John Hammond - Wicked Grin

When is a Tom Waits album not a Tom Waits album?  Wicked Grin is John Hammond’s 28^th album.  For practically his entire career, John Hammond has been an interpreter of songs of blues musicians.  Wicked Grin is another such album in Hammond’s large canon, only with a twist.  It’s full of songs by Tom Waits, produced by Tom Waits, recorded in Tom Waits’ favorite studio with some of Tom Waits’ usual musical suspects [Waits' occasional bassist Larry Taylor, drummer Stephen Hodges, keyboardist Augie Meyers, Charlie Musselwhite on harmonica].  The only song not written by Waits is I Know I’ve Been Changed.  There are two songs that had not been released by Tom Waits at the time Wicked Grin was recorded – 2:19 and Fannin Street [both were later released by the man himself in 2006].  Buzz Fledderjohn was a Japanese bonus track for Mule Variations.

As mentioned, John Hammond has made a career interpreting the blues of the old masters, so why Tom Waits?  I say “why not?”  The two men have friends for a long time.  Waits once opened for Hammond over forty years ago, an experience that Hammond once said made him very hesitant to follow Waits on-stage.  Of Waits’ songs, Hammond once said “I include a song of his or two just about every night. I love these songs. They nail it and they have a blues base… all the feeling, and Tom’s take on life  Waits provided a song for Hammond’s 1992 album Got Love If You Want It [the song is No One Can Forgive Me But My Baby if you’re looking].  Hammond returned the favor by playing on Waits’ 1999 album Mule Variations.

Wicked Grin has a dreamlike, swampy blues feeling to it.  For the most part Hammond stays away from Waits’ latter day work for Anti- Records and concentrates on the older stuff from the Asylum and Island days.  The songs from those days were more bluesy, boozy, and a bit more seedy.  What came out was a sparse, more modern sounding Tom Waits record with a singer you can actually understand.  That being said, these tales of urban realism, wild characters and street-smart scenes are in good hands with John Hammond.  Some of the arrangements are similar to [but not exactly like] the originals.  Others [the ones I prefer] are radically different.  Either way, this is good stuff.

The tracklist:

2:19 [Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards]

Heartattack and Vine [Heartattack and Vine]

Clap Hands [Rain Dogs]

‘Til the Money Runs Out [Heartattack and Vine]

16 Shells From a Thirty-Ought Six [Swordfishtrombones]

Buzz Fledderjohn [Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards]

Get Behind the Mule [Mule Variations]

Shore Leave [Swordfishtrombones]

Fannin Street [Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards]

Jockey Full of Bourbon [Rain Dogs]

Big Black Mariah [Rain Dogs]

Murder in the Red Barn [Bone Machine]

I Know I’ve Been Changed [Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards]

Tony’s picks from Wicked Grin:  Shore Leave, Buzz Fledderjohn, ‘Til the Money Runs Out, 16 Shells From a Thirty-Ought Six.  The arrangements on the first three songs are radically different than the originals.  I like the originals, but these arrangements just add to the charm.  16 Shells From a Thirty-Ought Six is similar to the original, but to these ears John Hammond does it better. 

Bonus fries:  If you like Wicked Grin but can’t get enough of him singing songs by Tom Waits, there are more songs on subsequent albums.  On 2003’s Ready for Love [produced by Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo], you’ll find Low Side of the Road [from 1999’s Mule Variations] and Gin Soaked Boy [from Swordfishtrombones].  On 2007’s Push Comes to Shove [produced by G. Love] you’ll find Cold Water [also from Mule Variations].

Bottom line:  If you like Tom Waits’ songs but not his voice, or if you just want to hear the songs you like done a different way, this is a very good purchase.  The albums from which the “bonus fries” come from are also worthy of parting with your money.  Ready for Love and Push Comes to Shove have similar production to Wicked Grin, so get all three for a nice trilogy.

