Tom Waits- "Bad As Me"

[the_platypus]

The two songs released so far are really top-notch. Color me psyched.

[Otis Westinghouse]

Great stuff. One brawler and one bawler!

[Otis Westinghouse]

You can sign up to hear it streamed at http://badasme.com/

Here are some spare codes to use for this. First come first served!

Can't wait to buy it. And have to get Bjork's newie too. It's turning into a good year. I'm loving the sound of this record and would agree with the reviews that say it's best in years (Word reckoned best since Swordfishtrombones, which I can't agree with as Rain Dogs occupies that position!)

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[Otis Westinghouse]

Great record. Haven't bought it yet cos Björk is on the way first and I need to enjoy that a bit before indulging. it's a great year for music when these two singular and remarkable figures release top notch records a week apart.

Observer interview with Tom, worth reading, review also in yesterday's edition (and linked to at the bottom of the page) heaped praise on it, like all others I've seen:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/oc ... sfeed=true

[Jeremy Dylan]

I hadn't realised how much Marc Ribot's tone sounds like Keith Richards' until I tried to tell them apart on this record. It's pretty uncanny how much Ribot sounds like Sticky Fingers era Keef sometimes, with a bit of Mick Taylor thrown in there too. Flea plays on a couple of tracks too.
The record is a gem.

[strangerinthehouse]

I been listening to it for the past couple of weeks and I have to say it will probably go down as one of his best albums ever.

Real Gone had some gems in it but it was a difficult one to enjoy. This one is short, enjoyable and has as much emotional impact as his earlier albums. I've particularly enjoyed "New Years Eve," "Kiss Me," "Talking at the Same Time," "Bad as Me," and "Pay Me."

You're right Otis, 2011 is an amazing year for music.

[Emotional Toothpaste]

Kinda disappointed in it. A few great tracks, but a few clunkers, too. Feels a little bit like Tom phoned this one in. Not in the same category as Mule Variations, Alice/Blood Money, Orphans, or Real Gone.

[Otis Westinghouse]

Gosh, first person I've seen anywhere who isn't raving about it...

I found Real Gone too much like hard work. It had some great moments, but...

Enjoyed the organising concept of Orphans, but just too much filler. The others you mention are great, esepcially Mule.

Nothing will ever compare for me to Rain Dogs, though Swordfish ain't too far behind.

[Jeremy Dylan]

The highlight of Real Gone is 'Make It Rain':

I ain't abel, I'm just cain

[Otis Westinghouse]

Agreed.

[Jack of All Parades]

Have spent the last few days with the 'deluxe' edition- have to love the book format which gives it a weighty feel. Initial reactions are moderate to lukewarm. He has done better. He is in danger of becoming a caricature of himself as a writer. Too many of the lyrics rely on the trope of opposites- just listen to the song Bad as Me for instance. It has become an affectation in too many of the lyrics on this record. That said there are some lovely love songs as he is becoming quite the crooner in his own 'voice'- Kiss Me, Get Lost and the deluxe edition song She Stole the Blush. I love his falsetto on Kiss Me- something he should do more often. You can make up your own mind by listening here but this is a wonderful song- listen to this link:

http://www.chicagonow.com/booth-reviews ... tom-waits/

Two beautiful out of love songs- Face to the Highway and Back in the Crowd. A highlight is that new falsetto and a much better song than EC's National Ransom in Talking at the Same Time which poignantly and pointedly hits on today's troubles for so many people with the notion that "they got the fruit/we got the rind" and that perhaps the only safe place may be a nest 'high enough to ride out the flood'. New Year's Eve caps the record; it is a bulletin from the edge.

Love the delicate interplay between his voice and that of Keith Richards on Last Leaf a song which can now join the pantheon of great seasonal love songs. In fact Richards and David Hidalgo add immeasurably to the sound of this record. Inspired choices to have them on board. I like the record. Wish I could rave more but the definite trend of 'tropes' in his lyric is off putting. It is lazy as I get the sense he could write that way all day. I would love to see him stretch himself more as a lyricist- he has fallen into a habit and he needs to shake himself free of it.

