Thank you, jshea71, for giving me reason to check out Tom Waits. I found the three tracks you suggested:









You weren't kidding when you said they're "pure poetry set to music." I didn't realize he did so much spoken word stuff. It's like Louis Armstrong, Joe Cocker, Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski and Henry Rollins all rolled into a series of beat-poetry, performance-art pieces. Definitely not music for everyday listening, you gotta have time to chew on this stuff. Unbelievable. And it DEFINITELY suits his voice.

Then I had to check him out on Wikipedia, only to learn that he spent some time in his formative years living right here in San Diego! Crazy!

Of course, now I want to hear more. It looks like he's traversed an extremely wide range of musical territory, but it seems like Used Songs 1973-1980 might be a good starting place for someone like me, who is interested in the jazz-inspired stuff. What say you?

the best of the 'troubadour' era:
Small Change
Blue Valentine
Nighthawks at the diner (brilliant live record)
Heartattack and Vine

I also reccomend

Franks Wild Years
Mule Variations
Rain Dogs
Alice
Blood Money

Hell all of em are great. I have everything he's ever released, and almost 100 bootleg shows, radio appearances etc. He's right up there with Cash and Strummer.

Thanks for that, I'll check 'em out! I went to his website and downloaded the free "Glitter and Doom" live preview tracks - have yet to give them a listen, though.


I can already tell he writes wonderful (if depressing) stories. It's interesting: great story songs are almost always about people with deep experiences. Gypsies, musicians, drunks, jilted lovers... You rarely hear songs about cube jockeys and middle managers. Though I have a feeling Tom Waits could even make us cube jockeys fascinating too!

This one is pure genius: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_IjSm8JEfg

Hey Andi,

Glad you dug the Waits stuff. I pretty much agree with Bigassape's recommends.

Nighthawks at the Diner is the one that really got me hooked. It's got such a great ambience, and just a lot of really fun lyrical turns.

Frank's Wild Years is basically the soundtrack to a stage show he produced with his wife in Chicago in the mid 80s. A lot of nice character stuff in that one.


The Used Songs collection is a pretty good overview of his early work. Beautiful Maladies is another good collection that covers a pretty big shift in his sound during his next phase. I think I read somewhere that at that point he decided to stop writing songs on the piano, because he felt like he kept writing the same thing over and over. He started writing with his wife at that point too, which I think added a new dimension to some of his work. Good stuff, the lot of it.