Tony's 2011 Picks - Eleven from '11

I didn’t buy a lot of “new” music in 2011.  There wasn’t a lot of new music that jumped out and screamed “buy me.”  Some of those that I did buy I’ve already written about at length.  I pretty much stuck to stuff that’s come out in years past that I didn’t get when they were new.  So my list of favorite releases from 2011 is a short one.  Ten of them contain new music, and one of them is a monster of a box set.  As one would expect from me, the list is filled with the usual suspects, but as long as the usual suspects continue to make new music, I’ll continue to buy it and write about it.

Tom Waits – Bad As Me The only surprise about this Tom Waits release is the brevity of the songs.  All thirteen songs (16 if you got the “deluxe” version) run under five minutes.  Sound-wise, there are no surprises.  The “human beatbox” that was prevalent on 2004’s Real Gone is gone, and keyboards that were absent from that release make their return on Bad As Me.  As usual, Tom Waits barks, hollers, croons, and rasps.  Keith Richards makes an appearance on four of the songs, the funniest of which is Satisfied.  Here Tom Waits mocks Mick and Keith by name and tells him that, unlike the singer who “can’t get no satisfaction” he will be satisfied by the time it’s his turn to depart planet Earth.  There’s an anti-war rant called Hell Broke Luce, which features machine-gun fire and snarling guitars.  He’s got poetic ballads like Back in the Crowd and Kiss Me.  Bad As Me has the mix of the old-timey and the surreal one expects of any Tom Waits release.  The songs sound like they were recorded after all the bars closed.  There’s dark humor and sorrow, anger, disgust and heartbreak.  The disgust comes in Talking At The Same Time: “We bailed out all the millionaires/They got the fruit, we got the rind…”  The sadness comes in Pay Me where the singer tells of his family who pays him not to come home.  The only way down from the gallows is to swing… To borrow a phrase, Bad As Me is chock full of brawlers, bawlers and bastards.  It is essential for any Tom Waits fan.  Same as it ever was…

Emmylou Harris – Hard Bargain  For most of her career, Emmylou Harris has contented herself with being an interpreter of songs written by other people.  She’s always been insecure about her songwriting.  I think she sells herself short in that regard – she wrote From Boulder to Birmingham!  What I didn’t realize [and I probably should have – I have many or her albums] was that she was the primary songwriter for only three of her albums before Hard Bargain.  Emmylou wrote all the songs on Red Dirt Girl [2000] and Stumble Into Grace [2003], but returned to recording other peoples’ songs for All I Intended to Be [2008].  On Hard Bargain, Emmylou returned to songwriting and produced a wonderful collection of songs.  There are three elegies on Hard Bargain.   The Road is for Gram Parsons.  In this song she can still remember every song he played.  My Name is Emmitt Till is told in the first person, telling how a black boy from Chicago was murdered in 1950s Mississippi for talking to a white woman, how he was kidnapped from his uncle’s house, beaten, stabbed, shot, and thrown in the river “like trash when they were done.”  And she tells of how Emmitt Till’s mother kept the casket open to show her son’s mutilated body “for the whole wide world to see.”  Darlin’ Kate is for her late friend Kate McGarrigle, a frequent collaborator who lost her battle with cancer.

The album includes Six White Cadillacs.  Here, death is a welcome respite from the road that “we won’t have to wander anymore.”  The Ship on His Arm is about a wartime marriage that was inspired by her own parents, who married during World War II.  There’s New Orleans, where “the whole world stood to watch us drown,” but “to cut and run ain’t in our blood.”  It’s interesting how Emmylou chose to make “hurricane” and “Pontchartrain” rhyme in a song.  There are songs of lonely women – Lonely Girl and Nobody.  Given her long-time advocacy for animal rights, she even wrote a song about a Big Black Dog.  There’s a lot of melancholy on Hard Bargain, but it’s a good album nonetheless.  Her voice is still as angelic as ever.  I read in Billboard not too long ago that her next project will be a duets album with Rodney Crowell.  It’ll be good, that much is certain.

