A LOOSE THREAD, A GREAT EXCUSE

It's game three of the Padres/Dodgers division series. Yeah, I'm distracted. I've been meaning to post some early Tom Waits and, since he was at one time a local  (in the photo above outside the original location of Folk Arts on Washington Street), it's a good enough. The first two songs are Southern California-centric. "San Diego Serenade" is, obviously, and "Diamond On My Windshield" is about driving north, name checking first Oceanside (roughly 60 miles up the road) and then San Clemente and the Orange Drive-In (which may not exist anymore). Regardless of locale, all of these songs are favorite early Waits tunes. It's crazy how his stuff evolved after the early eighties, when he started getting a little weirder. Then again, he's always his his own style. Even with his early stuff he was wildly different from his contemporaries, not the least because of his gravel voice. While the Eagles (who covered his "Ol' 55" on an early LP) were singing about peaceful easy feelings, Waits was singing about pasties and G-strings.

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Listen:
Tom Waits - San Diego Serenade mp3 at Internet Archive
Tom Waits - Diamond On My Windshield mp3 at Internet Archive
Tom Waits - Step Right Up mp3 at Internet Archive
Tom Waits - Martha mp3 at Internet Archive
Tom Waits - Ol' 55 mp3 at Internet Archive
Tom Waits - Shiver Me Timbers mp3 at Internet Archive

PROTO-OLD FART

Here's a good one that I ran into, as usual while looking for something entirely different. It's a well recorded early live set from Tom Waits from a broadcast of Austin City Limits. If you're only familiar with Waits's later post-Rain Dogs stuff, these might seem a little less adventurous. Musically, that may be true, but the early stuff is what brought him to the table. His trademark gravely voice is there, but the music is more old school. There's mid-song storytelling coupled with smoky lounge jazz of the crinkly naugahyde booth variety. Considering that it was recorded in 1978 when Waits was twenty-nine and this type of music entirely  out of fashion, it's amazing to think of someone that age not grasping for that brass ring of youth acceptance.

There's another set down there from a BBC show in 1979, nine songs. I haven't got to that one yet, but that's my next stop. If you don't like early Tom Waits, well, I guess you're just shit outta luck tonight. Me, I'm diggin' in.

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Listen:
Tom Waits - Austin City Limits, Christmas 1978 at Big O Seven individual mp3s
NOTE: "To reduce spamming, the BigO website is going through Cloudflare. What it does is scan your browser to ensure the visitor is not a spam. Do not be alarmed as this usually takes only a few seconds." Letting you know so you don't freak out.
Tom Waits - Never Talk to Strangers (BBC 1979) at Aquarium Drunkard Nine songs in a zip. Once at Mediafire, click only on the green download button.

THE KID AND THE LIFER

This past weekend I was walking down the short three block long business district towards the beach. Walking in the opposite direction was a kid, looking like he was in his mid-teens. He was walking down the street holding a record album with both hands, reading the liner notes with a big shit eating grin on his face. I was so enamored with the look of a kid that age being that excited by an album cover, I didn't even notice what record he was looking at. I just looked at his face and imagined what lay before him, because many years ago, I was that kid, on that very same sidewalk, doing that exact same thing. Checking out the liner notes of a just purchased record. Back then the record store was Soundsville, and it was just two doors down from the current record store, the curiously named Cow. I flashed back to all of the excitement of the trek home to listen to a new record for the first time. I thought about all of the record stores I've been in, all the counter guys whose wisdom I soaked up, all the discoveries and chances taken merely on the merit of a cool album cover. I was hoping that kid's smile would reappear, week after week for decades as mine has.

I just found out that on the very same day I saw that kid, San Diego lost one of the longest running and most knowledgeable counter guys that has ever worked in a local record store. His name was Lou Curtiss, and he may not be well known outside of his hometown but believe me, music freaks here knew him, particularly those who are into roots music. He ran his own record store, Folk Arts, for 47 years (he sold it in, I think, 2014). His specialty was the old shit. Old timey, early blues, early jazz, folk and so on, with 78s as far back as 1892. As a local musician put it on Facebook today, "Who else would have a whole section in their store of rare 78’s labeled ‘Honking Sax’" And he had a radio show, Jazz Roots, on the local jazz station. And he wrote for the local roots music tabloid, Troubadour, and he put on folk festivals, and later roots festivals. Dude knew his shit.

