TomWaitsAWeek | Tom Waits – Alice (2002, US)

Today’s spotlight is on number 526 on The List, submitted by swordgeek. This is the last spotlight in our #TomWaitsAWeek feature.1

As mentioned in our previous spotlight, Waits’ 1993 album The Black Rider brought in someone who would become a key collaborator and influence on Waits, one Robert Wilson, an absolute fixture in the world of experimental/avant-garde theatre. While the earlier Franks Wild Years like Black Rider was also a stage-to-studio affair, I feel like adding Wilson into the mix amplifies the fact that the most Tom Waits of Tom Waits traits really glitter when the cinematic/stage-worthy qualities of his story-songs are given more room to breathe. Indeed, if, in another timeline, Waits only existed in the world of off-Broadway musical theatre, his brilliance would not be diminished in the least. So, yes, the Waits/Wilson collab albums – Black Rider, Alice (i.e., the subject of today’s spotlight), and Blood Money – are essentially soundtracks. And, because they’re soundtracks, it could be easy for someone who hasn’t yet heard them to feel intimidated without having seen their originating theatrical piece, or even assume these are curious artifacts only for Waits completists, akin to his film soundtracks. However, I would suggest one need not be guarded in approaching them. These albums, my friends, are absolute gems just as the ‘regular’ studio albums are, with Alice, imho, shining the brightest.

Similar to how Waits had first written the Black Rider songs for the Wilson-directed musical/”cowboy opera” of the same name (which premiered in 1990), Waits and Kathleen Brennan wrote songs for Wilson’s opera Alice (which premiered in 1992) and then later tweaked them for the studio album. While Alice the opera is primarily about Lewis Carroll’s rather questionable/creepy thing for Alice Liddell, the young daughter of some friends and possibly his muse for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, at least when approached as an off-stage collection of songs, Alice seems but one character in a typical Waits-ian cast, complete with circus performers. And, given all we’ve heard thus far on our journey through Waits’ discography, the music itself is familiar territory, particularly with a few callbacks to Small Change‘s “The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)”, as well as some of the eclectic instrumentation used since the beginning of his experimental phase. I, for one, really love this album, and would likely place both it and Black Rider in my Top 5 Waits Albums list, if I had to make one.

Given my attempt to cover all the albums consecutively in the previous #TomWaitsAWeek spotlights, it should be noted here that Alice didn’t immediately follow Black Rider. First of all, there was an entire decade between the Alice opera and album. When asked by The Onion A.V. Club2 on this matter, here is what Mr. Waits said:

The Onion: So, why did it take you so long to record the songs on Alice?

Tom Waits: The songs were written around ’92 or ’93, ’round in there. It was done with Robert Wilson in Germany. We stuck ’em in a box and just left ’em there for a while. They were aging like the honey. And we locked in the freshness. They were hermetically sealed. You move on to other things, you know? And then you go back and say, “Well, this was okay.”

O: It was kind of developing a reputation as the great lost Tom Waits album.

TW: I bought a copy of the bootleg on eBay. ‘Cause I didn’t know where those tapes were.

During this decade, Waits also released a non-Wilson collab album, the fabulous Mule Variations (1999). I think I learned my lesson while writing the last spotlight though, so I won’t attempt to summarize that album here too. However, I would say that Mule Variations/Black Rider/Alice is perhaps my favorite run in Waits’ discography, for whatever that’s worth. I will also not attempt to summarize the final few albums, i.e., Blood Money (2002), Real Gone (2004), Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards (2006), and Bad as Me (2011). Well, except for noting that Blood Money was actually released at the same time as Alice, and is also studio versions of songs that Waits and Brennan originally wrote for a Wilson musical (namely Woyzeck, which premiered in 2000), so let’s just say it’s Alice‘s fraternal (or conjoined?) twin.

