Need some more Tom Waits. I already have Closing Time and Night Hawks at the Diner.
What might you suggest?
Frank’s Wild Years
It’s loosely based around a plot, and has some of the best jazz-influenced Tom Waits songs, including “Temptation,” the dirtiest song I know.
I like Mule Variations a whole lot. It’s bluesy, but with a nice rough edge on it. Hold On is a beautiful song.
Closing Time is the best album of the early years (the paino bar years). It has some of my favorite songs ever “Grapefruit Moon”, “Hope That I Don’t Fall in Love with You” (the song that got me into Tom Waits after I accidentally heard Hootie and the Blowfish do a cover of it) and “Little Trip to Heaven”
Mule Variations is very good. I also liked Alice (Blood Money, its companion album was just ok in my opinion).
You might want to pick up “Beautiful Maladies” which is a compilation of a lot of his 80s stuff. It has some of his great “clang boom clang” darkside songs.
Nighthawks is probably my fave, but I also find myself reaching for Heart Attack and Vine quite often.
Of course, I pretty much consider just about everything after that his “new stuff” which I don’t care for as much…
If you like what you have, I doubt you’ll be disappointed with Small Change, Blue Valentine, or Foreign Affairs.
Foreign Affairs is really underrated in my opinion. It’s a short record (wht is it 7 or 8 songs?) but some really great stuff is on there.
Seconding Frank’s Wild Years. Also Swordfishtrombones.
It’s pretty raw, lots of guitar and heavy drums. Goin’ Out West, probably the closest Tom eveer came to writing a pop song.
What?! No love for The Early Years? I like Vol. 1 the best.
The Doctor
You’ve mostly got his early stuff so I would say pick up *Heart Attack and Vine * to round out the early years, then pick up Swordfishtrombones to see if you like his “new” sound (I think it is the most accessible of his new sound records). If you dig Swordfishtrombones run right out and pick up Franks Wild Years, Rain Dogs, and Mule Variations. From there pick up Bone Machine, Alice, Real Gone, and *Blood Money * (in that order.) Then go back and pick up the early years compellations to get the songs that you missed on his other early albums.
Also if you happen to see it (and if you like live albums) grab Big Time, a really great live record which plays a little bit of everything from his catalogue (up to that point).
But you already have his best album, the horribly underrated and mostly forgotten Nighthawks at the Diner. Unlike anything he has done before or since. This was the album that changed me from being a Tom Waits appreciator into a crazy Tom Waits zealot.
I gotta vote for Rain Dogs and Bone Machine and of course every other album, but “Going out West” is worth the price of Bone Machine alone.
The true gem on Bone Machine for me will always be “Murder in the Red Barn.”
“Cause there’s nothing strange about an axe with bloodstains in the barn.
There’s always some killin’ you got to do around the farm…”
Oh god, isn’t it though? I swear, he spied into my soul for that one.
I don’t have nearly all of Waits’ albums, but Swordfishtrombones is my favorite. And I’m a big fan of the latest one, Real Gone. Funny, I just got Small Change yesterday.
Time to trot out my Tom Waits story: I saw him live before he was well known, as an unadvertised support act for Frank Zappa at a gig in San Diego in 1974. (I had seen Waits on Chip Monck’s TV show, so I was probably one of the few people in the hall who knew who he was.) Zappa’s band was having trouble with their equipment, and were still soundchecking when the audience was let into the hall. After a while, with the starting time of the concert having passed, Zappa decided to have the band play a few songs while the roadies struggled with the equipment. After three or four songs, Zappa declared that the situation was as good as it was going to get, and then introduced the opening act. Having already had a taste of the main attraction, the audience quickly grew actively hostile to Waits, who performed solo with an electric piano. Some cretin near me kept yelling “Somebody shoot that fucker!” This was the nastiest audience reaction I ever saw, until years later when I saw a Richard Thompson audience drive Victoria Williams off the stage in tears at the Fillmore.
I have Heart of Saturday Night in addition to Nighthawks and Heart Attack and Vine, and I love them all. The newer stuff, not so much.
Yeah, Zappa’s audiences were legendary in their hate for Tom Waits at first. Not their vibe or expectation. Zappa knew Waits was a genius, but he really, REALLY needed his own shows and venues to make a splash.
Oh, and Real Gone. Great album, but IMO, Marc Ribot steals the whole freaking album with that twisted, awesome solo he does on “Hoist That Rag.” I love to just listen to that part over and over again for some reason, and I’m not a big fan of guitar solos.
And a third - it’s just a great album. Rain Dogs is just as good, too.
Another CD you might really like is Extremely Cool, by Chuck E. Weiss (he of “Chuck E.'s In Love”), to which Waits makes many contributions. It’s a real treat, and a great addition to any Waits’ fan’s collection.
Not like you need it, but another vote for Swordfishtrombones. I’m not enough of a Waits connoisseur to have developed well-informed snobbery, so I’d say that is THE Tom Waits album to own, if you have to own just one.
To be honest, I might recommend perusing iTunes if their Waits catalogue is beefy enough. I find the T.W. oeuvre to be pretty uneven, aesthetically, and I’m not afraid to say I love some of it, while some of his tunes make we pine for sounds of mechanized dental care. The ability to pick and choose would be a plus, IMO.
The Heart of Saturday Night - A nice compliment to the older stuff you already have, and one of my favourite Tom albums ever. Fumblin’ With the Blues, Shiver Me Timbers, Diamonds On My Windshield…flawless.
Small Change - Still has that old, bluesy, spoken-word feeling, but really when Tom started to change his style a bit from the goateed beatnik to the maudlin piano-playing barfly.
Blue Valentine - One of Tom’s most underrated albums, and as I fondly refer to it, Tom’s “young-girls-meeting-horrible-fates” album.
Rain Dogs - If I had to pick Tom’s best album, this’d be it. Not a single song on it goes wrong, and this is often the album that gets folks into Tom Waits. I know it did it for me.
Aw hell, just do yourself a favour and go buy everything he’s ever done, you’ll thank me later.
I quasi-recently bought The Heart of Saturday Night, and have listened to it a countless number of times. I mean, I’ve set this CD into my CD/DVD player, punched the repeat button, and let it go for hours on end while I did my homework. Only to do this again and again, for about every day in the month. And I’m still listening to it. It’s without a doubt the most beautiful album I own.
Do yourself a favor and check out “Drunk on the Moon”, and “Please Call me, Baby”