[Poor Deportee]

Have spent the last few days with the 'deluxe' edition- have to love the book format which gives it a weighty feel. Initial reactions are moderate to lukewarm. He has done better. He is in danger of becoming a caricature of himself as a writer. Too many of the lyrics rely on the trope of opposites- just listen to the song Bad as Me for instance. It has become an affectation in too many of the lyrics on this record. That said there are some lovely love songs as he is becoming quite the crooner in his own 'voice'- Kiss Me, Get Lost and the deluxe edition song She Stole the Blush. I love his falsetto on Kiss Me- something he should do more often. You can make up your own mind by listening here but this is a wonderful song- listen to this link:

http://www.chicagonow.com/booth-reviews ... tom-waits/

Two beautiful out of love songs- Face to the Highway and Back in the Crowd. A highlight is that new falsetto and a much better song than EC's National Ransom in Talking at the Same Time which poignantly and pointedly hits on today's troubles for so many people with the notion that "they got the fruit/we got the rind" and that perhaps the only safe place may be a nest 'high enough to ride out the flood'. New Year's Eve caps the record; it is a bulletin from the edge.

Love the delicate interplay between his voice and that of Keith Richards on Last Leaf a song which can now join the pantheon of great seasonal love songs. In fact Richards and David Hidalgo add immeasurably to the sound of this record. Inspired choices to have them on board. I like the record. Wish I could rave more but the definite trend of 'tropes' in his lyric is off putting. It is lazy as I get the sense he could write that way all day. I would love to see him stretch himself more as a lyricist- he has fallen into a habit and he needs to shake himself free of it.

I bought the (non-deluxe) version today and have only heard the album once, so I may be rushing to judgement, but Chris's critique strikes me as very fair. There are certainly a lot of great moments on here and I enjoyed the time spent. My initial impression, though, is of an artist in something of a rut. The last of his albums to strike me this way was Blood Money, but that one had the 'excuse' of being older songs purpose-built to a musical. A bit surprising to see TW not really pushing himself.

[bambooneedle]

Loving it. Looking forward to playing it over and over. what can one say? it's Tom Waits in form.

Real Gone was awesome as well with a couple of exceptions but so what. Highlights for me besides Make It Rain were Sins Of The Father, the questioning bit in Don't Go Into That Barn "did the moon see you? No sir", How's It Gonna End, Hoist That Rag, Trampled Rose, Day After Tomorrow, Green Grass, Dead And Lovely... how the hell does anyone dare complain about a Tom Waits album.

[Poor Deportee]

Loving it. Looking forward to playing it over and over. what can one say? it's Tom Waits in form.

Real Gone was awesome as well with a couple of exceptions but so what. Highlights for me besides Make It Rain were Sins Of The Father, the questioning bit in Don't Go Into That Barn "did the moon see you? No sir", How's It Gonna End, Hoist That Rag, Trampled Rose, Day After Tomorrow, Green Grass, Dead And Lovely... how the hell does anyone dare complain about a Tom Waits album.

I agree that Real Gone was excellent. Not 'complaining' about this one, just remarking that it seems relatively uninteresting by Waits's sky-high standards.

[so lacklustre]

Also have the deluxe version and just love the packaging too. Only played twice but enjoying more than Real Gone already.

[Jack of All Parades]

Piece in this week's New Yorker on "Bad as Me" by the critic Sasha Frere-Jones which has some interesting parts about Waits and Dylan but which ultimately says very little about the new record other than that his song "Talking at the Same Time" could be a signature song for the new disaffected generation of occupy Wall Street protestors and the despair of "Hell Broke Luce" with its 'war is hell' motif. You can check it out for yourself:

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/m ... frerejones

Or this from this past sunday's NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/arts/ ... its&st=cse

[strangerinthehouse]

Have spent the last few days with the 'deluxe' edition- have to love the book format which gives it a weighty feel. Initial reactions are moderate to lukewarm. He has done better. He is in danger of becoming a caricature of himself as a writer. Too many of the lyrics rely on the trope of opposites- just listen to the song Bad as Me for instance. It has become an affectation in too many of the lyrics on this record.