U2 – Achtung Baby Box Set Carol got me this for my birthday.  When author Bill Flanagan wrote his book U2 At the End of the World, he wrote about U2 in their Achtung Baby/Zooropa period.  Manager Paul McGuinness described this time as a three-year campaign.  This box set is the product of that period.  Included in this set are six CDs and four DVDs.  The six CDs include the original Achtung Baby remastered, the original Zooropa remastered, B-sides and Rarities, 2 CDs of remixes [the Über and Ünter remixes], and the “alternate” Achtung Baby.  The hardest core U2 fans have heard all of these before, but not me.  The remastered Achtung Baby and Zooropa sound as good as one would expect.  The B-sides and Rarities are interesting.  I could do without the remixes.  The “alternate” album [‘Kindergaten’] is for U2 what Let It Be…Naked is for the Beatles.  Take away the studio tricks and underneath you still get a pretty good album.  The DVDs include the documentary U2: From the Sky Down.  One DVD contains each of the videos made from the Achtung Baby/Zooropa period.  A third DVD is the Zoo TV – Live From Sydney concert.  This show was quite a bit of sensory overload, but it was good to see Bono not take himself so seriously for once.  The fourth and last DVD has lots of goodies – a Zoo TV special,  an MTV documentary, MTV’s show Most Wanted where a fan got to see a U2 show via satellite from his house, a video short about Trabants [‘Trabantland’], U2 on Naked City, U2 on TV-AM.  There’s CD-ROM content as well, complete with links to websites.  This is how to do a box set the right way.

Glen Campbell – Ghost On The Canvas  The country icon makes his final album and says goodbye to his fans.  http://tonysmusicroom.blogspot.com/search/label/Glen%20Campbell

 

Gregg Allman – Low Country Blues  Gregg’s first solo studio album in fourteen years has been nominated for a Grammy in the Best Blues Album category.  In fact, of the five albums nominated, three were made by members of the Allman Brothers Band.  Perhaps for this year they should rename the category “Best Blues Album by a member of the Allman Brothers Band.”  http://tonysmusicroom.blogspot.com/2011/08/gregg-allman-low-country-blues.html

Warren Haynes – Man in Motion  Also nominated for Best Blues Album [the third being the Tedeschi Trucks Band’s Revelator].  The hardest working man in the music business, Warren took a year off from Gov’t Mule to release and tour behind this soulful gem.  To these ears, Man in Motion is more of a soul album than blues, but I tend to nitpick.  http://tonysmusicroom.blogspot.com/2011/05/warren-haynes-tale-of-two-albums.html

Neil Young – A Treasure  Neil Young changed musical directions with every album he made for Geffen during the 1980s.  This CD captures Neil and some legendary Nashville studio pros in his “country phase.” http://tonysmusicroom.blogspot.com/2011/06/neil-young-treasure.html

Levon Helm – Ramble at the Ryman  Recorded at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium in 2008, Levon Helm and friends keep the spirit of The Band alive.  Levon doesn’t do all the singing, but with Larry Campbell, Theresa Williams and daughter Amy Helm along for the ride, he doesn’t have to.  http://tonysmusicroom.blogspot.com/2011/06/levon-helm-ramble-at-ryman.html

        

Joe Bonamassa – Dust Blow  This is the first of three releases Joe Bonamassa put out in 2011 [the others being Black Country Communion 2 and Don’t Explain (with singer Beth Hart)].  With three releases in 2011 Joe is trying to take Warren Haynes’ title as the hardest working man in the music business.  Unwilling to be put in a blues-rock straight jacket, Joe goes in a more eclectic direction as he did with his previous two releases, Black Rock [2010] and The Ballad of John Henry [2009].  I love to hear this guy play.

http://tonysmusicroom.blogspot.com/search/label/Black%20Country%20Communion

Black Country Communion – 2  After a not-so-stellar first album,  Glenn Hughes, Joe Bonamassa and company fulfill their potential on their sophomore release.  At times Black Country Communion sounds like the second coming of Deep Purple.  Everything is better – Kevin Shirley’s production is better, Glenn is singing better, Joe is playing like a hard-rock guitarist, and Derek Sherinian can finally be heard in the mix.  Jason Bonham didn’t need to improve his drumming it’s still rock-solid as it was on the first album.  Father John would be proud.  http://tonysmusicroom.blogspot.com/search/label/Black%20Country%20Communion

