Tom Waits

Let's not forget composer, actor, and playwrite. His plays and operas completely sell out in Europe, but they continue to be one of those things the US just "doesn't get".
 
I love Tom Waits but I had some trouble getting into the Alice album.

I'm also wondering if the people who swear by Alice have heard ANY Tom Waits albums or songs they didn't like as much.

One of my favorite songs of his ever is Murder in the Red Barn. It's like a beautiful junkyard of dark poetry and music.
 
That should be normal, what do you like so far? Theres a few mosters on that album that I think are worth it.

Invitation to the Blues

The One that Got Away

Pasties and a G-string.

Then you've got your weird ones and your slow-growers...

I wish I was in New Orleans and Jitterbug Boy are amazing if you get into them.

Step Right Up and The Piano has been drinking are oddities that are good to play during a house party when its raining. Their odd, conversational, background workings that tend to give everyone the right feeling about the place. Like they'd jsut sturabled into wonderland.

"I don't know whats going on here, or who these people are, but with this music on, it seems like anything goes. grab a drink and start talking to the artsy girl by the bookshelf"
 
Im gunna be honest. Ive never heard any Tom Waits before, but have wanted to for a long time. Would anyone be able to upload what in their opinion is his best album?
 
Well Blue Valentine doesn't sound like raindogs. Its my favorite waits album, and in my opinion a masterpeice, but try mule variations, I mean the issue is, once you hit SFT, no waits album is going to sound like another.

Real Gone is another one that is nearly flawless, cept for the opening track where waits raps (or so they say, I can't hear a ****ing thing but noise).

Ok how about this. If you heard Raindogs and your favorite track was:

Anywhere I lay my head: Then you want Real Gone

Gun Street Girl: Then you want Mule Variations

Time: Then you want Heart of Saturday Night

Walkin' Spanish: Then you want Blue Valentine
 
To try to answer Big3's question as to why we love Waits, I think I know why I do anyway, and it can be summed up in five simple worRAB: he couldn't give a sh!t!
Basically, for me, Waits never set out to make his music popular. He never wanted, or got, a hit single (though his music has made hits for many, many other artistes). He knew he was an acquired taste, and if people weren't bothered to make the effort to get to know him, then f**k them. He built up a solid fanbase of people who were, in the main, sick of the wallpaper music and MTV pop being purveyed as music, he appealed to people who wanted something more, something different, something off the wall. True, his followers would be most likely eclectic themselves, but that was no bad thing.
Waits would have been as happy playing small jazz clubs or dime-a-dozen joints in the heart of Jersey as he would be selling out stadia and arenas. He's probably happiest in the studio, giving birth to screaming new affronts to the mainstream, unleashing wild new sounRAB and learning to play the navajo nosepipe and the Outer Mongolian beadboard. A more wild version of Paul Simon --- well, no, there are similarities, but Waits would kick Simon's ass. A crazed Mike Oldfield or Vangelis on steroiRAB? Hmm. Not really.
Hard to jam Waits into any sort of pigeonhole: he just sits there tinkling piano and downing whiskeys, refusing to be made into something he's not.
In the end, Waits is comparable only to one person, and that is Waits.
He's unique, he's uncompromising, and he doesn't give a pair of fetid dingo's kindneys if you like him or don't. He ain't in it for the money --- he's there for the music.
And that, I think, is why we love the guy.
 
Bone Machine is probably one of my favorite albums, so many differant feelings run through your head when you listen to it and some of the sounRAB made on that album sound so tribal that they dont sound like instruments at all, almost like a junk-yard band would sound.
 
I would, but im going to tell you this, when you first start listening to Tom Waits, its like wrestling a man greco-roman style, if you just charge in blind and foolish he's going to wrap you up like a pretzel.

Its best to stratagize. Start with where you're more asthetically bound to enjoy, and then move outward from there. He's easily one of the greatest American musicains period (I happen to think he's the best one) but you need to aquire the taste.

IM me on AIM if you have it: MrTheBrow
 
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