I bought the (non-deluxe) version today and have only heard the album once, so I may be rushing to judgement, but Chris's critique strikes me as very fair. There are certainly a lot of great moments on here and I enjoyed the time spent. My initial impression, though, is of an artist in something of a rut. The last of his albums to strike me this way was Blood Money, but that one had the 'excuse' of being older songs purpose-built to a musical. A bit surprising to see TW not really pushing himself.

I'm not sure what other direction could Tom Waits embark upon except for maybe fine tuning that excellent croon and rockabilly growl that he has developed since the 80's. I guess the last big chance he took was in Real Gone, which to me was kind of a mixed bag, lots of noise at times but some devastatingly good songs - like "Day After Tomorrow."

Then again, maybe the more socially conscious songs he's done since the "Day After Tomorrow" are the new direction he's taken. Since then he has given us the excellent "Road to Peace," and now "Everyone's talking..." and "Hell Broke Luce." I'd be hard pressed to think of a song like those during the Island or Asylum years.

This albums seems to be like a return to form for me, a turn away from the clatter and a renewed emphasis on the story each song tells, just listen to "New Years Eve." And yes, sometimes there's cliches and overused tropes ( I do think "Bad as Me" is the weakest song on the album but it's still fun) but if the music is good, you'll still sing along.

[Jack of All Parades]

What really works for me on the record are the personal songs of relationships like "Get Lost", with its admonition to throw caution to the wind, or "Back in the Crowd" or the quite moving "Kiss Me" where he makes a valiant attempt to breathe, even incant, oxygen into the affections for one another of a pair of lovers that is ebbing. It is a beautiful evocation of the mutability of passion; just a wonderfully executed song. When coupled with the song "She Stole the Blush" he offers two strong songs of love. Unlike the New Yorker piece, I think he has found a renewing direction in the pronoun 'I'.

The socially conscious songs on this album resonate powerfully for me. I really think that his "Talking at the Same Time" is a far better commentary on today's economic and social times than say EC's "National Ransom". Where that other song is in essence a digressive rant, Waits's song has a poignant immediacy to it by the insertion of that rhetorical 'I'. Musically, it is also quite subversive as Frere-Jones points out in the New Yorker piece. He is right; I thoroughly enjoy the Brechtian tone his more political songs have taken on this record.

No matter what, I have to love the man given his relationship with my late father in law



"Tom Waits: Would You Say This Man Was Attempting To Convey An Impression Of Sordid Bohemianism


I dig Kerouac drones TOM WAITS. Ah, but FRED DELLAR knew that already

I came in on the southbound flyer, then hoofed it halfway across town to see Tom. From a nearby window drifted the sound of Billie aqua-freshing 'The Man I Love', Prez(10) singing long, thoughtful phrases and making it, really making it. Was it really like that? Hell, no. But when you're booked to interview Tom Waits, the Brian Case(1) of singer-songwriters, then it's best to get in the mood.

Waits is in the town for a gaggle of nights at Ronnie's(2). That his gig seems a well-kept secret I'll agree - just another chapter in Waits' as-yet-unwritten biography, The Last Of The Big Time Losers. The guy's had three albums released so far. The first was deleted after just a fly's life, while the second never received a British pressing order. And the third, a live-in-the-studio double, got slammed by reviewers who never had a chance to ease on into Waits via the more accessible preceding duo. Three strikes in a row then.

Writing-wise he's been luckier. It's become fashionable to include at least one Waits song on an album. However, our hero claims this trend doesn't exactly keep him in Saville Row suits - not as though sartorial elegance has ever been a strong line with the Californian, whose bum-of-the-year appearance has brought forth strong accusations of gimmickry from non-believers.

