Best Tom Waits Album

i have a mushy ol' soft spot for nighthawks, and i'd like to see it get at least one vote.

No way is Bad as Me as vital as the mid eighties records or even Bone Machine.

itt i express my sadness that the tropicana motel is now a pastel-colored ramada that looks like some john jerde san diego yuppie bullshit.

i've got plenty of love for a lot of these, but small change, rain dogs and bone machine are the holy trio for me. what a body of work.

cough: Which is the best (or, which is your favorite) Tom Waits album?

I made it through about 3/4 of The Black Rider and then it all became just too Waitsian.

made it that far through his ouevre i mean

real gone is chopped liver

my top 3, about equally, are rain dogs/closing time/blue valentine; i'm minded to vote for closing time just for "martha" alone

Nighthawks or Frank's for me. I think today I'll go Nighthawks just to fulfill the request upthread.

If the Alice Demos were officially released it would be a pretty equal triumvirate at the top.

is the Big Time film any good? keep meaning to get that.

Big Time played at a local arthouse theater when I was in college and I missed it. Since then I've been unable to track down the DVD. I'm sure it's ripped and floating out there in torrentland though.

xp Are the Alice demos supposed to be better than the album? What's the story?

the quieter tracks on real gone are nice. lots of great marc ribot action.

i love how no matter who his sidemen are, including the rhythm section of primus, it always comes out sounding like tom waits.

lex likes Tom Waits

huh

big time the movie is on netflix streaming if you do that.
it is great, though a bit dated i guess. kind of fits in with other 80s performance films -- stop making sense, etc.

I'm also bummed I missed every single production of The Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets since 1990. I did, however, get to see the production of Woyzeck in 2002 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, which used the music from Blood Money. It was really great.

7 years of people being surprised on ilx that i like tom waits

The Alice demos are the guide tracks he recorded for the musical back in the early 90s. any of the recordings are pretty spare and creepy, and Waits voice in 92 was better than a decade later. The instrumental interludes are great too.

Any = Many. Fight fingers on the phone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr7J2GS3ar4

i remember hearing the demos back in the day and they're nice, but i do love the quiet, breathy woodwind arrangements on the studio version of alice.

That's the one track I think might be better. "Table Top Joe," however, is a travesty.

Saw the tour Big Time was taken from. Still in my top 5 shows, even though I've sort of gone off TW.

i really love tabletop joe!

I'm voting 'Bone Machine'. I stood by 'Rain Dogs' as the definitive Waits LP for years but as time has passed my love for ragged disjointed masterpiece that is 'Bone Machine' has grown and grown. It might not be his most coherent album but it's got some of his most brilliant, and often overlooked, songs on it.

I'll go for Blue Valentine even if it's a lie. It never gets enough love in these polls and in a Waits POX I'm sure at least 3 songs off blue valentines would end up there in my top 10 (red shoes, xmas card and title song).

The problem with Bone Machine is that when I only owned like 10 CDs it was one of them. So I overplayed it to shit.

Voted Rain Dogs, but Franks Wild Years and Bone Machine are tied for a close second. Haven't listened to the new one all the way through yet, but what I've heard is about as good as Mule Variations, but with more punchy horns and no songs as awesome/crushing as "Cold Water."

I like em all. Rain Dogs was my favourite for a long time, but like many I think I've overplayed it. Really, I'm looking at this list and they're all about equally my favourites for different reasons.

had to go with Rain Dogs, but on a given day I could have gone for either the apparently maligned Closing Time or the recent Orphans.

7 years of people being surprised on ilx that i like tom waits

― lex pretend, Monday, October 24, 2011 5:49 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

7 years of self-caricature makes people tend to caricature you fyi

Swordfishtrombones

*burps*

i've only heard, like, 4 of these albums, and i like them all but am not really convinced my life would be very enriched by hearing the other 20. maybe a few. voting for Blue Valentine because i thought i voted for it last time we did this thread but somehow it ended up w/ 0 votes.

Frank's Wild Years is my favourite but Bone Machine runs it a close second.

Swordfishtrombones is the one I love most straight through. Also the one that first clicked for me as far as his 80s stuff.

nighthawks 4eva

I was in a bar once and somebody put "Martha" on the jukebox so I quickly ordered a whiskey and I'm pretty sure I haven't had any dreams or life goals since then.

Yeah, the new one is good but no way is it as good as the earlier classics. I suspect it'll be a grower but if it grows that much, I'll be shocked.

Voting Bone Machine here - I know that Rain Dogs is supposed to be the one to beat, but it never clicked for me the way some of the others have - I'd even say on some days that Frank's Wild Years is a really close second. But Bone Machine seems to me the perfection of crazed-yet-sentimental loner thing he was working on through the Island years, with the perfect combo of maelstrom, maudlin, menace and melody. Since that point there have been truly great moments but it's all seems like variations and slight refinements.

Franks just barely over Nighthawks.

bone or frank's or swordfish

or rain dogs

you know, i don't even really love this guy, but he had a hell of a strong run there

Bone Machine. Heresy maybe, but Rain Dogs is just a few songs too long.

