.
I remember when this album came out very well. I’d liked TW since the Small Change & live Nighthawks at the Diner and saw him live at the London Palladium, around the time of Heartattack & Vine I think, where he first showed that he was moving in a new direction, particularly with his singing. But SFT was a real shock to the system, I played it over & over trying to comprehend just what was going on. I don’t remember Harry Partch being brought up until quite a while later but listening to him I could then see the link even though I’m not someone who understood the new musical scales he invented. It was just the noise that SFT made that I loved. Great descriptions of all of the tracks here Tiggs, just one thing I disagree with…… in my opinion SFT was the introduction to what I feel is TW greatest triumph, Rain Dogs, a masterful set of… well I don’t things ‘songs’ is the right term, more like ‘stories with accompanying noises’. Saw him on that tour too, Hammersmith Odeon. Still waiting for another masterpiece although from all reports he’s happy enough living with Kathryn somewhere on a rural farm living a normal life. But I live in hope!
I love Rain Dogs too but think it hangs less well together as a whole than Swordfishtrombones. Small margins.
There is something wonderful about him and Kathleen on a rural farm. He’s given us so many great, great masterpieces. I think he deserves to enjoy the small pleasures of life. One thing is, there is no worry that his voice will lose its impact.
A perfect album – how rare is that? I know Rain Dogs gets more praise – but there’s something in these songs that keeps drawing me back to the “runt of the litter”.
And a typically erudite and insightful review, Tiggs – I sincerely hope that you can be prevailed upon to review the remainder of the trilogy in similar fashion.
(PS: have you ever considered publishing a slim volume of your Afterword reviews?)
I only do Features on perfect albums. 😉
I regard posting here as ‘publishing’. I have thought about putting some together for my grandchildren but I doubt there would be any interest even from them!
Well, Dave had his Bowie book – you could call it “Perfect Albums”!
Good idea!
It reminds me of the Isle Of Man. I worked there from August 1983 to July 1984. I had the time of my life, partying every weekend, mainly soundtracked by Prince. The winter was amazing when everyone went wild spending the money they earned in the summer. Swordfishtrombones was the music for the hangover afterwards.
Yes, indeed! Still the Tom Waits album that I listen to most often…
You beat me to the IOM by 7 years – however, I’m still here! I recall the joy of a new rotation of F1/F2 medics from Liverpool/Merseyside/NW every year, trying to persuade them that it’s better to seek advice rather than bash ahead, if uncertain about a drug or a dose. I’m sure that you were eminently sensible – when not hung-over…🙂
I was much better trained. I went to Birmingham. 😉
I found the best way to avoid a hangover was to remain drunk the whole time.
Arf!
Excellent review. I was obsessed with Tom Waits as a student, in fact all the way through to Mule Variations. Then somewhere in there I just lost interest and it’s been years since I’ve listened to him. Somehow all the eccentricity and growling just got a bit tiring.
But I’m going to listen to this now thanks to your review. Will report back.
Reporting back, it’s definitely no longer for me. I can admire it but like Dai below I reckon I prefer tunes these days.
Oh dear.
Sorry. Great review all the same.
No need to apologise. We all have different ears and they change over time.
First real Tom Waits album I bought. I had a great compilation of the earlier stuff, may have had the One From the Heart soundtrack after reading a positive review in the NME and seeing the (pretty terrible) film. After this I bought every album he released for 20 years at least.
Lovely write up, but once again despite loving it at the time I don’t listen any more. I prefer stuff with tunes. Seem to recall In the Neighborhood almost becoming a hit single, that one had a tune
At Neil Young’s Bridge concert in 2007 in the Bay Area, California I saw him play a 40 minute set with the Kronos Quartet. One of the greatest live experiences of my life, but I very rarely revisit his work these days
Thanks, have seen that before, but have not listened in case it takes away any of the magic.
I really enjoyed reading this post, even though I’m not a big fan of the album (my preferred Waits being Heartattack & Vine, Blue Valentine and One From The Heart). I like the title track a lot though. I really like the line “He came home from the war with a party in his head and an idea for a firework display”. It always comes to mind when I think of the war zone that is New Year’s Eve in Italy.
I love that line too. My grandson once caught me humming and dancing in the kitchen. He asked what I was doing as there was no music on. I told him there was a party in my head. He now uses the phrase all the time.
Of course, PTSD is a very serious condition..
Marvellous summoning of the magic of this record. I’d bought most of the Asylum records, counted myself as a fan, but one with a gradually lessening interest due to the same familiar furrow having been ploughed for a while.
Swordfishtrombones, on its early reviews, promised a new departure for an artist with obvious further potential that I’d been hoping would emerge. But still I resisted, having stretched my budget transparently thin in record shops for too many years.