"I'm not a household word - I'm just a legend in my own mind." Croaks Waits in a voice that's broken out of Alcatraz and got shot up in the process. "Still, I've come a long way since I was a dishwasher and had a good job sweeping up. "I once worked in a jewellery store and when I quit I took a gold watch. I figured they weren't gonna give me one 'cause I'd only been with them six months anyway."

Back to those cover versions though.
"I don't like any of 'em."
Not even the Eagles' version of 'Ol' 55'?(3)
"Naw - I don't like the Eagles. They're about as exciting as watching paint dry. Their albums are good for keeping the dust off your turntable and that's about all."
Eric Andersen then?(4) After all, Andersen's included Waits' songs on his last two albums.
"Naw - I don't like Eric Andersen either."

He takes the copy of Andersen's latest Arista project, which I proffer, and reads the sleeve notes, punctuating the singer's own poetic album jottings with the words "Rod McKuen"(9) every few seconds. I remark that even if Waits has a low opinion of Andersen's output, the reverse would not appear to be true.

"Yeah, right. But I still don't like him. I wish he didn't like me. We had a fight once because he was messing about with my girl. Y'know something?... it's really difficult to hit a guy who likes you, so I wish he didn't. "I guess I shouldn't badmouth anybody though. I mean, who the hell am I? Still I've got my own tastes and I have to say that most of the performers currently on the circuit don't, with the exception of a few, fall into that category."

*

Many of the people Waits actually admires are long gone... Kerouac, Lenny Bruce, Lester Young, Tim Buckley. While others like Zoot Sims, Al Cohn, Charlie Mingus and Thelonius Monk, remain as living reminders of the time when New York's 52nd Street was the hub of music world; all bop, berets and goatees. Waits himself sports a 35-year-old goatee on his 27-year-old chin. His threadbare cap seems even older. Talk about Kerouac's Visions Of Cody ("I've got a first edition that's signed by Jack"), Moondog, the legendary blind street musician who once made an album featuring the sounds of the New York streets; Symphony Sid, the deejay who once preached Bird and Diz from tiny Bronx radio stations WBNX: or King Pleasure, the singer who taught the world vocalese, and Waits latches on, swapping story for story.

He digs the whole beat generation scene ("I was something of a misfit during the sixties") but resents any suggestion that his act is any part of the current boom in nostalgia. He shudders when I toss around names like Bette Midler (who recorded Waits' 'Shiver Me Timbers' on her last elpee) or The Pointer Sisters. "The whole thing is rampant y'know. Those people who go in and enjoy Manhattan Transfer don't know who the hell Lambert, Hendricks and Ross are. Music is not a big part of most people's lives. When it stops becoming something you do and becomes rather what you are - then you begin to understand what's important historically. I don't see anything I do as being nostalgic - I feel very contemporary. "The thing is to do something that's not necessarily here today and gone tomorrow. But most people don't care about that, they're under a lot of social pressure. When getting laid depends upon what you've got in your record collection than you gotta have all top ten hits - that's the way it is."

Interviewing Waits is both easy and difficult. It's easy because he's an inveterate raconteur, a mainman on words, a sultan of scrabble. But the difficulty arises when he opts for being Waits the entertainer, testing whole routines on unsuspecting journalists waiting merely for the short answer. Already he'd thrown two monologues my way - one being a hilarious (but true) story involving Waits himself, his '54 Cadillac, Ed Begley Jnr.(5) and a girl from Persia who couldn't speak English ("I hadda pinned up against a wall, trying to explain things to her.") Another being a tale called 'Rocky And Charlie Dutton' that's likely to appear on what Waits terms his fourth, coming (geddit?) album. It takes a little time to get him back on course again.

So tell us about your backup band, Tom. "Well, I've got Frank Vicari on tenor sax, Dr. Hutingdon Jenkins III Jnr.(6) on upright bass, and Chip White on drums. Vicari's being playing since he was about 13 years old. He used to line up outside Birdland when he was a kid... the only white tenor player lining up with a whole lotta black cats - just for a chance to sit in, listen or hang out. Since then he's played for Woody, Maynard Ferguson... lots of others."