Curtiss was an early supporter of Tom Waits, before he was signed and after. That top photo above is Waits hanging outside Folk Arts in 1974, taken by Curtiss's wife Virginia. So that's the tie in with the link below to a 1976 Waits show. There's also a link to Honey Where You Been So Long, an unrelated but similar in theme old timey blues site, and a link to Folk Arts' partial library of late sixties folk festivals Curtiss was involved in. Because Curtiss has been described as a curmudgeon, and just for good measure, a totally unrelated interview with 78 collector Joe Bussard, an opinionated sourpuss with an insane record collection.

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Listen:

Tom Waits - Live at the Ivanhoe Theater, Chicago, 1976 (zip) at Aquarium Drunkard Go there to get it.
Visit:
Honey Where You Been So Long Pre-war blues, yo.
The Lou Curtiss Sound Library All good.
Joe Bussard, 78 collector - Interview, photos and streaming mix at Dust and Grooves Joe Bussard is punk rock.

PRIDE OF NAPOLEON'S

Did you know there was an animation film of Tom Waits's "For No One " that dates back to 1979? I did not. Before computer animation, before CGI and all of that. Before MTV. It's hand drawn from film shot from different angles in a studio. It was made as a test for a new kind of animation process that Lyon Lamb Video Animation Systems was trying to sell. The site for the short film has the complete animated version and a short clip of the source film, of Waits in the studio with some sultry lady.  (YouTube links for both are below). 

That got me poking around for accompanying stuff. I was jazzed to find that the posting of Waits's set at the San Diego Folk Festival (1974) is back online at Captain's Dead. The set is great, particularly if you like his early stuff. It's just him, no band, and it's raw, but really well recorded with a lot of good between song patter, His disparaging remarks about VWs in the intro to "Looking For the Heart of Saturday Night" are yuk worthy. And any of you from San Diego who remember the Greyhound Depot of yore, will appreciate his description of those glory days in the intro to "Depot Depot", There's a few other things below too.

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Listen:
Tom Waits - New Coat of Paint mp3 at Missy Oshimura (?)
Tom Waits - I Hope That I Don't Fall In Love With You mp3 at Sensuous Summons
Tom Waits - Bad As Me mp3 at In All Caps
Tom Waits - Three more songs at In All Caps
The live set:
Tow Waits - San Diego Folk Festival, 1974 at Captain's Dead 11 songs, go there to get them.
Video:
Tom Waits - For No One (anitmated) at YouTube
Tom Waits - For No One (source clip for above) at YouTube
Tom Waits on Fernwood Tonight , 1977 at YouTube This is great. Stick around for the interview.
Tom Waits - San Diego Serenade (live) at YouTube
Visit:
Tom Waits For No One The story behind it, sketch books, clips, etc.

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.

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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.

THAT BIG FUCKIN' BOMB MADE ME DEAF

The video for Tom Wait's "Hell Broke Luce" has been put online and it's a whopper. Really, just speaking visually, every single shot in it is arresting. And Wait's lyrics spelling out the perils and reality of going off to war make it a chilling four minutes. It really isn't a music video. It's not a film, or a dream sequence. It's, dare I say, art; in a good way. Everything comes together in a video that you will not be able to shake. If you're wondering why loose is spelled "luce," in an interview with Slate.com, Waits said, "There was a prisoner in Alcatraz during a prison riot—this goes back to the ’40s. And during the riot, of course, everyone was nervous, and he scratched on the wall with a knife. And he wrote 'hell broke luce,' and that’s how he spelled it." The Wait's quote pulled from Mojo's site about the video, while serving as a description of his intent, doesn't come close to preparing you for the intensity of the whole thing:

“Matt Mahurin has created an apocalyptic war dream to accompany the song ‘Hell Broke Luce.' Kathleen [Wait's partner] and I envisioned it as an enlightened drill sergeant yelling the hard truths of war to a brand new batch of recruits. The video grew from the gnawing image of a soldier pulling his home, through a battlefield, at the end of a rope."

