Hello all,
I am curious about the guitarist Marc Ribot, who I know best from many of Tom Waits’ albums. I’m a huge Waits fan and I love the guitar work, but I’m curious if anyone is familiar with Ribot’s solo career, and if they could describe his style for me, compare him to anyone else, and recommend a good starter CD.
I really don’t know his solo work at all, but he’s the fucking balls on Tom Waits albums. That solo on “Hoist That Rag” is one of the most inspired things I’ve ever heard.
I’m a relatively new Tom Waits convert (I never even listened to him until 2002), and I’m slowly purchasing all his albums. I don’t even have the newest one yet, Real Gone, but I hear it is excellent. Waits is definitely my favorite artist, and Marc Ribot’s guitar sound plays a big part in why I love his music so much.
I’m a big Ribot fan. I love his work with Tom Waits, but also love his solo work and work with John Zorn and others of the downtown NYC scene.
Zorn is known for doing weirder jazz, but check out his The Gift for some incredible Ribot goodness. Far from jazz, it’s Zorn’s take on exotica - ie., the tiki lounge music of the fifties. Ribot’s all over the record, dropping amazing surf guitar licks and bends, some dirty, Santana-ish grooves, and some blissful, tropical atmospherics. It’s dignified cheese of the highest order.
Next up, check out both records done by “Marc Ribot and Los Cubanos Postizos” - “the prosthetic cubans” and “muy divertido!” It’s Ribot and a great backing band doing a mix of Cuban-pop originals and covers. They’re great records (i prefer “the prosthetic cubans”), and again show off Ribot’s singular style.
Once you get into Ribot’s actual solo records, it quickly becomes hit or miss. The problem is that Ribot often attempts to experiment beyond his means, coming up with bizarre “experimental” failures like Shrek, Saints, and Scelsi Morning. Like many, his avant garde pretentions don’t really pan out.
His soundtrack work, however, is great. Check out both compilations of this work, Shoe String Symphonettes and Soundtracks Vol. 2 (both on Zorn’s Tzadik records). While he stretches his abilities into composing and arranging for other instruments, it really works - which makes sense, coming from the guy responsible for so much of the cinematic atmosphere on Tom Waits’ records.
I hope that’s a good start!
Ribot did some great work on several tracks on Freedy Johnston’s “This Perfect World,” one of my favorite albums of all time.
And with Costello on ‘Mighty Like a Rose’
Good info on other projects.
MiM
This sounds really awesome, because I love retro lounge music al la Esquivel and Combustible Edison, and especially surf guitar. Tell me more about this John Zorn guy! I’m a sax player myself so I love to hear good sax, but I tend to feel alienated if the jazz is too “free” and avant-garde. Anything that sounds like film noir or spy movie soundtracks makes me fall in love with it, though.
Thanks to everyone else for the info as well!
I’d recommend his two different takes on “Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground” on the Wim Wenders movie The Soul Of A Man (part of Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues). I seem to recall that the soundtrack only has one, and they’re both great. One’s acoustic and one’s electric, and I’d be hard-pressed to tell you which one is better.
Second on Costello, specifically Ribot’s contributions to Kojak Variety. On his cover of Jesse Winchester’s “Payday,” Costello asked Ribot to play the solo as if he were walking down the street and hearing different types of music coming out of the clubs. An interesting bit of musical whiplash, and not something that your average session guy could come up with, or even be asked for.
As regards Zorn, he’s done some great way-out composition and playing in different contexts. I always thought thatNaked City’s self-titled Elektra album from the late 1980s was a good point of entry, especially if you’re down with a punk/jazz hybrid with a sense of humor to spare (specifically, a version of Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman” which superimposes the tune over the bassline of “Pretty Woman”).
I know a lot of people who like his work in Painkiller, which is, for lack of better description, “death-jazz” (picture death metal’s approach taken to jazz, and you have an idea). Bill Laswell plays the bass, and the work with Painkiller is an interesting and very surprising progression from his work with Herbie Hancock.
I love his work with Tom Waits and his work on Hoist That Rag is fantastic. I’ve heard some concert bootlegs of Waits’ most recent tour that give Ribot even more space to shine, throwing out amazing skronky blues leads left and right.
I agree with freejooky that the Los Cubanos Postizos CDs are fantastic and, though I tend to agree that his experimental reach is beyond his grasp, I have a soft spot Yo! I Killed Your God mostly for its gritty live show energy and kick-ass title.
As for Ribot’s work with John Zorn, I also recommend people check out the Zevulum disc from Zorn’s 2 CD release The Circle Maker. Just love the vibe on this one.
I don’t know a lot of his solo work but I saw him live (solo) ~ 1993 just on the strength of how much I liked his work with Waits. He was amazing.