Waits has always had a penchant for useful tenor players, people like Tom Scott and Al Cohn(7), one of Herman's great '48 Herd, along with Zoot Sims and Stan Getz. "Yeah, I had Tom Scott(8) on one of my albums - but that was before I found out I could get anyone that I wanted. Tom's okay but he's too young and too stylised, more like a rock tenorman, not really what I'd call a jazz player, though he can play jazz. He did some nice stuff on the soundtrack of a movie called Taxi Driver that's very big in the States. Al played with me for a couple of weeks once and I hope to have him on my next album if everything fits in with his schedule. I admire him and his style. And he drinks about a quart of Johnnie Walker Red Label a night - though how he does it I just don't know."

Though Waits plays some guitar and a reasonable line in gin-soaked piano, he describes himself as a pedestrian musician. "I'd never cut it as a sideman, I just accompany, that's what I do. I'm glad to have my band with me, they're a real high-voltage bebop trio. I've been on the road for about five years now but I've never been able to afford a band until recently - and even now I can't afford it, I just pay through the ass."

Reminiscences next - about the time he tried to get a gig with a then unknown Al Jarreau at the Blah Blah Club in LA ("A real toilet that place"), about Maria Muldaur explaining to Martin Mull just how much an ancient necklace had cost her ("Just imagine what you'd have paid if it had been new," said Mull in mock wonder), and about the multitude of American tradenames and expressions that proliferate throughout Wait's albums... "Muckalucks are carpet slippers, a Peterbilt is a truck and Stacey Adams once were a very prestigious shoe... if you had them on then nobody messed with you and you could go anywhere. Stacey's stayed ahead of current affairs and were considered extremely hip. By the way, the shoes I'm wearing are called Ratstickers!" It's retaliation time so Waits begins writing down some of the British expressions he hasn't heard before. "You call them French Letters here?... or Packets Of Three? Yeah, I'll have to remember that."

One last question then. Is there anyone in this wide world that he'd actually like to cover his songs? "Ray Charles... and I'd like Cleo Laine to do one. The thing is, though, that people never record the songs I'm really proud of. There are songs I do every night and the magic is still there - but there are others that you can ambush and beat the shit out of until they just don't water anymore for you. "I've got a lot of new songs - 'A Bad Liver And A Broken Heart,' 'A Briefcase And The Blues,' 'Frank Is Here,' 'Whitey Ford'... and a lot of these haven't been written yet but I've got the titles and I'll be glad if somebody covers them.

After a brief discourse regarding that next album - which is likely to be called Pasties And A G-String - the subject moves finally to the ineptitude of some country rockers. "Those guys grew up in L.A. and they don't have cow-shit on their boots - they just got dog shit from Laurel Canyon. They wouldn't last two minutes in Putnam County, that's for sure. If somebody gets shot and killed there on a Saturday night, the Sunday papers say he just died of natural causes!"

At which point I, in the words of Waits himself, made like a hockey player and got the puck outta there."

© Fred Dellar 1976

Notes:

(1) Brian Case: In-crowd joke. Case was a famous and apparently unconventional NME reporter. He did a couple of interviews with Waits: May 5, 1979; October 29, 1983 and November 11, 1987

(2) Ronnie's: Ronnie Scott's Club, Soho/ London. May 31 - Jun. 12, 1976. Further reading: Performances

(3) Ol' '55/ The Eagles: Cover released on "On The Border". The Eagles, 1974 Elektra/ Asylum LP 1004

(4) Ol' '55/ Eric Andersen: Cover released on "Be True To You". Arista Records. Recorded in Los Angeles, 1974. Arista AL 4033. 1975. For further reading please visit the official Eric Andersen site

(5) Emmy nominated American actor/ environmentalist. Further reading: Official Ed Begley jr. website

(6) Dr. Hutingdon Jenkins III Jnr.: That should read Dr. Fitz(gerald) Jenkins III. Further reading: Who's Who?

