NAPOLEON'S STILL AROUND?

If you've been lurking around here a while, you may have noticed. I've got a thing for early Tom Waits stuff. It might be because he was one of few non-oldies artists to survive the punk rock purge of my record collection. You may have had one of those, when punk rock powered your personal bullshit detector, and a lot of the bands that you liked became somewhat irrelevant, not necessarily because of their music, but because of their showbiz flash and all that rock star nonsense. Waits still seemed like a regular guy to me. A few years later, I happened to meet him. He was still living at the Tropicana Hotel at the time and though the conversation was short, he did seem like a regular guy, albeit a regular guy about thirty years older than his age. Anyway, the early stuff has always been my preference. Yeah, yeah, the later stuff is good and all that, but there's something about the early stuff that's so simple that it makes the bells and whistles of some of the later stuff seem unnecessary. And now I'll use the word stuff just one more time for good measure.

Aquarium Drunkard just posted a live set from 1976, from a live radio broadcast of a show in Chicago. When I went looking for a few single songs to pad things out, I found another live set from 1974, recorded at the Troubadour, in L.A. We'll wait while you empty your ashtray.

The photo above was taken outside Folk Arts, in San Diego, where he was a local, Snapped in 1974 by Virginia Curtis, wife of Lou Curtis, together the proprietors of the record store. Folk Arts Rare Records is still open. And they have one hell of a musical archive. Folk, blues and gospel.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~ 

Listen:
Tom Waits - New Coat of Paint mp3 at Missy Oshimura (?)
Tom Waits - Tom Traubert's Blues mp3 at Pathfinder Pat
Tom Waits - I Hope That I Don't Fall In Love With You mp3 at Sensuous Summons
Live sets:
Tom Waits - Live at the Troubadour, 1974 mp3 at Crooks and Liars 64 minute set, fast download
Tom Waits - Live at the Ivanhoe Theater, Chicago, 1976 (zip) at Aquarium Drunkard Go there to get it.