Eventually, a few years on, the album became a mid-priced title in Island’s 25 Years re-issue campaign and there it was, finally affordable enough to slip in between the Midnight Oil and Nancy Griffith purchases; a smorgasborg of quite astonishing changes and explorations. Thanks for the review – I’ll be spinning the vinyl this evening!
Excellent review Tig. I bought it on release and loved it immediately though it took a few listens to fully see how brilliant it is. The whole album has a mood which is quite unique. It’s not my favourite though – that is “Blue Valentine” which IMHO is his masterpiece, where he stumbled out of the bar, sobered up and went in a recording studio. I thought Rain Dogs was good too though the surprise was gone as we’d had SFTB, plus there were more conventional songs including ones covered by Rod Stewart FFS.
The other, well, problem with this album is it set a template where he had to have clattery weird stuff on everything which is why he and I parted company eventually and I barely know his later albums at all.
Great consideration of “One from the heart” – I have the soundtrack and loved the film though it got panned. The chemistry between Tom and Crystal Gale is just fabulous, equal to Bette Midler earlier on.
I saw him tour it too – in the afternoon we went to the Edmund Hopper exhibition and Tom Waits in the evening. That was a proper day out.
I recognise a lot of what you say there @Twang – that ‘clattery stuff’ subsequently put me off too, and it wasn’t until ‘What’s He Doing In There?’ (itself only a once very six month’s listen) that I tentatively dipped back in again. Indeed, apart from Frank’s Wild Years, Swordfish remains the right-most vinyl album on my shelves from him to this day, with the Asylum years to its left much more frequently visited.
You got One From the Heart VV? Def worth getting and generally at old soundtrack prices I imagine.
Update – 2 quidish on Dodgers marketplace
Given that it’s clatter-free Tom, I’ve just ordered myself a copy!
PS just DM’d you – check your Messages.
There isn’t much clattering on Alice and Blood Money. Both are well worth your time.
Thx Tiggs – will investigate.
👍
Me too!
It’s a wonderful album. I still prefer Rain Dogs but that’s because Rain Dogs (and the Asylum Years compilation) got there first. I was 16 when Swordfishtrombones came out but 18 when Rain Dogs appeared, the perfect age to wallow in its majesty and sleaze. If I had latched onto SWF first I have little doubt that that would pip Rain Digs in my affections. When you love both albums it’s hard to retrospectively decide which one is ‘best’.
Never could stand that dog.
Arf!
She said…
Champion review Tigg. So good that it’s prompted me to start Saturday off with a listen. I can’t draw a preference between this and Rain Dogs. I love ’em both.
I came to Waits late. I have no explanation why he just flew under my radar and it wasn’t until Southside from the Word site in an act of kindness took the trouble to burn me copies of the entirety of the Waits back catalogue that I got properly introduced. I had heard bits and pieces of his songwriting previously but in isolation from the whole. Perhaps that’s the reason I can’t draw any preference from one to another. To me they seem of a whole. Obviously there are good days and less good days so to speak but they are all interesting days and even on the most inclement days the sun is shining even if it only rarely peeks out from behind the clouds.
Thanks, pencil.
May I ask which headphones you used or did you decide to rouse the neighbourhood?
My Arya V3s interestingly I needed to up the volume on my headphone amp a few notches which is unusual as I find most of the music I listen to doesn’t require it. My downstairs neighbour told me yesterday that she is going away for a few days from Monday so I shall be rousing the neighbourhood with the foorstanders into the evening for a few days. I’m already planning my playlist.
Sounds wonderful.
Do share your list with us. I think a fair number of us are interested in your current listening.
Monday evening is already planned. Just over three and a half hours of jazz spread over two albums. Echoes by Fire! Orchestra which is already a favourite from earlier this year and Diatom Ribbons (Live at the Village Vanguard) comprising Kris Davis, Terri Lyne Carrington, Julian Lage, Val Jeanty and Trevor Dunn which was released last Friday and which I’m deliberately not listening to until Monday.
Tuesday is as yet undecided so I’m open to suggestions if you feel so inclined.
See what you make of Cecilie Strange – Beyond & Balladeste – Conversations In Ritual
Good choices. I know them well. If you dig back into the earlier releases from them both you will not be disappointed. I love Balladeste’s album covers too. Simple graphical images. Lovely.
How about something glossy like ABC?
😉
Unfortunately my gold lame suit is at the dry cleaners so I may have to forego that particular pleasure. 😉
Just had a thought. The Gentle Good – Galargan?
Bore da Tigg. Da iawn. The Gentle Good is a lush suggestion although I am unable to find Galargan. Did you mean the interpretation of the old folk song from Gwilym Bowen Rhys? Ether way an evening spent in the company of The Gentle Good and Gwilym Bowen Rhys is now pencilled in for Tuesday. Diolch yn fawr iawn.
Five stars from.The Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/sep/01/the-gentle-good-galargan-review-bubblewrap-collective-folk-album
Out next Friday. Too late for Tuesday. My mistake.