“I think you will agree, it’s uplifting and fun.” Yeah, right. Maximize your screen and see how uplifted you are.

More video:
Tom Waits - Chicago at YouTube From the Late Show With David Letterman
Visit:
Tom Waits interview at Slate.com
Earlier Tom Waits posts

ODDBALL RECORD CHAMP

I shouldn't really have to go into a big long thing here about "Lowdown Monkey Blues," a song by Tom Waits and the Replacements. If you're in the probable majority (here, at least), you have more than a passing interest in both. Regardless, this should be a no-brainer. At minimum, for curiosity value. It was recorded around 1990, and other than that I know little of it's provenance. I particularly like the part right after Paul Westerberg sings "I'm a lowdown, lowdown sack of shit" (at 4:26). You hear Waits chuckle, and it sounds just like a stoner chuckle. I don't really see Waits as a stoner, so it's made all the funnier. (Unfortunately the song is cut off right after that part.)

There's a couple others Waits songs down there. I've always liked "Martha" a song from his first album (1973). It's sung in the character of an older guy calling an ex from decades earlier. As I've gotten older, I found it more and more remarkable that he wrote it in his mid-twenties. He does nail something in it. The last one, "Sea of Love," is a cover of the song you've heard a zillion times. Posted as filler.

You really ought to check out Big Rock Candy Mountain, the blog that posted the Waits/Replacements cut. There's a bunch of good stuff over there; worth getting lost. I'd been meaning to point you towards their last post, about the band catl.

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Listen:
Tom Waits and the Replacements - Lowdown Monkey Blues mp3 at Big Rock Candy Mountain
Tom Waits - Martha mp3 at Gigantic Club
Tom Waits - Sea of Love mp3 at Town Full of Losers

WAITS ODDBALLERS ALERT

In the interest of giving you Tom Waits fiends a heads up for every oddball I run across, here's one from 1980, when he guested on an album by jazz saxophonist Richie Cole, called Hollywood Madness. (I know the image above is a bit misleading, but for all practical purposes, this is a Tom Waits recording, as he's the vocalist). There's a few weird things going on here, one of which is Tom Waits singing about Tom Waits. Sure, he's written a bunch of songs relating personal experiences, that's what Tom Waits does. But in this sucker he name checks himself. He also does a pretty comical scat thing, and a rambling spoken word outro. The whole thing sounds like something from a musical, due in no small part to the background vocals by the Manhattan Transfer, not to mention Waits sounding almost as buoyant as Louis Armstrong. The whole thing is entirely lighthearted which, for Waits, is weird.

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Listen:

Tom Waits with Richie Cole, Eddie Jefferson & the Manhattan Transfer - Waitin' on Waits mp3 (8/9/2012: NOTE: Music link has been disabled. Sorry.) at Ballistic Wax
Further listening:
Four more recent Waits songs at In All Caps

MORE HOLIDAY FODDER

Don't get all worked up in a fuss over there. There's nothing by Kiss here. That image up there was just too easy, too stupid, to not do. Anyway, here's a mixed bag of various holiday songs. Do listen to the Lee Perry songs back-to-back, and hear him go from reggae producer to space cadet. I think his "Santa Claus" is fast becoming one of my favorite Christmas songs ever. Yeah, have another Scratch!