Tom Waits: The Black Rider/Alice/Blood Money

Of all the people who grace my CD collection, Tom Waits is probably the most interesting. He’s been making records since 1973 [Closing Time]. He possesses a unique voice that critic Daniel Durchholz described as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car.” I suppose that’s one way to describe his raspy, gravelly voice, but the voice is only part of the appeal. His music includes styles ranging from cabaret, vaudeville, primal blues, carnival music, tango and theatrical music. Some of his stuff sounds industrial. He includes unique instruments in his music, like bassoon, waterphone, bagpipes, pump organ, marimba, accordion, Stroh violin, and an early mellotron called a Chamberlin. He sings about bums, he finds inspiration in hookers, strippers, thieves, drunks, jailbirds, addicts, all kinds of life’s losers. He’s done music for movies, and he’s done music for theatrical productions. I have CDs from three such theater productions on which he collaborated with director Robert Wilson: The Black Rider, Alice, and Blood Money.

The Black Rider is based on an old German folk tale called Der Freischütz [The Marksman]. Wilson’s The Black Rider premiered at the Thalia Theatre in Hamburg, Germany in March 1990. It’s the story of a young clerk named Wilhelm who makes a pact with Satan in order to marry the daughter of an old forester. Wilhelm had a problem. He was in love with a girl named Katchen, but her father Bertram wanted her to marry a hunter. Herein lies Wilhelm’s problem – he’s a poor marksman. He can’t shoot straight to save his life. While he’s out in the woods trying to improve his marksmanship, Wilhelm is approached by a dark horseman named Pegleg. Wilhelm and Pegleg have a chat, during which Wilhelm tells Pegleg his tale of woe. Pegleg has a solution to Wilhelm’s problem. He has these “magic bullets” that allows the shooter to hit whatever he aims at, no matter how lousy a shot he is. There is only one catch – Pegleg wants the very last bullet to be able to go wherever he wants it to go. Wilhelm is desperate for Katchen’s hand so he agrees to Pegleg’s proposal. Unbeknownst to Wilhelm, Pegleg is really the Devil. So, Wilhelm practices with his magic bullets and becomes quite the marksman. He enters a shooting contest, wins, and Bertram agrees to let his daughter marry Wilhelm. On their wedding day, Bertram asks Wilhelm to demonstrate his excellent marksmanship one more time before he and Katchen exchange their vows. Wilhelm has but one bullet left out of those given to him by Pegleg. He loads, aims at a wooden dove, and fires. The bullet doesn’t hit the wooden dove – Pegleg directs the bullet to Katchen, who is stricken and dies. Wilhelm kills his own bride and shortly thereafter becomes a raving lunatic. The moral of the story is fairly obvious.

Alice is based on Lewis Carroll’s fascination with Alice Liddell, the inspiration for Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Wilson’s play premiered at the Thalia Theatre in 1992. The folks at Allmusic.com describe the music as “nocturnal, gloomy, reflective, literate, and quirky.” The music is in many styles like jazz ballads, old waltzes, tangos, European folk songs, theatrical love paeans. There is not a single “rock” song in the bunch. The instrumentation includes the Stroh violin [a violin fitted with a brass horn for amplification], marimbas, piano, organ, French horns, trumpets, woodwinds, and reeds. There are no guitars to be heard on Alice. There are themes of loneliness, sadness, insanity, resignation to one’s own fate. According to Waits "Alice is adult songs for children, or children's songs for adults. It's a maelstrom or fever-dream, a tone poem, with torch songs and waltzes...an odyssey in dream logic and nonsense."