That said, I did want to ramble on a tiny bit further here before logging off to finish the rest of our listening schedule1 for the week, because there’s some WONDERFUL rabbit holes to go down when looking at this partnership and period, particularly on Wilson’s side. In between Alice the opera and Alice the album, aside from the aforementioned Woyzeck, Wilson racked up a number of entries in his CV that blow my mind just thinking about them. For instance, in addition to a handful of new projects with Philip Glass (with whom, as mentioned last spotlight, he had collaborated with on the 1976 opera Einstein on the Beach), during this time Wilson also collaborated with Ryuichi Sakamoto in 1999 for a Lincoln Center Festival piece called The Days Before – Death Destruction & Detroit III, which riffed off of my favorite Umberto Eco novel, The Island of the Day Before. Also, he completed the third in the trilogy of his works performed by the German Thalia Theater company (the first two being Black Rider and Alice), the 1996 Time Rocker, the music for which was written by none other than Lou Reed. AND THEN, Wilson would collaborate again with Reed in 2000 on an Edgar Allan Poe musical called POEtry, which ran at BAM. Reed would go on to release a studio album based on the musical, The Raven (2003), which features Willem Dafoe, Laurie Anderson, ANOHNI, Steve Buscemi, Ornette Coleman, The Blind Boys of Alabama, David Bowie… Like, OMG, to have been in New York at that time!

Anyway, I hope you’ve enjoyed/are enjoying #TomWaitsAWeek, or at least can devote some time in the future to the three Waits albums we have on The List…and beyond. I myself haven’t yet finished going through Waits’ studio discography, and also now have some physical media to track down. Speaking of which, I’ll sign off with one last thing from that Onion interview quoted above:

Tom Waits: You know what I really love? The CD players in a car. How when you put the CD right up by the slot, it actually takes it out of your hand, like it’s hungry. It pulls it in, and you feel like it wants more silver discs. “More silver discs. Please.” I enjoy that.

The Onion: Do you have one in the Cadillac?

TW: No, I have a little band in there. It’s an old car, so I have a little old string band in the glove compartment. It’s grumpy.

• Bandcamp: Tom Waits – Alice
• Discogs: Tom Waits – Alice

1For those listening through the discography with us, Alice was part of yesterday’s listening schedule. Here’s what’s left on the docket for today: Friday – Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards, Bad as Me.
2Thanks to BramMeehan for this link!

TomWaitsAWeek | Tom Waits – Rain Dogs (1985, US)

Today’s spotlight is on number 315 on The List, and the second in our #TomWaitsAWeek feature. Fun fact: Rain Dogs album was the most repeated submission when we were first compiling The List, with something like 5+ people submitting it at the same time;1 CliftonR was the first to get in their vote, so they get the attribution. I’m going to apologize right off that bat to those 5+ people and anyone else who knows how great this album is – while Rain Dogs absolutely deserves its own dedicated and lengthy spotlight, it essentially shares this one with the 4 albums that preceded it and the 3 that came after. For that matter, each album mentioned here deserves its own spotlight. Alas, more Waits is better than less, so let’s not wait any longer and dig in…

Yesterday’s listening schedule2 for #TomWaitsAWeek included some huge shifts in Tom Waits’ sound and life. Foreign Affairs (1977) and Blue Valentine (1978) are perhaps not too far away from the preceding Small Change, albeit with amped up cinematic vibes, more strings, the first swapping of the piano for an electric guitar, and the first appearance (in “$29.00”) of what will become Waits’ signature drunk howl (thanks to satsuma for that phrase!). Foreign Affairs is also the first album that makes me picture the eyes closed/eyebrows raised/can’t lose face Waits often pulls while singing, though I’m sure it was there in the earlier albums (if not the recording, then definitely the live performances). Then, with Heartattack and Vine (1980), suddenly we are in electric guitar-based R&B territory, the sound seeming to move from a bar corner to a proper stage. But, perhaps most importantly, we catch a completely smitten Waits singing a seemingly non-Waits lyric – “sha-la-la-la-la-la”, in “Jersey Girl”. The girl? One Kathleen Brennan, who would impact Waits and his sound immensely, from one wonderful day forward.

Waits wrote Heartattack and Vine while taking a break from writing the soundtrack for Francis Ford Coppola’s One from the Heart (1981), on the set of which he re-met Brennan, who he had first met while filming Sylvester Stallone’s Paradise Alley (1978; Waits’ film debut). It apparently was love at second sight – the two were engaged within a week, and married the month before Heartattack was released.

