Discographies: Tom Waits Small Change

It turns out that while I had never heard Small Change all the way through, I had actually heard most of these songs before, which is interesting because in many ways, this is probably the Waits sound that people think of first. It's the deep raspy voice with the boozy delivery and jazzy rhythms. The progression continues from each of the previous albums, building and building, towards what, I'm not entirely sure. Though I know his more recent work, I'm not sure how it connects to his earlier stuff yet. I can only assume the gradual progression will make sense.

While many of the songs on Small Change drip with blues and sadness they are tempered by humor almost every time, either within the song itself or because the next song knocks you out of any impending depression. It all feels like a hazy, drunken stumble of a night through back alleys and pawn shops to burlesque joints and big crowded bars. So while the album kicks off with the sad, drunken ballad Tom Traubert's Blues which is probably one of his most well known songs, but it then kicks right up into what is probably my favorite Waits song, Step Right Up.



There's a tune called Salt Peanuts that has been credited to Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Count Basie, but the legend is that it's based on the rhythm and cadence of peanut vendors calling out "Salt Peanuts" on the street to attract customers. Related in origin as well as content is the Cuban El Manisero (The Peanut Vendor), written by  Moises Simons. Here, Waits takes on the music of  street vendors in a whole different way, mixing it with advertising, shady salesmanship and con men trying to get you to buy "it" because "it" is all you need. "It" will solve every ailment and heartache you ever had or will have. My favorite line "It finds you a job. . . It IS a job!" It's whatever you need it to be and this song pretty much convinces me to buy it with it's groove. Besides, it's only a dollar. Only a dollar.

Another standout track (fuck it, they're all stand out tracks on this album, really) is The Piano Has Been Drinking, which is just a brilliant marriage of form and content. The off key bits and rambling, drunken puns, putdowns and provocations paint a clear picture of a guy that has done some serious damage to his liver on this night and might end up in a fight, on his way to demand faster service, had it not been for the piano in the corner of the crowded bar that distracted him. He sat down and started tinkering with tipsy fingers, slightly off, but more or less, and eventually hit on a melody that started to get everyone's attention. Now he's just riffing and the crowd is actually loving it. Hell, even the staff he pokes at for bad service is amused.



And then we get an Invitation to the Blues, from the dame behind the counter at the local drugstore in a noir-ish, bluesy piece about your friendly neighborhood femme fatale. She won't poison you or shoot you, maybe, but she will break your heart. But you'll still accept the invitation.



Like I said, they're all standout tracks on this album. Overall, I think this is where there's no longer any denying that Waits is among the greatest song writers, performers and story tellers ever. I'm not really sure how much more I'll have to say about the next album, but then I have a feeling his style will begin to evolve. These albums have been very traditional, but they have a sense of experimentation sort of bubbling way underneath, probably due to his being heavily influenced by the beat poets. So here's a little clip I found to close out this album, but really, you should be listening to these albums yourself.

Discographies: Tom Waits Nighthawks at the Diner

Nighthawks at the Diner is one of two Tom Waits albums I had heard all the way through before starting this project. I'd heard it not too long ago and was completely blown away by it. Hearing again in the context of the two albums before it, what I find interesting is that while it makes perfect sense it is also quite surprising. Closing Time had a melancholy feel throughout and Saturday Night had a restless longing, but Nighthawks brings, above all, a sense of fun and humor to the mix. The album was recorded live in studio, with an audience, but it is all new material, so I didn't break my rules.

The material here is an expansion of the jazz heard in The Heart of Saturday Night, particularly Diamonds on My Windshield. Every song has a spoken intro that is often hard to separate from the song itself as it all plays like improvised jazz poetry, making the album seamless and best experienced as a whole. The stories are often "personal" and come with jokes, often resulting in a raspy chuckle from Waits himself. Overall the album makes me smile all the way through, which is a very unique experience for me to have with music.

We're Nighthawks, too! 

There's just something about diners that I love. It's the food, it's the simplicity, the general atmosphere, the history, the people. All of it. There's nothing like ending up at a diner in the wee hours of the night before heading home (which at 41, with kids, if you even find the time and energy to go out at all, means about 9 or 10pm). Jazz club conceit aside, this is what the album is about, really. Waits is often called a poet and it's clear from this album why that is. The pictures he paints don't feel like paintings, though. More like photographs. This is observational poetry from an eye (and ear) that misses nothing. As far as I'm concerned the diner in Eggs and Sausage is real and Waits sat in it writing down what he saw and heard over endless cups of coffee and maybe pie. The poetry of small, mundane moments, of orders taken and small talk and menus. The unintentional human contact when handing back a menu or taking a plate from a waitress. The sound of silverware, punctuating the unintelligible late night mumble of a crowd lost in their own conversations about life, what to order, what the future may hold, the movie they saw, how great this pie is, why it's time to break up, why it's time have kids, why it's time for more coffee. I want to go to this diner.



This album, perhaps because it's recorded live, also features a much raspier Tom Waits. Closer to the Tom Waits voice of today, thought not quite as much. Hearing the first two albums, it was remarkable how much softer his voice was. I expect it only gets raspier as we go along and at a certain point, he may lose the ability to go to the softer voice, based on the interview clips I've seen where he can't quite seem to smoke enough. After hearing this album, I searched the Youtubes for live footage of its recording and didn't find anything, but we do have something pretty close in this episode of PBS Soundstage from 1975 that features songs from Nighthawks as well as Saturday Night. Grab a cup of coffee or something harder, and enjoy.

