There was a tie between Alice Cooper and Tom Waits for most albums reviewed at six. The tie is now broken.
Disc 193 is...Foreign Affairs
Artist: Tom Waits
Year of Release: 1977
What’s Up With The Cover?: A continental looking Tom Waits poses in sultry fashion with a woman I can only assume is foreign - you can tell by the passport. As covers go, this is a cool one. If I could improve upon it, I might've gone for a slightly less 'monster mash' font for the album title, but this is a minor quibble.
How I Came To Know It: Just Sheila and I drilling through the Tom Waits collection. I think this one came to us a little bit later - maybe the last five or six years.
How It Stacks Up: We have eighteen Tom Waits albums. This one is not one of my favourites - I'd say it is in the bottom four, so somewhere between 15 and 18.
Rating: 3 stars.
This album, like the previously reviewed "Blue Valentine" is near the end of Waits' bluesy early period and actually comes out right before that album (which I reviewed back at Disc 98).
Musically, I found this album fairly boring. It is mostly simple blues tracks played on piano, with a bit of jazz thrown in. I think the music was ill-suited to a car ride, and so suffered on this listen, with each song blending into the next in a fairly unnoticeable way. In fact, I had to actively remind myself to keep coming back to it and pay attention. It was almost like Waits wants us to hear it as though it was playing on some old stereo in another room.
This is too bad, because the lyrics are strong, and the stories Waits tells are worth hearing. As ever he is the master of bawdy street talk, and loveable characters that paint their own personalities while talking about something else.
Consider these first eight lines of "Jack & Neal":
"Jack was sittin poker faced with bullets backed with bitches
Neal hunched at the wheel puttin everyone in stitches
Braggin bout this nurse he screwed while drivin through Nebraska
And when she came she honked the horn and Neal just barely missed a
Truck and then he asked her if she'd like to come to Californy
See a red head in a uniform will always get you horny
With her hairnet and those white shoes and a name tag and a hat
She drove like Andy Granatelli and knew how to fix a flat."
That is some good stuff, and the other songs are just as entertaining.
An interesting aside, Bette Midler guest stars on a duet called "I Never Talk To Strangers" and does her best Billie Holiday impression - or at least that's how I heard it. The song itself is just a little too forties radio for my tastes, but I'm sure that is part of what Tom Waits wants it to sound like.
I don't have much more to say about this album. It refuses to command your attention, but rewards you when you give it. I probably enjoyed this record for two stars worth, but when you take the time it is easily three or four.
Best tracks: Muriel, Jack & Neal, Burma Shave, Foreign Affair.
Disc 193 is...Foreign Affairs
Artist: Tom WaitsYear of Release: 1977
What’s Up With The Cover?: A continental looking Tom Waits poses in sultry fashion with a woman I can only assume is foreign - you can tell by the passport. As covers go, this is a cool one. If I could improve upon it, I might've gone for a slightly less 'monster mash' font for the album title, but this is a minor quibble.
How I Came To Know It: Just Sheila and I drilling through the Tom Waits collection. I think this one came to us a little bit later - maybe the last five or six years.
How It Stacks Up: We have eighteen Tom Waits albums. This one is not one of my favourites - I'd say it is in the bottom four, so somewhere between 15 and 18.
Rating: 3 stars.
This album, like the previously reviewed "Blue Valentine" is near the end of Waits' bluesy early period and actually comes out right before that album (which I reviewed back at Disc 98).
Musically, I found this album fairly boring. It is mostly simple blues tracks played on piano, with a bit of jazz thrown in. I think the music was ill-suited to a car ride, and so suffered on this listen, with each song blending into the next in a fairly unnoticeable way. In fact, I had to actively remind myself to keep coming back to it and pay attention. It was almost like Waits wants us to hear it as though it was playing on some old stereo in another room.
This is too bad, because the lyrics are strong, and the stories Waits tells are worth hearing. As ever he is the master of bawdy street talk, and loveable characters that paint their own personalities while talking about something else.
Consider these first eight lines of "Jack & Neal":
"Jack was sittin poker faced with bullets backed with bitches
Neal hunched at the wheel puttin everyone in stitches
Braggin bout this nurse he screwed while drivin through Nebraska
And when she came she honked the horn and Neal just barely missed a
Truck and then he asked her if she'd like to come to Californy
See a red head in a uniform will always get you horny
With her hairnet and those white shoes and a name tag and a hat
She drove like Andy Granatelli and knew how to fix a flat."
That is some good stuff, and the other songs are just as entertaining.
An interesting aside, Bette Midler guest stars on a duet called "I Never Talk To Strangers" and does her best Billie Holiday impression - or at least that's how I heard it. The song itself is just a little too forties radio for my tastes, but I'm sure that is part of what Tom Waits wants it to sound like.
I don't have much more to say about this album. It refuses to command your attention, but rewards you when you give it. I probably enjoyed this record for two stars worth, but when you take the time it is easily three or four.
Best tracks: Muriel, Jack & Neal, Burma Shave, Foreign Affair.
1 comment:
I really don't know this album very well - I'll upload those songs onto my Zen once you put them on the computer.
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