Record Reviews - RecordDB

Artist	Title	Review
Tom Waits	The Heart Of Saturday Night
Tom Waits	Blood Money
Tom Waits	Alice
Tom Waits	Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers And Bastards	<p>At this stage of the game, any new Tom Waits record is an event. Listening through the music of his entire career is daunting, to say the least, but it's a journey no one else, with the possible exception of Bob Dylan, has taken before. If one listens to the official recordings, from 1973's Closing Time, featuring the songs of an itinerant Beat barroom singer (no lounges please), right on through to the frenetic mania of 2004's Real Gone, one becomes aware of not only the twists and turns of a songwriter wrestling and bellowing at and with his muse, but of a journeyman artist barely able to hold on to the lid of his creativity, let alone keep it on. True, there have been many stops along the way: in the seediest lounges (1977's Foreign Affairs, which could have been a twisted inspiration to novelist Phillip Kerr when he wrote the Berlin Noir trilogy); acid-drenched blues scree (1980's Heartattack and Vine); travelogues of the unseen and the unspeakable (1985's Rain Dogs); seething and murderous suburban nightmares (1987's Franks Wild Years); the frighteningly comic tales of plagues and carnivals (1993's Black Rider); the scrape, squeal, and hollowed-out metal crunch of urban junkyards and classically American paranoia (1999's Mule Variations); and through-the-mirror-darkly image nightmares and fairy tale variations (2002's Alice and Blood Money). All of it is contained in the man who takes delight in the bent, quarreling marriage of song and sound with dangerously comic imagery.</p><p>Orphans is the most unwieldy Tom Waits collection yet. Packaged in a Cibachrome-tinted box are three discs containing 56 songs total. It claims 30 new tunes, but a mere 14 can be found on other records — six othersd have to be hunted for while the remainder have shown up in various incarnationson soundtracks, compilations, etc. This crazy thing began as a collection of outtakes, rarities, soundtrack tunes, and compilation-only cuts — some of which survive here in new form, including tracks from the Ramblin' Jack Elliot tribute, the Bridge benefit, and two Ramones covers, to name a few. In other words, the first conception for this mess was as a hodgepodge collection of attic material. Waits checked out the tune selection as it was and said something like "nah, bad idea; this would suck." So, he did what any self-respecting artist with a head full of ideas, two stomping, shuffling feet, and itchy fingers — and time on his hands — would do: he recorded new songs and re-recorded others, so the thing would have some kind of elasticity yet hold its rickety bone and far-reaching sources together by means of cheap glue, chewed gum, solder, and a visionary recording engineer named Karl Derfler.</p><p>The end result is this daunting triple disc divided by title and theme: disc one is "Brawlers," Waits' rock and blues record, evoking everyone from T. Rex and Johnny Burnette to Sonny Curtis and Howlin' Wolf. It's a grand thing, since he hasn't released one like this before — the closest were Heartattack and Vine on one side and Mule Variations on the other. Travel, regret, murder, salvation, guttersnipe meditations on sorrow, and nefarious and broken-down innocent — and nefarious — amorous intentions are a few of the themes that run through these tunes like oil and sand. Disc two is "Bawlers," a collection of ballads, raw love songs, weepy wine tunes, wistful yet tentative hope — in the form of floppy prayers — and an under-the-table and wishing, bewildered, yet dead-on topical tome on the world's political situation. Disc three, entitled "Bastards," is even edgier; it's Waits hanging out there with his music and muse on the lunatic fringe of experimentation. Think Bone Machine's wilder moments and Waits' loopy standup comedy in the form of six spoken word pieces included here. Thank goodness he finally did this. If you've ever seen the man on a stage, you'll get why these are so important immediately.<p>"Brawler" digs deep into the American roots music that has obsessed Waits since the beginning of his long labyrinthine haul. There's the frenetic rockabilly swagger that probably makes Carl Perkins and Gene Vincent shake and shimmy in their graves. One of the movie tunes, a cover of "Sea of Love," recalls its place in the film for those who've seen it. If you haven't, it's a slanted, tarnished jewel freshly liberated from antiquity. The hobo ballad "Bottom of the World" recalls old country gospel, and "Lucinda" can only be described as a gallows dance tune. The slippery hoodoo blues "Road to Peace" is the season's most timely and topical political song.</p><p>"Bawlers" is the set's bridge, and it's easy to see why: it's the most accessible disc in the box. There are some of the movie tunes here, from flicks like Pollock, Big Bad Love, and Shrek 2. Other cuts, such as "Goodnight Irene," recall "Tom Traubert's Blues (Four Sheets to the Wind in Copenhagen)" from the Small Change album; the singing protagonist here is older and more desperate, almost suicidal. Resignation displaces hope; it's a long reach into the past and expresses the void of the present. The cover of the Ramones' "Danny Says" is completely reinvented; it's one of the loneliest, most sweetly desolate of Waits' many sides. It's not all darkness, however; there are gorgeous songs here too, such as "Never Let Go" and "You Can Never Hold Back Spring," where an indomitable human spirit reins and rings true.