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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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