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Tom Waits
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Author:  Strat [ Fri January 25, 2013 4:18 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Tom Waits

Was that your first time witnessing that video, Joey? Can i call you....joey?

Author:  epilogue [ Fri January 25, 2013 4:27 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Tom Waits

Strat wrote:
Was that your first time witnessing that video, Joey? Can i call you....joey?

You can call me whatever you want, friendo.

And yes. That was the first time I'd seen that video. Now that I've seen it, I feel like a proper arse for not having seen it sooner.

Author:  verb_to_trust [ Fri January 25, 2013 4:30 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Tom Waits

E.H. Ruddock wrote:
Is liking Tom Waits the cool thing to do now?


When was it ever not?

Author:  Strat [ Fri January 25, 2013 4:31 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Tom Waits

durdencommatyler wrote:
Strat wrote:
Was that your first time witnessing that video, Joey? Can i call you....joey?

You can call me whatever you want, friendo.

And yes. That was the first time I'd seen that video. Now that I've seen it, I feel like a proper arse for not having seen it sooner.



I just feel like ive posted it a hundo times now. you know? So it makes me feel as though you aren't really paying attention to me?!
:|

Author:  epilogue [ Fri January 25, 2013 4:33 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Tom Waits

Strat wrote:
durdencommatyler wrote:
Strat wrote:
Was that your first time witnessing that video, Joey? Can i call you....joey?

You can call me whatever you want, friendo.

And yes. That was the first time I'd seen that video. Now that I've seen it, I feel like a proper arse for not having seen it sooner.



I just feel like ive posted it a hundo times now. you know? So it makes me feel as though you aren't really paying attention to me?!
:|

My sincere apologies.

Thing is, I don't usually click on posted videos. Usually I'm posting at work or in a place where I can't really play them.

Author:  Strat [ Fri January 25, 2013 4:58 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Tom Waits

Im about to post a video in a "songs you recently discovered"

I think you should click on it. cause i literally just discovered it. I have now watched this video 4 times.

By the time you click on it I will have watched it at least 6

Author:  epilogue [ Fri January 25, 2013 4:59 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Tom Waits

Post it!

Author:  Gods' Die [ Fri January 25, 2013 2:38 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Tom Waits

I thought that was from the 2000s for some reason.

Author:  McParadigm [ Fri January 25, 2013 2:59 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Tom Waits

Pretty sure that's like 2001 or so. After he talks a bit, he plays Ain't Going Down to the Well on a banjo. If memory serves.

Just finished reading the 33 1/3 series book on Swordfishtrombones. Not nearly as cool or insightful as the Highway 61 or In the Aeroplane ones were, but still pretty cool. Had a good point on Frank's Wild Years, I thought...the idea that it could have been a better album (which is asking a lot of something already so cool) if he had let go more of the play's narrative when he tracked it. A lot of the best songs on that album (Cold Cold Ground, I'll be Gone, Way Down in the Hole, Telephone Call from Istanbul) are not in the play, anyway. They were mostly written later (Fred Gwynne told Tom on the set of Ironweed: "I've got a great song title...see what you can do with it. It's called 'Yesterday is Here'). By ditching the narrative (which is flimsy at best in the actual play), you can start building a more Tom Waits type album...the kind that feels like a mix of Bible stories getting retold by compulsive liars and fairy tales the Grimm brothers left out for being too upsetting. The author also makes a comment that I wish I could remember off-hand...basically saying that Tom's strength is not for creating long-playing narrative so much as for creating the sense that a powerful story is in the middle of occurring, and that you and he are sitting in a room full of opium smoke while he gives you brief glimpses of the events and people involved. And you walk out later feeling like you really got it, but when somebody asks you to explain it to them you don't even know where to start.

So changing Frank's (which initially feels blasphemous) starts to make sense to me. It probably doesn't hurt that I completely fell in love with the demos, so the album proper had already stopped being a concrete event in my mind. But Frank's doesn't need that big a change, either. For example, you can ditch the idea of needing two versions of Straight to the Top on there....the rumba can stay on this record and the Vegas version can stay on Big Time (where it works better anyway). Speaking of...I'll Take New York works better on Big Time, as well, so shuffle that one sideways.

Losing the narrative means you don't need to twist and disguise Innocent When You Dream to account for storytelling, so it could be a lot more like it was in the play (which is close, but more fleshed out and affecting than the version on Big Time). The 78 version was released on a soundtrack, so it would still be out there...you could put the barroom version somewhere else (donate it to a cause or something), and that way they'd be really cool little discoveries for fans to have later on.