(7) Al Cohn: "And Al Cohn sharin' this apartment with a telephone pole" (Pasties & a G-string, 1976 ) - Alvin Gilbert Cohn. Born: Brooklyn, NY, November 24 1925 - Died: February 15 1988. American arranger, composer and jazz saxofonist. Also played on Jack Kerouac's "Blues and Haikus", 1960

(8) Tom Scott: tenor player. Worked with: Joni Mitchell, the L.A. Express, Tony Darren, Tony Williams, Eric Andersen, Rickie Lee Jones, Fred Frith. No confirmation he ever worked with Waits. Looking at the date of this interview, the album they could have been working on together would be Closing Time or The Heart Of Saturday Night.

(9) Rod McKuen: This might be Robert McGuinn from Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue. Maybe Waits is thinking of his attempted concert appearance, a couple of weeks ago at the Ballinjax Club/ The Warehouse, New Orleans, where he was kept off stage by McGuinn and others (lists as The Warehouse, New Orleans, Louisiana - May 3/6, 1976)

(10) Prez: Nickname of saxophonist Lester Young


Waits: The Great White Hope

By Steve Lake in New York

This is an old diner on the funky end of 8th Avenue, hung with grease stained cardboard plaques that say things like "Hamburg + french fries + coleslaw = 95c" or "Try our soup of the day. Different soup daily 20c."

Green tiled walls and green chipped Formica work-bench type counter tops, the dreary uniformity of colour broken by hulking and battered aluminium urns.

Tom Waits feels at home. Most of the... uh... clientele here are earthy working men, burly constructing crew workers, truck drivers, and the odd derelict, most of these red nosed and grimy and sporting the standard wino trim - three days of stubble, what remains of heads of hair ancjhored down to scabbed scalps by months, years of sweat and dirt.

Nobody here realises they're dining with the great left-field hope of the David Geffen empire. Yes sir, from the team that gave you the Eagles, Joni Mitchell, the Souther Hillman Furay Band, and even (for a while) Bob Dylan - Elektra/ Asylum Records presents ... (fanfare of trumpets)... Tom Waits!

Tom Waits is the worst dressed man I ever saw. Impossibly crumpled, three-sizes-too-big, dark grey suit, collar liberally sprinkled with dandruff, columinous torn T-shirt decorated with axle-grease thumb prints and a flat cap with grimy brim of which has been all but rubbed away by generations of usage. From underneath, straw coloured curls protrude, crowning a drained and pallid face. Bloodshot eyes, hollow cheeks and a whispy goatee.

Although reluctant to admit it, Waits has consciously styled his artistic and personal development along the lines laid down in the Fifties by the so-called Beat Generation - taking as his model writers like Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and particularly Jack Kerouac.

And never mind that virtually all the writers involved in that very loose movement ultimately disowned their hobo on-the-road years, Waits is passionately commited to the spirit of the Fifties and all that it entailed.

In the grand Beat tradition, Waits sits in seedy luncheonettes and crowded bars writing down conversations that he hears around him, and later turns these into songs.

And the Kerouac influence makes itself manifest in these songs in more than just general terms. Why, the very title of Waits' second album "The Heart Of Saturday Night" is in direct reference to a passage from Kerouac's book Visions Of Cody, and the theme of the whole album is essentially little more than an elaboration, albeit articulate, on this self-same passage, (Pages 80 through 85 in the McGraw Hill paperback edition, if you want to check it out for yourselves.)

And, when it came to selecting a Fifties style back-up trio for his New York appearance at the swanky Reno Sweeneys Club(1), who should Waits choose to front such a band but tenorist Al Cohn(2), who just happens to be the saxophonist who worked with - you guessed it - ol' Jack Dulouz Kerouac himself on a 1960 jazz/poetry album called "Blues/ Haikus".

To be sure, then pianist/ guitarist/ singer/ raconteur Tom Waits walks that most perilous of lines between idolisation on the one hand and downright plagiarism on the other.

