Tom Waits' Frank Trilogy

You have to download the file, but it doesn't take any time at all. It's not a perfect thesis, but it's interesting enough for at least one read.

i like rain dogs most coz i heard it first.

My G-d, I also spent a whole miserable week (Spring fucking break, no less!) laid up in bed doing little besides playing the recently-released Frank's Wild Years and watching the ceiling spin! (Inner ear infection: Just awful, like being hungover for a week. Even tho after a few days I'd improved to the point where I could move around without threatening to puke, I still literally couldn't walk in a straight line, only in a semicircle. To successfully walk across the centre of a room, I'd have to consciously aim for the corner! Took a full two weeks to recover fully. End of digression.) "Frank" was the first one I heard, and I loved it for the weird arrangements & oddball percussions. I followed it with the other two, all of which appealed to the Beefheart fanatic in me. Lost interest shortly after Bone Machine but I still like the earlier ones a lot, except for the excessively horn-sodden Salvation Army dirges. I agree that Rain Dogs would benefit from removing 3-4 songs, but it's still my favourite of the three.

did we ever poll these? just these? i think i started out thinking it was Rain Dogs, then it was Swordfish and finally Wild Years, but really it's a tough one.

It is tough! Thank you for reminding me how much I love these. I would always go for Rain Dogs, but today I feel like saying Swordfish.

if i had to ruthlessly whittle the three down to one album, it would look like this:

Underground
Shore Leave
Johnsburg, Illinois
Town with No Cheer
In the Neighborhood
Just Another Sucker on the Vine
Soldier's Things
Singapore
Clap Hands
Cemetery Polka
Tango Till They're Sore
Time
Rain Dogs
Downtown Train
Blow Wind Blow
Temptation
I'll Be Gone
Please Wake Me Up
More Than Rain
Way Down in the Hole
Cold Cold Ground
Innocent When You Dream (78)

Interestingly, there's a p much even spread for each album. I couldn't bear to scrub any more out, so it would be a pretty long record. What's also interesting is the pattern I've found with these (and nearly all Waits albums come to think of it) is, they start really strong, a little dip somewhere towards the last third of the album and then pick up again right at the end.

I swear one day I'm going to find a crate and pitch up at Speaker's Corner to scream at passers-by about how the Big Time versions of these songs are all so much better.

i've gone off TW for long periods in the 90s and after but I still cherish the memory of seeing that tour (the one Big Time is taken from).

returned to this stuff recently after not caring for oh 2+ decades. something about his fanbase in this town that put me off tbh (nail in the coffin probably being a guy at a bar who was trying to tell me that the three greatest songwriters ever were Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, and Nick Cave). Still this was some very weird shit for 14yo me to hear - being unfamiliar with Howlin Wolf or Beefheart or his various antecedents, it was like I had no frame of reference for it. But the melodrama and the odd instrumentation and the fact that most of these songs are actually quite sturdily constructed on fairly standard chord changes and melodies really resonated with me. And then at the time he was intersecting with all these other cool, bubbly underground things - Down by Law, showing up on Letterman, included in Sonic Youth's "Teenage Riot" video, uh Ironweed...

yeah he was super woven in during the late 80s

part of my disaffection during the 90s and 00s was to do with the awfulness of the whole young man in an old man hat thing and the feeling that he largely spawned it... I had to get over that, it ain't his fault. The other thing, which still stands in re: his later albums, is my distaste for that froomy tchad blakey studio sound he took to (did those guys work on these records or does it just sound like it?).

the whole young man in an old man hat thing and the feeling that he largely spawned it... I had to get over that, it ain't his fault.

haha YES

^^^ Skot's turn of phrase btw, not mine

whole young man in an old man hat thing and the feeling that he largely spawned it
ahem
https://www.morrisonhotelgallery.com/images/medium/10243-BDY-12-final-150dpi.jpg

wrong hat

I know it's a Skot phrase/thread I just always think about that thread when Tom Waits comes up

totally!

fuck off pork pie hat

underrated Mingus b-side

‘All these bulletproof songs, one after another’: remembering Tom Waits’ extraordinary mid-career trilogy

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/aug/20/tom-waits-frank-trilogy-reissues-swordfishtrombones-rain-dogs-franks-wild-years

I remember when Swordfishtrombones came out. It was a revelation, and such a radical departure. I think Kathleen Brennan had as much or more to do with hrs transformation as anything else.