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Listen:
Lee Perry & Sandra Robinson - Merry Christmas, Happy New Year mp3 at Music Like Dirt
Lee Perry - Santa Claus mp3 at Music Like Dirt
Clarence Carter - Back Door Santa mp3 at Music Like Dirt
Billy Childish & the MBE - Santa Clause mp3 at Brooklyn Vegan
Louis Prima - Shake Hands With Santa Claus mp3 at Lil' Mike's
Shonen Knife - Space Christmas mp3 at Lost In Your In Box
James Brown - Santa Clause, Santa Claus mp3 at AM Then FM
Carla Thomas - Gee Whiz It's Christmas mp3 at Kick Kick Snare
Tom Waits - Silent Night mp3 at Salad Days Music

THERE'S A DRUNK IN THE BACK YARD

Here's another one with Keith Richards, this time from the newest Tom Waits long player. (Man, he gets around.) Not too crazy about how Waits name checks Jagger and Richards in the song (multiple times), but otherwise, it's got a great beat and it's easy to dance to. Another thing to note: Dylan's other son has a camera. I know because he made the video for the song.

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Listen:
Tom Waits - Satisfied mp3 at Informal Flick Thru
Four more new Waits songs at In All Caps Added 11/14/11
Earlier Tom Waits posts:
Tom Waits and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band
Early Tom Waits Live

SHIVER ME TIMBERS

A few weeks ago, I posted a link to a song on the blog My Dad's Records. Today I returned there to dig through it a little and enjoyed a serendipitous moment that was a little too close to home to ignore. The blog is by a guy who is digitizing his dad's record collection, and taking the opportunity to have conversations with his dad about the music, album by album. His dad had/has pretty good taste, so it's kind of neat seeing the insights he passes on as an elder, as much as it is reading his son's interpretations.

Note: From here down, the rest of this post is about my Dad, so skip to the links at the bottom if you couldn't give a shit.

Where was I? Oh yeah, it got me thinking about my own Dad, who passed away a few years ago. He had lost pretty much his entire savings trying to start a business just after his retirement, and ended up with little more than Social Security to live on. He took on part time work to stow a little money away, and began brushing up on his sailing, something he had done as a teenager and young man, but not much since. He soon became competent enough to rent medium size boats and go sailing in the local bays. He looked for crewing opportunities, and landed a couple open water cruises with strangers looking for able bodied, albeit retirement aged, crew.

Then, with a little help from friends, he bought Aeolus, his own boat, living on it in a local marina, to cut expenses and to prepare it for a solo voyage. It took a year or so, but he finally got it in ship shape. The maiden solo voyage was to be up and down the coast of Baja California. He shoved off, remaining in contact with family and friends via mail and email, when he stopped at various marinas. Some of the stories he related in his correspondences were hilarious (though, perhaps, only if you knew him). In one letter, he told of being on deck in the middle of the night, buck naked and bathing, in the middle of the ocean. Out of nowhere, a helicopter appeared, shining a spotlight on him. Figuring that they might think he was in distress, he gave them the all clear, flipping the bird at the blinding light. In another letter, he related having caught a fish big enough that he couldn't possible eat it all, so he gave it to the people in the local fishing village. Later that night, he was below deck when he heard some clunking around and some animal sounds and when he ducked out of the cabin, he saw a villager delivering a live goat, tied at the hoofs, reciprocating his gift of fish. The person delivering the goat was so appreciative, and my Dad's Spanish so limited, that declining the gift took a great deal of effort. (Now, I really want to read the old letters again.)

After a while, my Dad had some health concerns, and came back to the U.S., leaving his boat in a Mexican marina for his return. His health worsened, and after briefly returning to Mexico to salvage his belongings and sell Aeolus, he returned to the states to live out the rest of his life.

So what do the songs below have to do with anything? Recently, I had a conversation with my sister, about my Dad's sailing and his unrealized long term plans. I mentioned that I thought that his wish was to die at sea, that it was his preferred "perfect way to go." She confirmed that it was absolutely his intention, reminding me that he had laid out provisions that would repay his friends that had helped him buy Aeolus. Back to the beginning, tonight, while perusing Dad's Records, I ran into a song, "Shiver Me Timbers" by Tom Waits, that has reminded me of my Dad ever since his passing, even without the recent confirmations of his intent by my sister. The song really should have been played at his wake. It seems so dead-on true to his spirit.

