Glitter and Doom – Tom Waits

It was May 2001 when I became a huge Tom Waits fan. My friend Todd let me borrow Beautiful Maladies and told me to listen to a song called "Clap Hands". Within 3 minutes, I was hooked for life. I then started on a holy quest to acquire most of his albums. About a year later, there were two new Waits releases, Alice and Blood Money. I really liked them both (but had a preference to Blood Money), and couldn't wait to get more. A few years later, I laid hands on his latest release, Real Gone, to which I was a fan of immediately. I was getting spoiled. There had been 3 new CDs in 2 years. I thought that this was a prolific trend that I could get behind.

However, I had to wait until 2006 before another release came out. Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers, and Bastards was not a new studio release. It featured outtakes and songs that I had already had copies of (like "Book of Moses" from the Skip Spence tribute album, and his interesting interpretation of "Heigh Ho"). Not that the release was a waste of time and/or money. I was thrilled with his cover of The Ramones "Danny Says" (which will be in a future post) and "Sea of Love". But I wanted something new, from Alpha to Omega.

Earlier this month, I was happy to learn that there would be a new Waits CD coming out today. Although this is not a studio album, I'm happy to add to my mounting collection of Waits MP3s. Glitter and Doom is a compilation of songs recorded from his 2008 world tour, one that did not include a stop in Minneapolis (Not feeling the love Tom). To make up for his limited tour, Tom had offered a free sample of the CD, featuring the first eight tracks from the new CD. While any purchase is going to put on hold for a few weeks, I have been going through the gratis sample to great delight. I am quite taken with the live version of "Singapore", a favorite of mine from Rain Dogs. He leads off the CD with "Lucinda", an Orphans original, which serves well as an opening song for any show. So far, my favorite is "Get Behind the Mule", originally from Mule Variations.

A word of warning. This is advanced Waits that requires some prerequisites. If you are not familiar with his work, this is not what you want to use to get started. Anytime I want to start someone on Waits, I recommend Heart Attack and Vine, which is a good Waits starter's kit. It's a merger of his earlier "Piano Bar" era, and you start to hear the ground work for his later shift that becomes more apparent in Swordfish Trombone. Depending on which sound of his you like better, you have the option of either working backwards or forwards. Plus, the title track of the album has one of my favorite lines "There ain't no devil, it's just God when he's drunk".