That one is still my favorite. Any album that can include “Frank’s Wild Years,” “Johnsburg, Illinois” and “Town Without Cheer” gets my vote.

*his

*”Town With No Cheer” lol

Shore leaves and Swordfishtrombone get my vote. Any Tom Waits song that has marimba in gets my vote (this is my actual opinion). It is also the reason Clap Hands is the best on Rain Dogs

The whole album is loaded. About the closest thing to filler is "Just Another Sucker on the Vine," but that clocks in at only 1:47.

Shore leaves and Swordfishtrombone get my vote. Any Tom Waits song that has marimba in gets my vote (this is my actual opinion). It is also the reason Clap Hands is the best on Rain Dogs

― hrep (H.P), Sunday, 20 August 2023 21:23 (twenty-three minutes ago)

clap hands rocks. i love how the solo doesn't sound like it's in the right key. in a good way

The whole album is loaded. About the closest thing to filler is "Just Another Sucker on the Vine," but that clocks in at only 1:47.

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Sunday, 20 August 2023 21:29 (seventeen minutes ago)

couldn't disagree more, the only thing wrong with this one is its length - it's over too quickly!

The guitar solos on rain dogs are all top stuff, Marc Ribot made that album what it is, Jockey Full of Bourbon the obvious other classic. That little dissonant lick in the middle of the Clap Hands solo is one of my favourite 2 seconds in all of Tom Wait’s music.

Prefer Bone Machine to all of these tbh

For real? Wow.

I'd rep for Alice and Mule Variations, but Bone Machine? That's a stretch.

The 80s trilogy is easily my favourite stuff, but Bone Machine is still one of his very best and follows hot on their heels.

Mule Variations never really clicked for me, save a few songs - too many overlong boom-clang bluesy-woozy workouts, not enough gothy schlock for me.

On the other hand Alice veers so far to the dark side I find it an uncomfortable listen - I do admire it a lot though, but I find its sister album Blood Money more appealing

I think Mule Variations has some of his best songwriting. "Chocolate Jesus," "Hold On," "Georgia Lee" and "Come On Up to the House" are among the best things he's ever written. And "What's He Building?" is at least as good as "Frank's Wild Years."

But I can never make my mind up about which I like of the eighties trilogy. They feel of a piece to me, like a triple album in a way, with few moments I don't like.

I'm generally more into gothic bierkeller Waits - the incarnation on The Black Rider - than down-home blues-traveller Waits. Everyone raves about Jockey Full Of Bourbon and 16 Shells From a Thirty Ought Six, but they're not what I like him for. So it's Clap Hands, Singapore, In The Neighbourhood, I'll Be Gone, Town With No Cheer for me.

That said, I've plenty of time for the raw, autumnal grimness of Real Gone - he nailed his aesthetic on that one.

It's like his wife said to him, "Hey Tom, did you ever listen to Captain Beefheart?"

For real? Wow.

Why? It's no stretch.

Maybe a little bit of a stretch, it's just not an album I normally think of as being on the same level as the trilogy. Tbf, I haven't given it a listen in quite a while. I played the hell out of it when it first came out.

Haha it's specifically songs like Hold On and Chocolate Jesus that leave me listless on MV. Maybe I should give.it another listen with fresh ears as it's been a while.

I seem to remember the opening four or five songs are all quite down-home and repetitious. What's He Building is fun, but it's The Ocean Doesn't Want Me Today pt.2.