</p><p>Finally, it comes down to "Bastards." The eerie, strange, cabaret-in-a-carnival music that is Weill and Brecht's "What Keeps Mankind Alive" enlists banjos, accordion, tuba, and big bass drum as simply the means to let these twisted words out of the box. Thankfully the cover of "Books of Moses," originally by Skip Spence, is here, as is Daniel Johnston's "King Kong." Neither of these cuts resembles their original version, and Waits brings out the dark underbelly inherent in each. "Bedtime Story" is the first of the Waits monologues here. It is the repressed wish of every parent (with a sense of humor) to have the temerity to tell this kind of tale to their children when they retire. Others include a reading of Charles Bukowski's "Nirvana," the hilarious monologue "The Pontiac," and the live routine "Dog Door." Perhaps the most inviting cut here is the piano-and-horn ballad "Altar Boy," a postmodern saloon song that would make Bobby Short turn red with rage. This disc is the true mixed bag in the set: unruly, uneven, and full of feints and free-for-alls.</p><p>Ultimately, the epicenter of Orphans is Waits' voice. It's many expressions, nuances, bellows, barks, hollers, open wails, roughshod croons, and midnight whispers carry these songs and monologues to the listener with authority as an open invitation into his sound world, his view of tradition, and his manner of shaping that world as something not ephemeral, but as an extension of musical time itself. As a vocalist, Waits, like Bob Dylan, embodies the entire genealogical line of the blues, jazz, local barroom bards, and traveling minstrels in the very grain of his songs. That wily throat carries not only the songs he and his songwriting partner and wife, Kathleen Brennan, pen, but also the magnet for the sonic atmospheres that frame it. There is adventure, danger, and the sound of the previous, the forgotten, and the wished for in it. And it is that voice that links all three of these discs together and makes them partners. One cannot dismiss that even though some of these songs have appeared elsewhere, Orphans is a major work that goes beyond the origins of the material and drags everything past and present with sound and texture into a present to be presented as something utterly new, beyond anything he has previously issued. To paraphrase Ezra Pound in response to Allen Ginsberg's inquiry about what his poem "The Cantos" meant, these orphans speak for themselves.</p><p>— <b>Thom Jurek</b></p>
Rick Wakeman	Six Wives Of Henry VIII
Rick Wakeman	Journey To Centre Of The Earth
Don Walker	Freedom
Jerry Jeff Walker	Jerry Jeff Walker	<p>Jerry Jeff Walker was issued on Decca in 1972, and completed his rambling transition from New York folkie to Texas singer/songwriter. He'd left New York a decade earlier, but with all of his running around, he didn't make Austin home until 1971. Everywhere in this record's grooves -- which was recorded in different sessions in both cities -- is the latter's famed good-time, laid-back, take-it-as-it-comes feeling. The organic nature of the sound here is simply because Walker and two different groups (at least) of musicians played the songs live from the studio floor with no soundboard. These first versions of "Hill Country Rain" and "Charlie Dunn" are virtually peerless. Two Guy Clark tunes ("That Old Time Feeling" and "L.A. Freeway") rival the songwriter's versions and "Curly and Lil" and "When I Had You" guarantee the makings of one of the original Texas Music Scene's classics; the music made now that uses that moniker -- from Pat Green's to Cross Canadian Ragweed's -- is merely revisionist history and can be dismissed as such. Walker is at the peak of his powers on this album; it was the first in a string of his records that wouldn't run out, quality-wise, until the end of the decade. He is surrounded by what would become the Lost Gonzo Band (Bob Livingston, Gary P. Nunn, Craig Hillis, and Michael McGreary), with Mary Eagan and Dave Cook adding fiddle and pedal steel, respectively, and with a lively crew of friends (including Mickey Raphael playing harmonica on "That Old Time Feeling"). In New York, Walker went to "mix" his Texas record with Michael Brovsky, and landed when the Gonzos were playing The Bitter End, prompting more live sessions. In addition to the band, Michael Murphey, David Bromberg, Andy Newmark, Joanne Vent, and Ellen Kearney played on the recordings that cut that part of the album. "Her Good Lovin' Grace" (though not the final track) sums up the ambience of these two informal, even revelatory, sessions, as the (Texas) band slips and slides its way through a song in the process of being written as it's recorded. Amazing. Like It's a Good Night for Singin', Ridin' High, and Viva Terlingua, this is a masterpiece, full of terrific songs, fine playing, and a sound that defines the era, yet is timeless.</p><p>— <strong>Thom Jurek</strong></p>