I'm also bummed I missed every single production of The Black Rider

Black Rider may be the best piece of theater I've ever seen. I am Robert Wilson's bitch.

After hearing Closing Time, I kept wanting every record of his to capture that same sound and mood. He never quite did it again and kept drifting into that insular Tom Waits world that I still don't understand. Closing Time is perfect though.

x2

Captured very well in the (bootleg?) Dime Store Novels, Volume 1: Live from Ebbets Field, October 8th, 1974

"Come on along with the Black Rider
We'll have a gay old time
Lay down in the web of the black spider
I'll drink your blood like wine

So come on in
It ain't no sin
Take off your skin
And dance around your bones...

...I'll have the veal
A lovely meal
That's how I feel
May I use your skull for a bowl

Come on along with the Black Rider
We'll have a gay old time"

I sometimes wonder how many Waits fans haven't heard The Black Rider. I encourage all to check it out. Perfect autumnal music.

Black Rider, the song, was what I think sold me on Waits. I like him when he goes all Nightmare Before Christmas.

Closing Time I find a bit MOR. It's pretty enough, but maybe a bit, I dunno "obvious" isn't the right word? It's just not strange enough - it could be by Joe Cocker or some other crooner. He hit his stride on the next one, Heart Of Saturday night, which has this total sense of romance and longing, rather than regret which is the atmosphere that permeates through Closing Time.

Plus if you get to hear the orchestra version of HOSN, the song, please do. It's one of my favourite Waits moments and it's criminal it never got released.

nothin wrong with MOR, closing time is beautiful and has some of his most emotionally resonant, intimate songwriting

and obviously i don't have any issue with his character-driven songwriting but i also know it's a shtick, and it's really nice to listen to waits completely shorn of that

blood money best, then bone machine, then frank's wild years, then rain dogs.

yeah - i don't think it's a bad album, and yeah some of the songs are pleasant, if not beautiful but it's the one i'm drawn to the least often. even the best songs on there a superficially pretty but sound a bit grating and corny after a while. Weirdly, I have the same problem with much of Blue Valentine - something a little bit classicist about these records whereas the others feel more uniquely Waitsian.

But yeah, there I like elements of all the TW albums, and each one has a slightly different vibe/character to it. 'Closing Time' sounds like a barroom entertainer who doesn't realise everyone's gone home for the night.
Heart of Saturday Night is like his walk home, in love with the lights and sounds around him, even as he trudges and spins and falls into gutters.
Then Nighthawks At The Diner provides light-relief, a kind of "morning after" dalliance with comedy before the much darker material of Small Change (his strongest '70s-era album imo).
Foreign Affairs is a bit hotchpotch, but not without its moments. It mixes camp duets with more brooding, experimental material (Potter's Field is the first sign of Waits' move towards the Swordfish-era material).
Never got along with Blue Valentine, maybe because I'd heard a lot of these songs already done by Screamin Jay Hawkins, but there's a kind of actorly way Waits delivers his songs here (not least because of the hammy "Somewhere" intro). I get the impression I'd rather see that album performed on stage than on record.
Heartattack And Vine isn't too hot either. Kind of goes into Blues Brothers territory. It feels more like a collection of good songs and a number of sketches and fillers with no thread running through them. It's good he took a break before changing direction in the '80s I reckon.

xpost

1974 The Heart Of Saturday Night
1975 Nighthawks At The Diner
1976 Small Change
1977 Foreign Affairs
1987 Franks Wild Years

could vote for any of these

LOVE bette midler on i never talk to strangers

Wonder what Billy Joel thought when he heard Closing Time the first time in the mid-70s.

Billy Joel! That's it - that's my problem with Closing Time and Blue Valentine - they remind me of Billy Joel.

Listened to the new one front to back this morning. There are individual songs that don't work - I don't like the title track much, "Satisfied" sounds like a rewrite of "Big Black Mariah" from Rain Dogs, "Last Leaf" is basically a reworking of "That Feel" from Bone Machine, and there's another song I can't think of right now that pretty much could have come straight off Franks Wild Years - but when you listen to it all the way through as a 45-minute journey, it really pulls together. Great pacing, a lot of variety without making that into a thing, and except for "Last Leaf," where Keith Richards gets a guest vocal, the players don't draw attention to themselves - they're all part of the Tom Waits Band. I can see myself listening to this one a lot more than, say, Mule Variations. The only thing keeping me from buying a physical copy is it's not the kind of record I can see myself putting on the living room stereo and sitting down to listen to. It's more of a headphones-walking-around album, to me.

I probably would have gotten a physical copy either way, but seeing the deluxe version in the book form was added incentive...and the extra three tracks are just icing on the cake, then.

the extra tracks are boring and they just extend the album further than it needs to go. i didn't know it came with a book because I got sent it electronically for review.

For anyone who needs to fill in gaps.

I listened to Closing Time again and I still can't get into it. I've done this on average of once a year for over 20 years, so perhaps it's time to give up. I'll take Small Change or even Foreign Affairs and Blue Valentine over that.