One of my Dad's favorite songs was Kris Kristofferson's "Sunday Morning Coming Down." He loved the line about picking out "my cleanest dirty shirt." It's one of the few songs that we ever got around to talking about. And that is why I like the blog Dad's Records. I hope that the guy realizes what a neat thing he's doing. I think it's neat, in a high praise sorta way.

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Tom Waits - Shiver Me Timbers mp3 at Dad's Records
Kris Kristofferson - Sunday Morning Coming Down mp3 at HankUS1.com
Previous posts about Tom Waits:
Tom Waits and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band
Early Tom Waits: Live

TOM WAITS & THE PRESERVATION HALL JAZZ BAND

Tom Waits and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, on a 78 RPM record. Sounds enticing, eh? Only 504 copies pressed, and they just went on sale at the Preservation Hall Jazz Band store, so if you're so inclined, you better not wait (here's where.). Oh yeah, they're fifty bucks each, which is a little rich for my blood, but for you high rollers, it's tax deductible. It's two songs, “Tootie Ma Is A Big Fine Thing” and “Corrine Died On The Battlefield.” The original versions of these songs, by Danny Barker, were recorded in 1947, and according to the site, are "two of the earliest known recorded examples of Mardi Gras Indian chants." Here's one of the songs:

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Tom Waits & the Preservation Hall Jazz Band - Tootie Ma Is A Big Fine Thing mp3 at Here Comes the Flood
The Preservation Hall Jazz Band online store
The Preservation Hall Jazz Band site

EARLY TOM WAITS: LIVE

Above photo by Virginia Curtiss (1974)

Back when I was in high school, I had a buddy whose Dad was really into folk music. For a few years running, he'd pile his son, me and my brother, into his car and take us out to the San Diego Folk Festival. I don't have many memories from the shows we attended, but I do remember that it was the first time I'd heard of Lou Curtiss and his record shop, Folk Arts (then at the end of India St., where Gellato Vera is now). To those not from the San Diego area, Lou Curtiss is probably not a familiar name. But, if you lived here, you'd likely know that he's been championing roots music for a long, long time. He opened his record store and organized the first San Diego Folk Festival in 1967, and just kept going. He later helped book music for the early Adams Avenue Street Fairs and, after that, the Adams Avenue Roots Festival. He writes a column for The Troubadour, and has a radio show, "Jazz Roots," on the local jazz station (heard live on 88.3 FM and online, Sundays from 8:00 to 10:00 Pacific Time). All this and he's an active archivist and researcher for the Smithsonian and Library of Congress.

Folk Arts was, and still is, a magnet for those looking for out-of-print recordings. Shop visitors run the gamut; past customers include Muddy Waters, Horace Silver, R. Crumb, Joan Baez, and local boy-done-good Tom Waits. Waits, a store regular back in the day, said of his friend, “Lou Curtiss is a heroic curmudgeon, entrepreneur and keeper of the flame.” Which brings us to the impetus for this post. When I ran into a post on Captains Dead, with Tom Waits from the 1974 Folk Festival, I had to post a link, for a few reasons. The fact that this is early Waits, without a full band, accompanying himself on guitar and piano, was reason enough. Then, there's chatter between songs, which is really, really, funny in places. And the excellent quality of the recordings didn't hurt. The big reason, though, was to publicly thank Curtiss, for doing what he does, humbly, and without tooting his own horn, for so many years. He's every music lover's cool older brother. The man is a local treasure.

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Tom Waits at the 1974 San Diego Folk Festival at Captain's Dead NOTE: As of 11/8/11 these links are dead, but the ones on the link below are still live:
Another live Tom Waits set from 1979, 20 mp3's at Captain's Dead (Right click song titles to download)
Folk Arts Rare Records, Curtiss' record store
The 4th annual SD Folk Festival mp3s at Folk Arts, Sam Chatman, Sam Hinton, Merle Travis and others
Samples from the Lou Curtiss Sound Library
"Lou Curtiss keeps American roots music alive here" at SignOnSanDiego

Above photo of Tom Waits by Virginia Curtiss (1974)