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@dooks
i'm just coming out of a massive tom waits bender that flavoured an entire 2 weeks in portugal (whilst reading the unauthorised barney hoskyns biog "low side of the road").
it was a funny experience. made me much more aware, and maybe more appreciative of the earlier stuff, but it somehow diminished a lot of the mystique around him too. not sure if that was as a result of reading about what a odd-cat he actually is in terms of constructing this persona, living in it to the extent of becoming it... then finding peace with his wife and reverting to merely playing the old character in public and feircely defending his (one imagines much more mundane) private life. you wonder why he feels the need to be so defensive, ornery and evasive all the time? he's an odd one alright. by the end of the book i just felt sorry for him.
i think that listening to so much of his stuff back to back had the result of revealing quite how similar so much of it is. for all of the length and depth of his catalogue you can't help noticing that he basically made the same record (albeit getting incresingly gruff with each iteration)from the early 70s to the mid 80s, then switched over from the jazznik crooner character to vaudeville freakshow "frank" character on swordfish (the formula perfected on raindogs) and has been releasing more of less the same record (again getting increasingly gruff with each iteration) ever since. bone machine gets a lot of love but i think mule variations is my favourite of the post raindogs bunch.
can't post no youtubes from work so you'll have to imagine singapore, shore leave, jockey full of bourbon, time, in the neighbourhood, heart of saturday night, big in japan, heartattack and vine take it with me when i go, tom traubert's blues, clap hands and ummmm i dunno, something weird like the eyeball kid or frank's wild years. i could pretty much forgive him anything for any one of those songs. and that there's *usually *a nugget or two of gold on each album means that all in all, i think i emerged from the waits bender a bigger fan than before.
shall be wearing my flashback "tom" t-shirt to do my gig tonight.