While reading Wild Years: The Music and Myth of Tom Waits, I got to the parts where he appears on various TV shows. I watched the footage from the Mike Douglas show, Fernwood and an Australian talk show, and after seeing them, it's not surprising to realize he's still only in his 20s. He's acting like such a pretentious poser! Lolling his head around, hunching over, chain smoking, you just wanna smack him alongside the head. No wonder he sounds mildly embarrassed by that era. His wit was already pretty sharp, but I think the old bum, former beatnik schtick became much more refined, believable and endearing as he got older.

http://youtu.be/QAAzhm1YBBY

http://youtu.be/R_0E7x3Nqys

went Rain Dogs

wnkiw young tom waits

He's acting like such a pretentious poser!

Martin Mull: "Take a load off your act!"

Captain Beefheart called him "Tom Wait-a-minute-that's-me!"

scrolling quickly, i thought this thread was called "Best Tom Waits Hat" and i was like "damn that's gonna be a tough one."

i voted Heart of Saturday Night... though Raindogs and Blue Valentine are equally deserving. I love that piano melancholy of the early years. Drunk on the Moon probably my favourite Waits song, it's like a Gershwin or Cole Porter tune. Franks Wild Years has that tragic drunk-thinks-he's-Sinatra singing in the gutter stuff. I can't understand the love for Bone Machine, lots of clanking and screaming, never really grabbed me, except for Black Wings.

this is either rain dogs or frank's wild years for me, the first two I ever owned; I think the first one I ever heard was Heartattack and Vine, my uncle had it as a kid and it used to scare me.

I like the Black Rider....I saw it in SF a few years ago though and the stage production was kind of...eh...let's say this didn't meet expectations for me but it was kind of cool. I'd like to see Alice at some point if they ever do it.

Had a tough time with this one. Got it down to Swordfishtrombones, Rain Dogs, Franks Wild Years, and Bone Machine. Tried to fight it but eventually went with the obvious choice, Rain Dogs, primarily for the incredible opening five-song run and the title track.

I agree with Lump that Rain Dogs (which I probably voted for in the previous poll) is maybe 3-5 songs too long. Swordfishtrombones it is.

I had to go with Franks, because I can't listen to just one song off of it without going on to listen to the whole album. It's truly impossible for me.

That link to the demo version of Alice made me reexamine that album, though, and I have to say it's really beautiful. I'd love to see it on stage.

just listened to Cold Cold Ground for the first time as a result of this
POLL: Best Track on Tom Waits' "Frank's Wild Years"

Tuuune!

swordfishtrombone

Cold Cold Ground is amazing. The version on Big Time especially so!

Watching those early Tom Waits chatshow videos is like discovering your parents having sex.

See, this is why if anything Bad As Me is the most palatable Tom Waits album, because for once there's very little veneer. It just sounds like an ageing guy kicking back with his pals and having fun for the most part. The belfry-dwelling creature from Swordfish-through-Black Rider is perhaps my favourite of his personae, but that Circus track off Real Gone was completely out of place and unnecessary, and I don't lament the dearth of 'Bastard' tracks on this new one.

Once again I surface to rep for the Big Time soundtrack, it might appear to be pretty disposable but it honestly is worthy of your attention, it has the most storming versions of Big Black Mariah, 16 Shells and Telephone Call From Istanbul. The songs aren't the same versions as the film, which are badly mixed and a bit lame by comparison. Marc Ribot is totally on fire with his chicken squak wrong-note soloing and there is a studio version of the song Falling Down which is very beautiful.

Falling Down is great. Strange Weather too.

I Still need to see Big Time. I wish someone would release a decent Tom Waits DVD - maybe not just a live performance, but a compilation of interviews, music vids, docs etc.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

ooh i'm on pins and needles! will the results be slightly different from the 2008 poll or exactly the same!?

They'll be different, won't they? Now everyone's decided Rain Dogs is played-out. Night On The Moon FTW!

voted swordfish. there are probably three or four other ones i could've voted for.
as far as the early stuff, i reach for the spare "Early Recordings" more than anything else. or bootlegs. dude has never not been amazing live.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

lol

well ILM died screamin'.

Impressive how many got at least one vote

If he had done this himself on One from the Hearts, it could've been a contender.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHKTE-OzMQ4

er, Heart

Bone Machine in 2nd place, lol.

A friend said on fb, "i have to go with bone machine if just for the first time i heard it. i was in the uptown ragstock in minneapolis and it came on the stereo and i thought 'what the hell, are the speakers blown?' then i realized it was just tom waits. also, a lot of it was recorded with abandoned tools found in a tool shed."

While it can be argued that albums like Small Change, Blue Valentine, Franks Wild Years, Alice, Blood Money have better songs overall, I agree that BM's impact was intense at the time. I think it's aged well, although personally I listen to Black Rider much more.

For a lot of Waits fans BM was their first.

I think it was my first proper non-comp one, yeah. It's kind of the quintessential TW album as it links his second and third phases.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM-GxqmYNlA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zqclc3dY09Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FHHPXxuUAw