On that album I'd keep Blackmarket Baby, Eyeball Kid and Come On Up To The House.

I'll give it another go soon though. My tastes and sensibilities might have changed since I first got into these songs.

My ranking, as of right now: Rain Dogs/Bone Machine (tie) > Franks Wild Years > Bad As Me > Swordfishtrombones > Blood Money > Alice > Mule Variations > Real Gone

I've never heard the Orphans set or The Black Rider.

"Goin' Out West" is a banger, for sure.

Yeah, Bone Machine is not a stretch. Definitely got some of his best songs. Earth Died Screaming, Such A Scream, A Little Rain, In The Colosseum, I Don't Wanna Grow Up, That Feel - all prime work I'd include on a "best of"

"That Feel" is one of the few Waits songs I can skip.

Mule Variations? More like Waits Variations. Too much of a manner.

The best of the '80s trilogy is still Rain Dogs for me, and while Bone Machine has too many hoarse quasi-Rod Stewart ballads, the arrangements consistently surprise me.

xp she was always destined for that

Sorry for the misgendering ❤️

i wouldnt say i prefer it over the studio albums but i def feel like its underrated & belongs in consideration with the classic 80s trilogy. its his Stop Making Sense, the live set that underlines the greatness of a career-defining run of albums.

OTM. For me each of the three albums feel like they're triangulating in on something with Big Time as the full distillation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwRkBTG17vk

Probably a weird opinion but I’d rate this trilogy as:

Swordfishtrombones > FWY > Rain Dogs

The highs on Rain Dogs are probably the highest but it’s the least concise album of the three imho. Songs like “Blind Love", "Hang Down Your Head", "Time", and “Downtown Train" are good but ruin the seedy bar/junkyard jazz of the rest of the album.

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Monday, August 21, 2023 2:56 AM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Agree with this. Rain Dogs has the best songs but also dips a little in places.

Some of the versions on Big Time (the record) are absolutely scorching, Big Black Mariah, 16 Shells.. has an incredible hair-raising chicken squawk solo from Ribot.

Big Time is very good, and I especially like the version of Cold Cold Ground on there. It could really use a remaster though

It just struck me that people like Waits, Lynch, Jarmusch etc represent a form of proto-hauntology.

But as opposed to 60s-80s pop-psychedelic ephemera, they're excavating a prior era: 1920s-1950s blues, jazz poetry, German expressionist cinema, Disney films, vaudeville and cabaret etc; and working out why these things could feel grotesque and creepy when viewed through the lense of a boomer who might have been exposed to these things at a far younger age than intended - the culture of their parents or grandparents spectrally fading away.

I know this isn't an original thought, but I'm fascinated about how every generation has its equivalent of this "creepifying" of their childhood and the culture of their parents' generation

Ribot's playing on this stuff is so great. It's like he's hitting all the wrong notes but just the right way and in all the right places, it keeps everything so off kilter and strange.

Yeah I think playing atonally like that is a skill in itself - you just have to not play the right notes

Oh yeah Marc Ribot definitely sends this album to higher places. Without his angular, dissonant guitar and sort of tex mex/rockabilly timbre, several cuts wouldn’t be as remarkable. Like imagine Singapore without the guitars running amok and giving it that sort of drunk carnival band attempting to play polka or Clap Hands without that solo or the entirety of Jockey Full of Bourbon.

What was the famous Waits instruction, "play it like you're at a midget's bar mitzvah?"

I think the "Clap Hands" solo is one of the ones that made me recognize his mastery, because yeah, in order to play all the wrong notes, you have to know how to play all the right notes.

I interviewed Ribot about a bunch of his sideman work about 10 years ago. He's got stories.

i havent gotten around to it yet but Ribot's recent memoir sounds fun

its been years but i remember the 33 1/3 about Swordfishtrombones being pretty good, lots of info i hadnt seen before. iirc there were some delicate allusions to trouble with hard drugs being among the reasons prompting his lifestyle change, decision to leave LA after Swordfish, etc.