But what does Waits have that's his own? you ask. Well, Kerouac never actually wrote songs as such, of course, and thus, unlike Waits, never got his material recorded by the Eagles, Bette Midler, Ian Matthews, Lee Hazelwood and Tim Buckley - to name but five. Not that Waits likes any of the cover versions overmuch.

"The Eagles made 'Ol' '55' really antiseptic, y'know, and that song's on juke boxes everywhere now. When I hear those songs and the real essence doesn't come across, I figure that maybe the songs just ain't strong enough."

This lack of conviction in his songwriting ability has made Waits lean progressively more and more heavily (on stage) on his words.

"If I can't find a melody to hang the words on to, I just don't worry about it. I do it anyway, without music. I got a thing on my upcoming album called 'Spare Parts', which is a thing I wrote but in the final analysis it's a solo effort, it's something you do by yourself and nobody can really tell anybody else how to do it.

"It starts off as a vicarious sort of thrill. Through somebody else's work you get the feeling that you could do something like that, but then later you find out how very difficult it actually is to do something meaningful."

And for tom Waits, his most "meaningful" effort to date is his new album - a live double album recorded, paradoxically, in the studios. To get the necessary nightclubatmosphere, Tom moved tables and chairs into his favourite studio, opened a bar and invited his friends along. The record is called 'Nighthawks At The Diner".

"It's probably the newness of it that makes me like it the most. I don't know - I never play my old records, so it's difficult to be objective. There's a new thing I've done called 'Eggs And Sausage' which I'm really pleased with, and another one called 'Warm Beer And Cold Women'... oh and there's one called 'Putnam County' which is a little vignette about a naugahide town in Kentucky...

"I've always found it awkward to adjust to the studio - that knowledge that you've got the same facilities as any other artist at your disposal - you can go in and make a great album or you can go in and suck raw eggs."

At Reno Sweeney's Tom Waits looks absurdly incongruous. The t-shirt has been replaced by a white more conventional variety and a skinny lifeless necktie is knotted about halfway down his chest. But otherwise it's the same sad suit and cap and peeling chisel toe shoes.

Reno Sweeney's, you should understand, is what London's Biba's Rainbow Room is supposed to be, stylised eleganza.

Al Cohn pushes his tenor through a few genteel paces, blinking owlishly behind his spectacles. Come to think of it, he hasn't changed much since the Fifties either. He's still sounding like a bluesier synthesis of Lester Young and Charlie Parker: not an unhealthy combination, let it be said.

But Cohn doesn't get enough room to move. This is Tom Waits' show and the music is secondary to the imagery. Unobtrusive background music, that's all that's required of one of the most important tenorists of the post war years, a guy on a par with Zoot Sims and Stan Getz. Which isn't to knock Waits necessarily - the jazz poetry fusions throughout history have usually transpired in the music losing out, relegated to a backseat role.

And tom waits is babbling. "Under the circumcision this is pretty prophylactic," he blurts at one point to more titters, and later I think I hear him cram a couple of stanzas from Kerouac's "Mexico City Blues" into the proceedings, but I can't be sure, and nobody else seems to notice. Seems we can't avoid talking about Kerouac. I prevail on him to explain the roots of this obsession.

"I'm interested in the style mainly. Before I found Kerouac I was kinda groping for something to hang on to, stylistically.

"I was kinda lost in the Sixties. Y'know I kinda slept in the Sixties. Knowing I wanted to do something creative, not knowing how or where to do it."

Living in California Waits remained immune to the celebrated San Francisco music explotion.

"I thought it was a waste of time, I knew it was going to consume itself pretty rapidly. I was more interested in the early beginnings of that scene than I was in its progress.

"I didn't go to San Francisco until the whole love and flowers bit was all over, and when I did go I was looking for the City Lights Bookstore and the ghost Jack Kerouac.

"Writing is a much more easy business to discuss," he croaks, "than to actually get down and do it yourself. You can talk for days about how you write or where you write or how you like the room or what you write about."