So now, you have made Big Time that much cooler because it has these really weird showbiz affectations that aren't on any record, and a version of Frank's that is more direct but a little too lean (14 songs and around 45 minutes long). You can take Falling Down (recorded for Frank's but left off because it didn't fit the story) from Big Time and put it here, which makes a lot more sense than placing a single studio track square in the middle of your live album. You can also consider Strange Weather, or If I Have to Go (!!!!!), if you want to. I'd vote to commit some of that time to further indulging the voices that come in at the end of Way Down in the Hole.

A more direct reading of Innocent, the inclusion of Falling Down, and the removal of some of the more tongue-in-cheek Vegas-y stuff does surprisingly little to revoke the personality of the album. It still 'feels' like Frank's Wild Years, and it still has all the same thematic purpose. And, like I said, I think Big Time benefits from having those pieces be unique to it, as well. All in all, it's a pretty cool exercise.

Author:  Gods' Die [ Fri January 25, 2013 4:26 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Tom Waits

Nice. I would listen to FWY more if these changes were on there. Another issue I have with the album is the album cuts sound a little flat or tame compared to any of the Big Time versions where I feel like he let his vocal affects out a little more and this was in the middle of an amazing place for him where his voice was an insanely powerful instrument.

Author:  epilogue [ Fri January 25, 2013 7:36 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Tom Waits

So what would your ultimate final tracklist for FWY look like, McP?

And is the version of Innocent When You Dream that you speak of (from the play) available anywhere?

Author:  McParadigm [ Fri January 25, 2013 8:18 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Tom Waits

I dunno. There's not a lot to complain about regarding the sequencing, in my opinion. But Putting Falling Down in where New York was makes for an almost too awesome second half. Way Down in the Hole -> Falling Down -> Telephone Call -> Cold Cold Ground -> Train Song. :shock:

I will say that Train Song is a cooler song to end on than Innocent, as well. Rain Dogs has its mix of defiant freedom and resigned loss for an ender...Anywhere I Lay My Head could almost be a response to Like a Rolling Stone...and having Frank's end with deep regret and a mournful yearning for a way to get back to that place that used to be home feels like a great way to juxtapose the two sets.

Fun fact: at least one crow has appeared in every Tom Waits album since 1983, except Black Rider...which gets a pass, because there's a crow prominently featured in the play. Arguably, this trend ends with Bad As Me, which only features a character refusing to eat crow. Still interesting. I don't think a single crow appears on any of the albums before that. Just scarecrows.

Author:  epilogue [ Fri January 25, 2013 9:16 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Tom Waits

I think if we're playing around with the tracklist anyway, I'd start the thing off with Blow Wind Blow. I love that has an opener.

Author:  Gods' Die [ Fri January 25, 2013 9:20 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Tom Waits

Train Song from Big Time is so fucking good.

And yeah...Falling Down might be his best song. Certainly my favorite of his.

Author:  McParadigm [ Fri January 25, 2013 9:33 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Tom Waits

durdencommatyler wrote:
I think if we're playing around with the tracklist anyway, I'd start the thing off with Blow Wind Blow. I love that has an opener.


It would certainly set a different mood than St. Chris does, wouldn't it?

Yeah, I can get behind it. Opening an album with lines like "Blow, wind, blow....take me away....take me into the night...." has a 'falling into the storybook' quality to it.

Author:  epilogue [ Fri January 25, 2013 10:09 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Tom Waits

McParadigm wrote:
durdencommatyler wrote:
I think if we're playing around with the tracklist anyway, I'd start the thing off with Blow Wind Blow. I love that has an opener.


It would certainly set a different mood than St. Chris does, wouldn't it?

Yeah, I can get behind it. Opening an album with lines like "Blow, wind, blow....take me away....take me into the night...." has a 'falling into the storybook' quality to it.

Thing is, that's always how I've heard the album. The tracks are all mixed up on my iPod and I never realized they weren't in the proper order until the old LAL thread.

To me Hang On St. Chris is the third track. And Blow Wind Blow works so well at the start, it's hard for me to listen to it any other way now.

Author:  stip [ Sat January 26, 2013 2:15 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Tom Waits

fun fact. Innocent when you dream (78) was the first tom waits song I ever heard.

Author:  epilogue [ Sat January 26, 2013 2:27 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Tom Waits

stip wrote:
fun fact. Innocent when you dream (78) was the first tom waits song I ever heard.

Interesting.

I honestly can't remember for certain. But I'm 99% sure mine was The Fall of Troy.

Author:  epilogue [ Sat January 26, 2013 2:28 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Tom Waits

Interesting fact: phone's off the hook, no one knows where we are, it's a long time since I drank champagne.

Author:  epilogue [ Sat January 26, 2013 2:41 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Tom Waits

Doing a Tom Waits tour tonight as I plod away on some projects. Did Swordfish first. Then Real Gone. Then Mule. Now I'm on Alice.

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