Jerry Jeff Walker	Viva Terlingua	<p>Viva Terlingua, recorded live in Luckenbach, TX, on a hot August night in 1973, is among the most legendary of "live" singer/songwriter albums ever released. It's the Live at the Fillmore East of redneck Texas folk-rock. Essentially, it's Jerry Jeff fronting the Lost Gonzo Band at the beginning of their long run together playing, living it up, having a ball, giving everybody the impression that life was a party, and to be sure, it was for a while. Given the loose, inspired performance on this set, Walker was every bit the equal of Willie, Waylon, and Billy Joe Shaver at the time. The material is terrific. Half of it is from Jerry Jeff's catalog: "Sangria Wine," "Gettin' By," "Little Bird," "Get It Out," and "Wheel." The rest? Can't possibly do better: Guy Clark's "Desperados Waiting for the Train," Ray Wylie Hubbard's "Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother," Michael Murphy's "Backslider's Wine," and Gary P. Nunn's Austin City Limits anthem, "London Homesick Blues." It doesn't sound anything like it was recorded in front of an audience, but it does sound live as hell. These folks were partyin' it up and layin' down the tracks at white heat. This record was made in a night and it feels like it was made in your living room. It's guaranteed to lift any dark mood within 15 minutes. This record asks no questions and there are no hidden meanings in Walker's or anybody else's lyrics; it's all there for the taking. And that's what makes it the enduring classic it is.</p><p>— <strong>Thom Jurek</strong></p>
Jerry Jeff Walker	Walkers Collectibles	<p>Following up Viva Terlingua with a studio record was a tall order for Jerry Jeff and the Lost Gonzo Band, but true to form as they were until the late '70s, they rose to the occasion with an inspired set of songs. Walker wrote six of the album's ten tracks, the Lost Gonzo Band's Gary P. Nunn wrote two more, Billy Callery wrote one, and David Cohen wrote another. It was all in the family. It's an up-tempo, rockin' country record with "Salvation Army Band" kicking everything off; it's followed by a drunken, barely pulled-off "Will There Be Any" a cappella. There are the tough outlaw love songs like "She Left Me Holdin'" and the long, moving ballad "My Old Man," which follows the wild Dixieland ride of "I Like to Sleep Late in the Morning." There's Gary Nunn fronting the band on a live version of "Rock Me, Roll Me" and the brass band feel of "The First Showboat." This is where Stephen Foster meets Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives meets Jerry Jeff's lazy, drawling Texas bass voice on the Mississippi. The album's high point is a ballad, Walker's version "Well of the Blues" by Nunn. It's simply arranged: a piano, a bass drum, a brushed snare, Walker's deep voice, and a backing chorus with a B3 easing in the background very slowly and faintly. What can you say? It's another winner.</p><p>— <strong>Thom Jurek</strong></p>
Jerry Jeff Walker	Ridin' High	<p>The mid- to late '70s were good to Jerry Jeff Walker. He recorded a string of absolutely endearing classics of the outlaw singer/songwriter genre of country music: Viva Terlingua, Walker's Collectibles, Jerry Jeff Walker, It's a Good Night for Singin', the live A Man Must Carry On, and this one, Ridin' High from 1975. Most Walker fans will argue like hell about which is best, but they are interchangeably great and stand the test of time in the same way Guy Clark's and Billy Joe Shaver's albums do. In any case, Ridin' High is pure Texas country drunk & roll with some Nash Vegas players added to the Lost Gonzo Band for some truly Cosmic Cowboy yammering. The material here is top-notch: Willie Nelson's "Pick Up the Tempo," Bob Livingston's "Public Domain," and Guy Clark's "Like a Coat from the Cold" -- and they're the first three tracks on the album! Walker has a way of delivering drunken anthems and tender ballads in his deep bass voice that brings you into the song so far you feel as if he's singing it just for you and your friends. He does this consistently on this album, backed by a star cast of players including not only the Gonzos but also Johnny Gimble, David Briggs, Norbert Putnam, and others. And the gorgeous horn touches added by Michael Brovsky are stunning. Two of Walker's own best songs are here, "I Love You," written for his then new wife Susan, and the rowdy man's good-time anthem "Pissin' in the Wind." The album is rounded out by Jesse Winchester's "Mississippi You're on My Mind," Mike Burton's oft-covered nugget "Night Rider's Lament," and a few others. The album feels like a solid stream of hippie cowboy music fed by cold Lone Star, lots of pot, and the occasional line. To listen closely is to miss the point. This is an album to be experienced with the senses, entering into the free flow of Walker's good-time world even for the 40 minutes it takes to listen to the album. But that's far better than nothin', ain't it?</p><p>— <strong>Thom Jurek</strong></p>
Joe Walsh	But Seriously Folks
Joe Walsh	There Goes The Neighborhood
Joe Walsh	Ordinary Average Guy
Joe Walsh	Look What I Did!
Roger Waters	Pros And Cons Of Hitchiking
Roger Waters	Amused To Death
Roger Waters	In The Flesh...Live
Weather Report	Tale Spinnin'
Weather Report	Heavy Weather

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