Notes:

(1) Appearance at the swanky Reno Sweeneys Club: Paradise Room at the Reno Sweeney. New York/ USA September 16 to 20, 1975. Further reading: Performances

(2) Al Cohn: "And Al Cohn sharin' this apartment with a telephone pole" (Pasties & a G-string, 1976). Alvin Gilbert Cohn. Born: Brooklyn, NY, November 24 1925 - Died: February 15 1988. American arranger, composer and jazz saxofonist. Also played on Jack Kerouac's "Blues and Haikus", 1960

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[bambooneedle]

^

Tom could take a shit after eating alphabet soup and it would be more worthy of examination than your posts about him. "This is that and that is this..." everything reduced to dumb simplistic analysis and oh so very small abstractions of thought. "I love this and that thing is my favourite..." Really? WGAF? "It's so Brechtian this and that...". again, all it does is reduce. It really is NOT impressive. The main impression that sort of stuff creates is that you are very pretentious and that you don't know what you are talking about.

[Otis Westinghouse]

I beg to differ. Chris knows exactly what he's talking about and he always writes stuff that's worth reading.

[bambooneedle]

Yeah, right, and EC hated women at an early age, and Bob Dylan was a heroin user who habitally puffs from his cigarettes on stage. And Tom has fallen into a habit. He needs to shake himself free of it...Yeah, right, Christofur is always on the ball. He's alright, he just needs a new personality, that's all.

[Who Shot Sam?]

Piece in this week's New Yorker on "Bad as Me" by the critic Sasha Frere-Jones which has some interesting parts about Waits and Dylan but which ultimately says very little about the new record other than that his song "Talking at the Same Time" could be a signature song for the new disaffected generation of occupy Wall Street protestors and the despair of "Hell Broke Luce" with its 'war is hell' motif. You can check it out for yourself:

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/m ... frerejones

Sasha Frere-Jones is a horrible writer.

[Poor Deportee]

On further listening, I think my main objection is to the sheer unstructured tunelessness of two key up-tempo songs at the end: the quite uninteresting 'Satsifaction' and the clod-hoppingly obvious 'Hell Broke Luce.' Those don't seem to be songs so much as not-terribly-amazing lyrics bellowed without much inspiration over a patented Tom Waits thunderous musical backdrop. I know people like the social commentary of the latter, but as with 'The Road to Peace' I find it totally ham-fisted. Even the title pun is lame. Contrast it with the great 'Solider's Things,' the difference is obvious.

That I skip the 10th and 12th tracks is a significant problem for me, given the weight they seem to want to carry for the album as a whole.

The other thing that bugs a bit me is melodies that are rather derivative of earlier Tom Waits: e.g., 'Kiss Me,' while lovely, could be uncharitably viewed as a lesser rewrite of the mighty 'Blue Valentine;' 'Pay Me' revisits melodic terrain traversed in 'Whistle Down the Wind,' although in this case I think I prefer the later version. Anyway, I don't want to be pedantic, but it's things like this that contributed to my initial sense that this album didn't really break any new ground in the manner of records like Real Gone or Bone Machine.

Lots of great stuff on here, though - in fact most of the songs are moving or else great fun. I especially enjoy the mordant take on gender relations: RAISED RIGHT MEN!! But all told, I still rate it a second-tier Tom Waits record.

[Otis Westinghouse]

I've hardly heard any of it, but there's a song about four in with the same tempo and rhythm and structure as 'Union Square' to the point where you can sing the one over the other and it fits. Did sound like TW by numbers. The sound and production of it impressed me a lot. Gonna give it a few proper listens and return with some thoughts.

[Emotional Toothpaste]

Otis - that would probably be the song Get Lost, and I think it is the 4th track. I can hear the similarity.

I agree completely with your review, Poor Deportee. Hell Broke Luce and Satisfied are instant skips for me, and so the album seems very short without those 2 tracks. Tell Me on the bonus disc is excellent though.