Never mind. A new release from him is something to relish. I shall look forward to next Friday. In the meantime there is always a dip into previously released favourites to savour. ✌️
Just read the review and noticed that RPG by Me Lost Me is also mentioned. I recommend that and her previous releases.
Pulling on my polo-neck and sparking up a virtual rollie, can I suggest a listen to ‘Jazz At The Pawn Shop’, a live Swedish double LP from Arne Domnérus, Bengt Hallberg, Georg Riedel, Egil Johansen and Lars Erstrand?
It was used to demonstrate a Rega turntable I recently auditioned. I was taken by the performance of the turntable, and I was also very much taken by the LP – I’ve ordered myself a copy only today. My first vinyl purchase for some considerable time. Nice.
FAMOUS demo disc, much loved in Linn shops and the Linn rooms at hifi shows (see also: Friday Night in San Francisco; A Walk Across The Rooftops).
How’s the listening day going @pencilsqueezer?
I said: “HOW’S THE LISTENING DAY GOING?”
FINE THANKS VERY MUCH!
I’ve just finished listening to The Shores Of Infinity the latest from the Melbourne jazz outfit Menagerie. The third time I’ve given over my ears to it since it’s release last Friday. I like it a lot, not as much as I like their 2021 album Many Worlds but nevertheless…
In another three listens, it will be even better!
I’m sure I’ve told the tale before of how, during the Bristol hi-fi show, I drifted away from my station and took my sarnies into the Linn room. LP12/Ekos/Troika, LK1/LK280, active Isobariks.
JATPS, FNISF, AWATR, Hounds Of Love, Raintown, Hipsway… my lunch break turned into a lazy afternoon and a trip to HMV. My employers were not happy, as I was supposed to be in their room, swapping between CDs of Graceland and Brothers In Arms.
Jings, it’s an age since I attended a hi-fi show (Quad were still using a 606 in their room, IIRC).
Do they still happen, in these streaming times?
My last visit to one was about 20 years ago. There was a new ATC active monitor which made my ears hurt. Getting to Heathrow from here is such a PITA I stopped going.
There’s a new(er) one somewhere in Northants which my pal’s shop attends. I’ve not been.
I’m happy with my current kit and not looking to change it – I very occasionally buy a hifi mag if something looks interesting on the cover – but I used to be interested in hearing the new stuff, for its own sake (let’s face it, I couldn’t afford any of it).
However, if I lived within easy travelling distance, I might be tempted. A rate of one attendance every 35-40 years?
Me too, Fitter. I’m having my cartridge replaced (like for like) because the stylus has worn out. No doubt there will be gentle sales pressure to ‘upgrade’ my 10-year-old amp with the current model, but I’m not interested.
There’s still more I can do to the acoustics of my den, which will return a much higher Bang For Buck.
By coincidence, my PT has been away having its first overhaul/maintenance since I bought it (late 1980s?). True Point Audio in Birkenhead. Due back this week or early next week – I’ve got the LPs lined up already!!
P.S. Do let us know how you get on with the Rega, Foxy. I have to take my LP12 to my dealer to have the A-T MC cartridge replaced, as the stylus tip recently gave up. They need a couple of hours to swap it over. “Why don’t you stay and play some music while you wait?” It could get expensive…
Alto saxman Arne Domnérus (nicknamed “Dompan”) lived down the road from me for the last eight years of his life. He’s buried in our local churchyard.
Great review of a wonderful album.
I loved Tom Traubert’s Blues, and had bought the Bounced Checks compilation, so was primed for this when it was released. My first copy was on Asylum, with a different cover, but had a pressing fault. When I returned it to the shop for a replacement, it had the normal cover and was on Island. Took me a few years to find another Asylum copy.
Regarding his introduction to Beefheart via his wife, perhaps this isn’t quite correct? Waits was managed early on by Herb Cohen I believe, who was also manager of Zappa for a while, so I think it’s unlikely he wouldn’t have been at least aware of Beefheart & his work.
BONGO FURY!!! BONGO FURY!!! BONGO FURY!!!
(a tribute to James Blast)
Here’s another review:
https://www.pastemagazine.com/music/tom-waits/swordfishtrombones-tom-waits-40-anniversary
A masterpiece IMO, and “Johnsburg, Illinois” is coming to the Desert Island with me. I do get that the affected Waits mannerisms are not for everyone though.
Last week my darling daughter (20) finally arranged for my wife and I to meet her boyfriend of some months, over dinner at the pub. Anyway the poor chap was obviously very nervous and struggled with small talk, until we inevitably got to talking music. His favourite album it turns out – astonishingly for a 20 year old – is Swordfishtrombones. So he passed that test with flying colours. (I did wonder if my daughter had prepped him a bit ).
Wow! I think I’d faint on the spot. My ‘son-in-law’ supports Liverpool! 😑