Blood Money, released the same day as Alice, is another German tale. Another Robert Wilson production, the play premiered at the Betty Nansen Theatre in Copenhagen in November 2000. The story is from a political play written in 1837 by Georg Büchner. The play, Woyzeck, is about a German soldier who needs to earn extra money and subjects himself to bizarre army medical experiments. These experiments and his lover’s infidelity with a handsome drum major drive this German soldier into madness, which leads him to murder said lover. So you’ve got sex, drugs, insanity and murder [oh my!]. This isn’t your typical “concept album.” This CD is permeated with German cabaret, and with some sound effects, like the sound of marching feet, it gives the CD a Weimar-era Germany feel. According to Waits, "Blood Money is flesh and bone, earthbound. The songs are rooted in reality: jealousy, rage, the human meat wheel...They are more carnal. I like a beautiful song that tells you terrible things. We all like bad news out of a pretty mouth. I like songs to sound as though they've been aging in a barrel and distressed." Like with Alice, there’s some eclectic instrumentation on Blood Money. He uses the Stroh violin, calliope, Chamberlin, trumpets, reeds, woodwinds, marimbas, accordion, guitars, bass, drums, cellos, to evoke the moods of panic, confusion, desperation, pain, death. He even shies away from traditional drums in favor of a “kitchen sink” approach, which included trash can lids, brake drums, megaphones, chairs, and even tubas to further help evoke the proper mood. There’s some interesting sounds going on here and on Alice and it definitely is not boring. It keeps me guessing “what is the next one going to sound like?” In one song Tom Waits will slur his words, another he’ll bark, maybe growl in the next, then maybe whisper. This stuff keeps you guessing musically. One thing Tom Waits is not is “typical.” If David Lynch made records instead of movies, this is what they’d sound like.

Tony's Picks - 2009

It's that time of year where music critics everywhere list their "Top 10" music picks of the year. As for me, I didn't hear a whole lot of "new" stuff, but of what I did hear this year, here are my thoughts.

New Music

Alice in Chains – Black Gives Way to Blue
For me, this was the surprise release of 2009. This band is literally back from the dead. Lead singer Layne Staley died from a drug overdose in 2002, and guitarist/songwriter Jerry Cantrell hasn’t released anything since his 2002 album Degradation Trip Vols 1 & 2. With new singer William DuVall in tow, the band put together an album that finally fuses the elements of their best work [the electric Dirt and acoustic Jar of Flies] into one album. Black Gives Way to Blue is their first collection of new music since 1995 [the Alice in Chains CD]. The ease with which AIC fuses Black Sabbath menace with Beatles melodic sense is still there. William DuVall does not try to copy Layne Staley, but still manages to pull off the great harmonies with Jerry Cantrell that highlighted the band’s previous work. Cantrell’s sludgy-yet-melodic guitar is still present in spades. A new beginning indeed, and a very welcome one at that.

Heaven & Hell – The Devil You Know
Formerly known as the Ronnie James Dio-version of Black Sabbath, Dio, guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler, and drummer Vinny Appice finally record a follow-up to 1992’s Dehumanizer. In order to keep their fans from confusing them with the original Black Sabbath [and to keep Sharon Osbourne out of the picture legally], these guys renamed themselves after the Black Sabbath album of the same name. The Devil You Know is everything you’d expect from these guys – ear-splitting, skullcrushing, gorilla-stomping riffage. With Tony Iommi’s face-melting riffs, Geezer Butler’s pummeling bass, and vocalist Ronnie James Dio in top form, The Devil You Know is a more-than-worthy addition to the Black Sabbath/Heaven & Hell canon. A must-have for metalheads. On a side note, Ronnie James Dio has stomach cancer. The docs caught it early, so I think Ronnie will slay this dragon. Cross your fingers.

