Janszoon

I've always thought of Frank's Wild Years as a fan favorite to be honest.

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TheBig3

None of the ones I've ever come across. Its a musical that I'm better few of them have scene.

I'm giving H&V one more spin and then i'll review it. I listened yesterday again and I'm getting a good enough feel to review it I think.

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TheBig3

To be up-front, before giving this album its lengthy and time consuming I didn't think much of it. And the reason its review is so late in coming is really two reasons:

1. I didn't listen to it much prior so I hadn't had months upon years of thoughts about it

&

2. I wanted to review it fairly. Many posters in this thread alone gave it moderate to glowing reviews and I didn't want to pan it on my lack of listening.

But one of the issues I had to reconcile as well was that this is still an album review coming from me - not an empirical review - and at the end of the day I need to sleep peacefully with what I've written.

Heart Attack & Vine is still, to me anyhow, an album lost in time. Adrift in an ocean full of bigger albums, better songs, and stations that Waits landed on. Because of this, the album is better seen as a journey than any sort of stance in the musical landscape.

Its two-faced. Which is generally true of his entire Catalog. His wife Katherine is quote as saying its "Grim Reapers and Grand Weepers." Riffing on that review, HA&V is Grand Weepers and Blackout Drunks. If I need a sentence to review this album it would be...

Of the 9 songs, it would break down something like this

A) Heartattack and Vine
A) In Shade
B) Saving All My Love For You
A) Downtown
B) Jersey Girl
A) 'til the Money Runs Out
B) On the Nickel
A) Mr. Siegal
B) Ruby's Arms

The A's are the drunks, the B's are the weepers. And they each have their appealing attributes but like some of the lesser songs on Closing Time, the B's show their Age. "Saving All My Love" is probably the worst song on here if only because of its 70's style string sections and, of the B's its not the heaviest hitter.

The other three are "On the Nickle" and "Ruby's Arms" which have enough vocal grit and lyrical brilliance to carry through the day; The Third is "Jersey Girl" which is the least Waits song ever, but simultaneously brilliant. Theres a reason Springsteen covered it, and its not just because he's from the Garden State.

You can tell, looking backward, that this was the start of an amazing style Waits will employ for much of his career, but you also would note that this isn't the best he's done.

The A's (the drunks) on the other hand are Waits at his transitional best. This is neither Closing Time nor Swordfish Trombones but while he's going from the former to the latter, he rides a Hammond B3 to amazing results.

This isn't the blues because its too happy, and thats only because its drank away its problems. These 5 songs are the film you wake up with on your skin the next day when you're hung over in a room you know isn't yours. Its the heat of sin in the moment you're going in for the kill, its not the thoughts of a drunk man, its the soundtrack to his swagger.

The title track is what everyone should play as they drive out of their neighborhood for a forgotten weekend in some far off destination you aren't bringing your wife on. And "'til the money runs out" is what the dice roll to in side alley gambling scams. This album is filthy and it could really only take place in two places in America - Las Vegas & New Orleans. But the absolute killer is "Mr. Siegal." Rollicking piano, a guitar that cuts like that first shot of whiskey at 11 am.

While I still can't say this is the first or third Waits album you should pick up, you should give it a listen before you rule it out. There isn't a field to harvest from lyrically here, neither is there the wild experimentation musically that Waits is known for, this album is the best friend you're going to have when you're showing off the gutter the next morning.

Must Hear:

1. Mr. Siegal
2. Jersey Girl
3. Heartattack & Vine
4. Ruby's Arms.

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TheBig3

If the three previous albums represent a Tom Waits in transition, then Blood Money would tell us that he was clearly becoming possessed. This is the album every scary metal you've ever heard wished they could have made. Of all the Waits albums there is, Blood Money might be one of my favorite. Waits throws out all the stops here; wild musical experimentation, vocals that gave up hedging bets and went full on hoarse, and some of the darker lyrics in the catalog.

Written simultaneously with Alice, Blood Money represents the aforementioned "Grim Reapers" element of Waits writing side. It leads off with "Misery is the River of the World," the soundtrack to what could only be a death march of carnival fire ants. A stand-up Bass keeps a 2-beat throb while the rest of the instruments create an entire world with flourishes from some unlikely tools: the steel drum sound comes from a tree that grows in Brazil, hollowed out and played on its bends, crash symbols appear from nowhere and grow like ripples in a pond, and a piano that rides the vacillation between creepy blues stomp and music from the carnivals house of mirrors.

Sound confusing? Read it while you're listening.

To keep with the theme, this track is followed closely by "Everything Goes to Hell" which gives a full on horn section that appears often on the album and is actually one of the reasons that I really dig this album. I'm a sucker for horns, and Waits doesn't give us mere trumpet flashes, we're getting instrumentation. These babies have some personality. And this is an attitude on Blood Money that is pervasive; Instruments floating around the room, in the high orbit of a simple beat or groove and Waits's barking gravel vocals reminding us that the musical drunken revelry is the only escape we have from the horrors that await us when we go back to face the real world.

Even when the mood changes musically, the lyrics keep the clouds grounded, showing a cast of characters lost in their own emotional fog. "Coney Island Baby" and "All the World is Green" sound as pleasant as some of Waits's sappier ballads, but there's an Oh Henry twist to this taste of pleasantries and the way "All the World is Green" plays out, you'd think it was inspired by some Persephonian style of torture.

But if this is taken as a speed bump by the listener, things aren't just going to get back on track, they're about to ride off of the rails. "God's Away on Business", while not as vicious in title as the first two songs on the album, brings a sharp, fast-paced baratone-horn and upright bass tempo. And this song illuminates something you've been hearing from the jump on this album that shows Waits's skill more than almost anything else - the mask of horror that this album wears is supported by an undercurrent of quirky, almost laconic and good-hearted instrumentation. But as they operate in the gravitational pull of Waits's voice, it becomes one of the more sinister albums I've ever heard.

While the album shows Tom at his more...adventurous, and the album has a few more of those "Coney Island Baby" takes (Woe, Lullaby), they maintain the same lament as their earlier counterparts.

Still the album maintains the sort of tone you'd expect from a recording called Blood Money, with some of its darker tracks, "Another Man's Vine" which wouldn't be out of place in some terrible pirate narrative, and "Starving in the Belly of a Whale" with its driving pulse and sharp, jabbing trumpets, create not just a wounded cast of characters but a world punished by what seems to be less of an Angry God, and more of a God who's gone off on Business.

Must Hear:

1. God's Away on Business
2. Starving in the Belly of a Whale
3. Misery is the River of the World
4. Knife Chase [Instrumental]

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Janszoon

Well it was with all the Tom Waits fans I knew in college for sure. Right where you live no less.

LOL wat. Are you drunk?

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TheBig3

Dear Mr. Zoon,

It has come to my attention that I've written two reviews you seen to have found invisible, and instead pointed out that I was either drunk or hammered when I wrote back to you. Please find the two reviews you missed above.

All the best,
Big3

P.S. College kids in this city suck balls.

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Janszoon

All in due time, old bean. I simply felt I would be remiss if I failed to respond to your remarks.

Your balls?

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TheBig3

When they aren't being pussies.

Also, I hope you didn't take my response as too douchey. I'm high on wine and Snake shows on discovery. I'm just talking out of my asp.

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Janszoon

lol

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CanwllCorfe

I finally tried Tom Waits after hearing his name mentioned so much. The only album that really struck me was Blood Money. I love it immensely

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