Rain Dogs is still an all-timer for me, whenever I hear anything from it I have that same feeling as hearing it for the very first time, if you played "Clap Hands" or "Jockey Full of Bourbon" at my funeral I would not be mad, I dig the other Frank records too (I just spun them all the other day) but Rain Dogs followed closely by Bone Machine are def my faves

Robot is killer on Real Gone too. Didn't know about the memoir!

yeah his solo on "Hoist That Rag" is probably my favorite work by him on a Waits album

I've wasted time trying to figure out what that glorious chord Ribot plays throughout the Big Time version of Big Black Mariah, dissonant notes, maybe palm muting and harmonics, or some chance situation with his amp settings, it sounds simple, but it still confounds me.

Oh I did know about that memoir/collection from a few years ago, still haven't read it though.

Real Gone esp the original mix is great

Yeah I think playing atonally like that is a skill in itself - you just have to not play the right notes

There's like a level of tension, "how tense should this next note be over the chord in which it does not belong?" Ribot marries atonal note choice with a tendency toward martial rhythmic choice, it makes it feel very deliberate and brutalist. The "Clap Hands" solo is such a head-expander!

Rain Dogs and Bone Machine are the only of Waits's albums that I listen to repeatedly, although I enjoy all his records, those two are perfect start-to-finish

Rain Dogs is funny to me bc I first got it in the mid 90s, the era of expanding runtimes and 23-track albums filled with one-off genre experiments, and Rain Dogs seemed very much of a piece with that vibe, although its obviously from 10 years earlier. In my head I totally associate it with that overstuffed kitchen-sink feeling of many 90s albums. When I found it on vinyl later I was shocked to see it was a single LP, in my head I'd been assuming I assumed it was like 80 minutes long.

I guess I'll be the contrarian and say that the version of "Red Shoes" on Big Time pales in comparison to the original.

I feel lucky to have seen him live once; like Leonard Cohen, he was a bucket list performer. Very good live, his little anecdotes between songs are the highlight, particularly the one about the dog chew.

I feel like ive never liked tom waits more than when I was 18 and its kind of been a cool smooth coast downward since -- likewise the first song i heard that made me realize I liked him as a teenager was 'shore leave' and everything is like, a slight step down from that to me (the other tracks on SFT > the other albums released around SFT > the other albums from the 70s > the 90s-00s efforts at recapturing etc)

it still has little ups & downs for me, like a roller coaster, but I think what was initially exciting was that it sounded like freedom to really go left, treating music in an almost theatrical way which is cool to me

nonetheless I think a certain amt of enthusiasm I have now is more like, empathy for the version of me that was really excited about it

idk , hes not bad

*downward slope

i don't think i've listened to him since i heard tom scharpling's great "fake hobo" take on him, but i'll definitely be getting this. our first kid's music on the way back home from the hospital was Rain Dogs because that was the only CD in the car. Which, in retrospect, has me believing i was driving my wife to the hospital while she was in labor listening to that as well. and it was her car!

― Western® with Bacon Flavor

controp: fake hoboes > real hoboes

Listening to Bone Machine again as a result of this thread. It's got its high points: "Such a Scream," "A Little Rain," "Goin' Out West." It's also got some Waits by the numbers. What really strikes me is that I find him least appealing when he's in carnival barker mode, e.g., "In the Colosseum."

Oh, and "Black Wings" is magnificent.

Real Gone esp the original mix is great

― chr1sb3singer, Monday, 21 August 2023 15:11 (yesterday) link

is there a big difference between the two? i have the original vinyl pressing but was unaware there was a remixed version.

Love "In The Colloseum", personally. Gimme creepy carnival barking Nightmare Before Christmas Waits any day of the week

There are some quite marked differences between the original and the remaster if Real Gone. From what I recall, they took out some of the record scratching on one track and added the odd instrument here and there. Strange choices, but not unwelcome really

The remastered version Real Gone ruins "Hoist That Rag" by plopping a horn section over Marc Ribot's incredible solo. Weird decision!

