Tom Waits is 70 today, a fact which would probably have surprised everyone including him a few decades ago.
I bloody love Tom Waits, whether he playing the lovelorn gin soaked hobo, crooning to his piano in the small hours, or sounding like Captain Birdseye has been at the cough syrup again, to the accompaniment percussion which sounds like a Victorian wardrobe being dropped down a lift shaft.
Rain Dogs is probably my favourite album of all time, so here’s a track from that magnificent record.
Played Mule Variations the other night – this still stops me in my tracks.
I’m hoping he’ll make a new album at some point. In the meantime…
Happy birthday to the old goat. I,too, love the man. I voted for Swordfishtrombones as my favourite of all time in The Afterword poll and I still stand by that decision. Unbelievable album, the one where he truly found his voice! (His soundtrack with Crystal Gayle is my second favourite.)
Here’s Shore Leave.
There’s nothing like it, is there? It’s nothing like my favourite of his but it has its own extraordinary atmosphere.
“I’ve been making records for ten years. They won’t help you with this”
Apart from You Can’t Unring A Bell, of course.
I thought it was great at the time, but never play it now. Think the earlier stuff may be more to my taste.
Never been remastered, never remixed, it’s an album occupying a universe entirely of its own, preserved in aspic for ever. To my ears, it sounds just as amazing today as the day it was released.
Go on. Spoil yourself and give it a whirl.
No. 6 in the the NME’s much*-ridiculed “best albums of all time” list of 1985. Ahead of anything by the Beatles, the Stones, the Beach Boys or even the Lurkers.
That album hits hard. If TW had done nothing else he’d be immortal because of it.
(*by idiots… OOAA. It’s a great list)
PS. Like a lot of Island records of this era, it sounds fuckin’ great anyway. see also Grace Jones, Black Uhuru, ZTT.
Even in the UK Island vinyl records stayed nice and flat and loud up to and including Paid In Full.
Sorry, me again, but as far as Mrs Moose is concerned, this is Our Tune.
Also, I know nobody else will post anything from Heart of Saturday Night – it’s TW’s Bluejeans and Moonbeams as far as Waitsheads are concerned. No matter. I love it.
Sorry I must go, I’ve had an idea for a fireworks display and the whole town’s made of iron ore.
Bollocks to that – I love LFTHOSN. The title track, Shiver Me Timbers, Fumblin’ with the Blues – so many great tracks. It’s probably my favourite if the piano-playing-hobo albums.
Thank you! A brother.
I think it’s TW for people who think they don’t like TW..
It must be; I like it. I am still unable to swallow anything much later (and I also like Closing Time, the debut). Much as the singer starts being unable to swallow his phlegm. Such a shame, as under all that mucus are some good songs, and good snaaaaaaawk might have allowed his accompanists to concentrate more on the backing they were having to play blind and deaf. Deafened by gargle, blind lest they see what he’s chewing.
Me too. Probably because I discovered TW during his “Ayslum” years that’s the period I like best. Having said that, “Jockey Full of Bourbon” is probably my favorite TW track (love Marc Ribot’s solo on that).
Have a Christmas tune
Or another
My favourite from the old Tom.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zus00TIPUJg
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And this from the more recent Tom.
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Or maybe this.
Probably my all time favourite artist. I don’t love everything he’s done, maybe 90%. Can’t remember how I first came across him, but Heart Attack and Vine rings a bell. It would be the influence of one of my pal’s older brothers more than likely. I used to have a few PBS radio broadcasts he did before becoming famous. Just him and a piano…..wonderful.
I like him. My choice is probably not one of the ‘critic’s favourites’ and hardly ever likely to feature in a career Top Ten overview but it’s the one album of his that I play most often. I refer, of course, to the amazing soundtrack album for ‘One From the Heart’. Waits and Gayle should never work. But they do.
Video documentary. The Acting Years.
My favourite from the early years. As sophisticated a piece of songwriting as anything from the classic American songbook