Discographies: Tom Waits The Heart of Saturday Night

I have to say that after the intimacy of Closing Time, Tom Waits' second album, The Heart of Saturday Night, took me a bit to get into. Right off, it felt more produced and bigger, not that it doesn't have intimate moments, but still. And while the first album felt like the end of a night, this feels like the middle of it. The middle of a bustling, hustling, neon, cigarette smoke and rain filled night in lounges, motels, pool halls, strip joints, all night laundry mats, truck stops, taxi cab depots, docks and ports. The stories here reminded me of when I used to work nights and was headed to work on a Saturday night, just as everyone else was getting ready to party. This is back door jazz, muffled in the distance while you take a cigarette break by the service entrance.

If Closing Time was nostalgic, this is more present and searching. Watching. Observing. But always yearning. There's a lot of talk of traveling here, or going away. Leaving. Characters are truckers and cab drivers or would be merchant marines or lovers of traveling salesmen who pass through town like a glimmer of stability, but never settle down. Everyone here is on the periphery of something bigger, but that periphery is crawling with undeniable anxiety of its own. The gaze is on the horizon and what's next, even if that's just a dark road to another town with same questions. And musically, the album is more focused on jazz with lots of bouncing upright bass and horns throughout. A standout track is Diamonds on my Windshield which could easily have been a left over Jack Kerouac poem.



There was nothing terribly gut-wrenching on this album for me. Maybe that's because I'm in a stable place in my life and the idea of searching for the heart of Saturday night out there in the world, on my own, is not something I relate to much anymore. But no matter, because at some point in our lives, I think most of us do relate to that restlessness and Tom captures it perfectly here. This was the 70's, and he uses music and imagery that may have been retro at the time, but remains vibrant and alive to this day. He was living in Los Angeles at the time, I believe, but the album really makes me think of New York in the 70s as much as it brings to mind the beat poets of the 40s and early 50s. Timeless and yet of its time. Retro and yet futuristic. There's no telling where this discography is heading.

Discographies: Tom Waits Closing Time

A friend of mine has been working through Bob Dylan's entire discography and inspired to do the same thing, only I'm starting with Tom Waits, because I'm less familiar with his work. Sure, I've heard miscellaneous songs and one or two albums all the way through, and I do like everything I've heard, but I've never really dug in deep. So I'm starting at the beginning. The rules are simple:

1. I will listen in chronological order to each original album.
2. No compilations, bootlegs, or live albums.
3. I will listen to each album at least twice on two separate days before I write about it.

So we begin at the beginning that is the ending of a night at some small town bar in Anywhere, USA, with the most appropriately titled album I think I've ever heard, Closing Time. Every song on this debut is basically a take on what you'd imagine an old barkeep might play on a dusty piano or cue up on the jukebox after everyone's left and the stools are all up on the bar, as he relives all the past lives and loves and heartaches that brought him here. This is the bar all the lonely drifters with their own sorted stories come to, and all the 9-5 drones who once had big dreams and everyone who's ever loved and lost and this bartender is the reason why. He listens. He understands. He sympathizes, empathizes and romanticizes with every shared regret and longing the pickled patrons slur over a drink or two. Or ten. Sometimes, he just knows from the look in their eyes and they share a nod of understanding. I'm sure many a drink is on the house and many a times, when he plays his tune on that dusty piano at the end of the night, to an otherwise empty bar, one regular (they're all regulars) may be passed out at the bar, from sorrow more than drink. And I'm sure our barkeep will be taking him home, or just letting him sleep in the back room. 

I hate labels and I listen to all kinds of music, so I already have an aversion to strict genre sections, but this album must have been a nightmare for record stores to shelve. There's country, jazz, blues, maybe even musical theater in here, sometimes all at once and all of it seamless. The only real unifying factor is nostalgia, really, and not in a cheap way. This is not the nostalgia of rose colored glasses and imitation of sounds past. This is authentically raw emotion that is more timeless than retro. Its vintage is all in the emotions it evokes and the pictures it paints. And what a picture! The first stroke comes from Ol '55, which is basically a country ballad and one of his most famous songs. I know I've heard it before, though I wasn't so familiar with it, but I was singing along pretty quickly. Pretty much every song had me reflecting on the past in one way or another, but the stand out track for me was the beautifully melancholy Martha. Though the lyric is quite specific about many aspects of this long ago love affair between Tom Frost and Martha, whom he has called long distance just to say he still loves her after 40 years (and make me cry, apparently), the mystery of the last line ("And I remember quiet evenings trembling next to you.")  in relation to the theme of the album is a story all on its own.

It's important to note that Tom Waits was only 24 years old when this album came out. If you look up "old soul" in the dictionary and his picture isn't there, burn that dictionary. I'm looking forward to the next album, but I may be living in this bar for a bit before I move on to the next one. It's sad, but it's real in a way that few things are or ever have been in music. These little slices of average people's lives offer something that's very pure and literary and visceral at the same time. It's clear to see why he's so highly regarded. This journey was a long time coming and I'm glad I'm starting it now.