Waits has apparently said of Brennan that he didn’t just marry a wife, but also a record collection. Brennan introduced Waits to a bunch of new music, perhaps the most influential to his own evolving sound being Captain Beefheart and composer Harry Partch (who made his own instruments). With the life changes and Brennan’s encouragement, Waits also changed managers and producers – to himself and Brennan – and used the opportunity to, essentially, reinvent himself. Thus we have the absolute masterpiece that is Swordfishtrombones (1983), the first of Waits’ experimental era – the first Waits’ album to not feature saxophone, the first to have marimba (and various eclectic instruments), and, really, the first to have music that finally seems to live in the same postal code as the vocals. It’s weird, it’s whacky, it’s what most now likely consider pure Waits. It should be in every record collection, and should have it’s own full blog (like, an entire blog, not just a blog post) dissecting every second of it. Also, it was released on my day of birth, which gives it extra bonus points from me.

Swordfishtrombones is the beginning of a loose trilogy of albums, the second of which is technically the subject of this spotlight (and our first album in today’s listening schedule): Rain Dogs. While continuing along the lines of Swordfishtrombones plus adding in the plethora of new influences and experiences that came with Waits’ and Brennan’s move to New York City (including Waits’ growing filmography), Rain Dogs also brings back in all the best things of the pre-Brennan albums (including some of that country rock twang from Closing Time, in “Blind Love”). It’s a ‘best of’ bag of Waits’ tricks, if you will, minus the whisky. The result is a couple of surprisingly rather radio-friendly tunes (well, alternative radio, at any rate) including “Hang Down Your Head” (the first tune co-written with Brennan), as well as some cinema-friendly tunes, with songs from the album bookending the soundtrack for Jim Jarmusch’s Down by Law (1986; which Waits also starred in). And, another super duper (not really) important thing that really stands out, to me at least: end-of-song FADE OUTS. Perhaps they were in previous Waits albums, but for some reason these are the first I recall, enough to point out, lol. Anyway, and again, it deserves more than the cursory glance here, so be sure to give it a few spins and gather your own thoughts about it. Whether it was the fadeouts, the film cred, or just people knowing what’s what, it’s not hard to see why this album made and continues to make a number of lists, including the “official” 1001 list.

Following Rain Dogs, we get Franks Wild Years (1987), the last in the trilogy and thus another album in a similar vein. This album continues the story of one Frank, first seen in Swordfishtrombones‘ track of the same name (well, with the grammatically correct apostrophe), via songs first written (some co-written by Brennan) for a play. The real standout for me on this album – and, as far as I can remember, my first introduction to Waits – is the spectacular “Way Down in the Hole”, which was used/covered for The Wire‘s theme song. My advice? Get the entire trilogy and listen to all of them in a row, a few times over, as their own separate #TomWaitsAWeek. And then, for bonus marks, check out all the cover versions done for The Wire, if you haven’t already. For myself, I haven’t yet devoted enough time to this Franks, so I’m planning on getting a lot more spins in soon.

The last two albums on our listening schedule today carry on the experimentation of the Sword/Rain/Franks trilogy, albeit with different vibes. On Bone Machine (1992), perhaps it’s because of the title but I can’t help but hear some Pixies vibes, also some Leonard Cohen vibes (“Black Wings”) – in other words, there’s a LOT of different stuff going on in this one. Again, it deserves it’s own spotlight, and more than a quick spin. And then, The Black Rider (1993) is another play-to-album collection of songs, the play in question co-written by none other than William S. Burroughs and directed by Robert Wilson (perhaps known by many as Philip Glass’ collaborator on Einstein on the Beach). Waits will very soon again collaborate with Wilson on what becomes two of the albums in tomorrow’s listening schedule, Alice and Blood Money (both 2002).

Alice is part of tomorrow’s listening schedule, and is the third Waits album we have in The List. Because I’m only human I won’t have its spotlight ready prior to listening, but we’ll meet back here on Friday to discuss it, and cap off our #TomWaitsAWeek.

Until then, I hope you don’t have to wait to listen to more Waits!

• Songlink: Tom Waits – Rain Dogs
• Discogs: Tom Waits – Rain Dogs

1Apologies for the wishy-washy data, but I only tracked the first time an album was submitted, so this is going off my shoddy memory of how many times I replied “already added!” to people. I do remember with certainty that SpaceAce was one of those people, btw.
2For those wanting to listen through the discography with us, here’s what is left in the schedule, of studio albums plus the Orphans box set (any live/soundtrack/etc. albums are extracurricular!): Wednesday – Rain Dogs, Franks Wild Years, Bone Machine, The Black Rider; Thursday – Mule Variations, Alice, Blood Money, Real Gone; Friday – Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards, Bad as Me