Gov’t Mule – By a Thread
With all due respect to the late James Brown, Warren Haynes is now the Hardest Working Man in Show Business. When Warren isn’t recording and touring with his own band Gov’t Mule, he’s touring with the Allman Brothers Band or The Dead. And when he isn’t doing any of that stuff, he’s working on solo stuff. After having recorded Déjà Voodoo, High & Mighty and Mighty High with Andy Hess on the bass, Gov’t Mule has a new bass player in the form of Jorgen Carlsson. He’s a more “in your face” kind of player in the mold of the late Allen Woody, Gov’t Mule’s founding bassist. The songs on By a Thread reflect that aggressive attitude. Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top makes a guest appearance on the opening Broke Down on the Brazos. It's fun to hear The Rev. Willie G. and Warren swap solos. My favorite is Railroad Boy, a smoking arrangement of a traditional blues song. Not far behind are the Hendrix-esque Any Open Window and Inside Outside Woman Blues #3. Almost every Gov’t Mule album ends with a long, slow bluesy number. World Wake Up, recorded while Andy Hess was still in the band, is it for this album. It has a weird Pink Floyd-like vibe. It’s a good way to end an album. By a Thread is not as good as Dose or Life Before Insanity, but it’s a helluva lot better than their last effort, the way-below sub-par dub-mix Mighty High. It’s pretty good.

The Allman Brothers Band – Live at the Beacon Theatre, New York 3/19/09 & 3/20/09
This year commemorates the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Allman Brothers Band. To celebrate this milestone, the band dedicated every one of the shows they played a during their 2009 Beacon Theatre run to Gregg’s older brother Duane. During the Beacon run, the Brothers played with many guest stars, a lot of whom knew Duane personally and worked with him “back in the day.” I got these two shows for one reason – it’s the first [and so far only] time that Eric Clapton ever shared a stage with the Allman Brothers Band. Duane was an integral part of the Derek and the Dominos album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, which is beyond any doubt EC’s masterpiece. Since the shows were a tribute to Duane Allman, EC was a must-have for the tribute. On both nights the band would play classics from Eat a Peach, Brothers & Sisters, At Fillmore East, then they’d bring out EC to finish the show. They played several selections from the Layla album [Key to the Highway, Why Does Love Got To Be So Sad, Anyday, Little Wing, and Layla], plus selected ABB songs [Stormy Monday, Dreams, In Memory of Elizabeth Reed]. Layla was the encore for both nights. I’ve heard other shows over the years where Warren Haynes took the lead vocal for this song, but for this special occasion, EC did the deed – it is his song after all. Not only are these shows historic, but the musicianship is fantastic. It was every ABB junkie’s fantasy finally coming true. It’s not likely the Allman Brothers Band will ever record another studio album, so I have to be satisfied with these live releases.

Ricky Skaggs – Solo: Songs My Dad Loved
If ever there was truth in advertising in an album title, this is it. Ricky Skaggs has an outstanding bluegrass group called Kentucky Thunder, but on this CD, this is Ricky Skaggs the one-man band. Ricky sings all the songs, overdubbed all the harmonies himself, and played guitar, mandolin, banjo, bass and piano. Unlike his albums with Kentucky Thunder, some of which contain a warning that listening to them will cause speeding tickets, this one has a more relaxed pace. Containing many traditional bluegrass numbers, this is a logical follow-up of the concept he did with his previous album from 2008, Honoring the Fathers of Bluegrass: Tribute to 1946 & 1947. This is an excellent CD from an outstanding musician.

Levon Helm – Electric Dirt
Band singers Rick Danko and Richard Manuel are still dead, Garth Hudson is performing piano and vocal works with his wife as well as continuing as a much-in-demand session musician, and Robbie Robertson has confined himself to creating music for movies. That leaves Levon Helm, the lone American in The Band, to carry the torch for The Band. Electric Dirt, the follow-up to 2008’s Dirt Farmer, is full of blues-gospel shouters, soul-country laments, New Orleans jazz, and mountain-folk reveries. Not bad for a guy who almost lost his voice to throat cancer.

