I love Tom Waits. Old hipster Beat Waits, and new batshit-building-instruments-out-of-farm-equipment Waits–I love it all. I can have my heart ripped out by San Diego Serenade just as easily as by The House Where Nobody Lives. I think I’d title my autobiography “You Don’t Meet Nice Girls In Coffee Shops”–or at least in my mental world my life is interesting enough to carry that title.
I mention this because The Observer has started a new series where they ask musicians to name and discuss their 20 most cherished albums, and they’re starting with Tom.
I’m happy to see some of my favourites in there, it’s like having Tom certify my tastes. For example, he has Cohen (“Leonard is a poet, an Extra Large one.”), Costello (“Scalding hot bedlam, monkey to man needle time. I’d hate to be balled out by him, I’d quit first. Grooves wide enough to put your foot in and the bass player is a gorilla of groove.”), and The Pogues (“They are a roaring, stumbling band. These are the dead end kids for real. Shane’s voice conveys so much. They play like soldiers on leave.”) in there. I was pleasantly surprised to see Bill Hicks (“Bill Hicks, blowtorch, excavator, truthsayer and brain specialist, like a reverend waving a gun around. “) in there, but on reflection it makes a lot of sense.
I’m not surprised by Sinatra, or Monk, Dylan, James Brown, Zappa, or the Stones, but I am going to have to expend a lot of effort finding out about some of Tom’s other choices. The Lounge Lizards, and Texas-Czech, Marc Ribot, Houndog, etc., will all need much further investigation.
(There are also a couple of paragraphs of analysis of Tom’s list available.)
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