I can't really pick a favourite record out of the run between from Swordfishtrombones and Black Rider (including Big Time), IMO they're all clasics with different moods and barely any skippable moments. From "Mule Variations" on, everything starts to feel a little flat for me, and the melodies start to blur with each other in my mind.

I do love the demo of Alice, much better than the recorded version, and the punchline is funnier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utmPWwatZ6M

I love his song for Solomon Burke, Diamond in Your Mind, which is basically an alternate version of "Come on up to the House": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLp7kH4jxRA

The fact that Songs For Drella and Stop Making Sense have both had the remastering treatment has me hopeful that there'll be a cleaned up Blu Ray of Big Time some time. Although i suppose it would've happened along with these new remasters if it was ever going to. Even the VHS goes for a small fortune on Ebay.

What they did to "Hoist That Rag" on the remaster is a truly insane & baffling choice

Isn't Big Time caught up in some weird complicated rights issue? I feel like I've heard that in the past as a reason why it hasn't been better-treated in Waits' catalog

FWIW, Big Time is streaming on Prime and some other subscription services (MGM+, Fubo TV etc.).

I quite like the horns on Hoist That Rag

The remix feels like a total top down pass on the record that mostly ends up in the same places but the record is so dense and in certain spots there are changes from the original mix that aren't I don't think "better" or "worse" but change the essential aspect of certain songs that whenever I hear it I'm always like "oh I miss that little sound" or I like hearing that part louder or whatever

I would actually have welcomed Real Gone conceived as a more horn-driven record. I swear there was a deep tuba note that would occasionally reveal itself in "How's It Going To End" but it's a buzz from the upright bass.

Don't actually mind the trumpet on Hoist That Rag. Reveals the Latin influence

That said, it's an incredibly front-loaded album that just kind of fizzles into unmemorable, often self-parodic songs by the end. Not even that keen on the widely proclaimed anti war song

It has 'Green Grass', which is one of my very favorite Waits ballads (with that Ribot accompaniment!).

Checking out Big Time on Prime...looks like a VHS master or something. Definitely could do with a restoration.

I kind of wish it just stuck to the performance and didn't throw in all the other stuff

Xpost: yes! green grass is beautiful

Today's grey skies
Tomorrow is tears
You'll have to wait til yesterday's here

I saw Waits back in '06 right as I graduated from high school and it seemed like he basically disappeared from the public eye soon after that, at least musically -- there may have been one other brief tour afterwards and looks like an album from '11, but I can't remember hearing about anything else. No one says you have to be a total lifer of course, but it seemed up until that point that he was (although after Franks Wild Years his output was sparser than I remember it being, I guess) -- guess maybe he just got tired of it all.

That was a good tour.

As mentioned, you’ll have to wait til yesterday’s here

If you want to go where the rainbows end
You will have to say goodbye
All our dreams come true, baby, up ahead
And it's out where your memories lie

I saw him when he toured "Mule Variations," then I saw him again in 2006, touring ... "Orphans"? I think the only other US tour he's done since then was this weird random jaunt through the south.

Man, I wish I remembered more about the shows I saw. I remember his down-the-aisle entrance in 1999 but not the show, tbh, and I while I recall the second show a little I don't remember anything specific about it. I think his son was playing drums? Super weird, I usually have a great memory for these things.

Had to wait until 2008 to see him in the UK. I'd have loved to have seen him in 85-87, and although Big Time is an excellent document, I wish there was a pristine recording of a whole show from that era, never yet found a bootleg that was good enough quality.

i missed his Mule Variations show in the bay area and since he lives here you'd think he would have played here again since, but I think there was one (small, super sold out) performance at a theater in Sf and that's been it. I've given up hope.