Bob Dylan – Together Through Life
This album originally started as one song. Director Oliver Dahan, the guy who made the movie La Vie en Rose about French singer Edith Piaf, approached Bob Dylan to contribute a song for his new movie My Own Love Song. Dylan gave him Life is Hard, but he soon found himself on a songwriting roll, and Together Through Life was born. Once again recorded with his road band, this album showcases not only a very tight band that can play honky-tonk roadhouse blues with a Tex-Mex flavor. The real fun is the lyrics – they’re Dylan at his caustic, sarcastic best and are [dare I say] fun. Included are tales of lustful desire [Jolene], henpecked husbands [My Wife’s Home Town – which, BTW, is Hell], repentant drunks [If You Ever Go To Houston] .. Then there is Dylan’s latest vision of the apocalypse, It’s All Good. The story starts off bad ("Big politician telling lies/Restaurant kitchen, all full of flies/Don't make a bit of difference"), and gets worse ("Brick by brick, they tear you down/A teacup of water is enough to drown"). In Dylan’s America, it’s survival of the fittest. When Dylan was much younger, he wanted to sound old. He’s there now, sounding grizzly, pissed off and lusty, all at once. Is this Dylan’s best since Blood on the Tracks? No [that honor goes to 2001’s “Love & Theft”], but this album is still worthy of more than just the occasional listen. Unless you’re my wife Carol, in which case “the less heard the better.” After all, Bob is an acquired taste.

Tom Waits – Glitter and Doom Live
What can be said about Tom Waits? On Wikipedia I read the following about his voice: it sounded "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car.” Good enough for me – I can’t think of anything better. Tom Waits’ voice is unique – it is his instrument. One cannot pigeonhole his music – he’s all over the stylistic map. He draws inspiration from folk, blues, country, jazz ballads, polkas, waltzes, cabaret, swing, popular ballads. In addition to the standard guitar/bass/drums/piano, he also uses such instruments and objects as such instruments and objects as the marimba; trombone; brake drum; banjo; bell plate; bullhorn; conga; accordion; mellotron; maracas; pump organ; basstarda; chamberlain; harmonium; viola; sticks; chairs and musical saw . His label’s website describes his live shows as “part distorted vaudeville, part big top, part piano bar and part stand-up, live shows are meticulously orchestrated to have all the grace and excitement of a derailing train.” That sums up what Glitter and Doom Live sounds like. It captures all those elements. It’s a two-disc set. The first disc is 17 songs recorded in various cities on his 2008 tour. That’s a shame because I got bored one day and counted the number of different songs he did on that tour – I think it was around 64, give or take a couple. But there is a podcast of the entire Atlanta show on NPR’s website. It’s a must-have for, well, ME! As far as the song selection goes, Tom Waits sticks to stuff released after 1990. The second disc is “Tom’s Tales.” These are lots of monlogues that he does in between songs that are all spliced together into one 36-minute recording. We get treated to such things as “Do you know how many omelets you can get out of an ostrich egg? Fourteen . . . that’s a lot of omelets. I’ve gotten along with most of the ostriches I’ve met.” "Shrimp -- they never give anything to charity. That always bothered me until someone told me, well, basically, they're shellfish." I learned the origin of the phrase of 'graveyard shift' and 'dead ringer'. I learned about Nazi alphabet soup. I wish I saw this tour. It sounds like it was a long, strange but very enjoyable trip.


Archive Releases

Neil Young – Archives Volume 1 [1963-72]
This sucker has been in the works for over 20 years, but it finally saw the light of day in three formats – Blu-Ray, DVD, and CD. If you want the Blu-Ray or DVD versions, take out a second mortgage. The eight-CD version is much more affordable. This volume of the archives covers NY’s beginnings in Canada, through his days with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby Stills Nash & Young, and his work under his own name with and without Crazy Horse. Basically, these are the songs that made Neil Young famous. There’s quite a bit of previously-unreleased material here, different versions and/or mixes, and rare tracks. The stuff that has been released before sounds infinitely better than the CDs on which these tunes were originally released. Also included are complete solo acoustic shows in Toronto in 1969 and 1971, and a 1970 show with Crazy Horse recorded at New York’s Fillmore East. Hardcore NY fans probably have most of this stuff, but with the remastered sound, this archive is worth every penny.

The entire Beatles catalog remastered
Ok, what is understood need not be discussed. The entire Beatles catalog was finally remastered and unleashed on the world on Sept 9th, 2009 [Number 9, Number 9, Number 9…]. They all sound great. Buy them!