The early part of this week was kind of like the death of a thousand cuts. Lots and lots of minor annoyances, that threatened to pile up and overwhelm me.
Well, actually, as soon as I started to feel sorry for myself, and make a list of all the things that were going wrong, it occurred to me that I have things pretty good compared to most people in North America, much less the world, and it was hard to sustain a good mope.
And then, just as philosophy was starting to pick me up, I accidentally ran into this:
Yes, the 3-CD collection of Tom Waits rarities and miscellany has been released. The title is “Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers, and Bastards“. You can also see track lists (and get samples in stupid Real format) over at Amazon.
What is it? Well, Tom says:
What’s “Orphans”? I don’t know. “Orphans” is a dead end kid driving a coffin with big tires across the Ohio River wearing welding goggles and a wife beater with a lit firecracker in his ear.
Well, it was utterly impossible to be down on a week when you get THREE discs full of new Tom. What’s more, most of these tracks are new to me. Aside from Mule Variations B-sides (like Buzz Fledderjon), and a couple of tracks I had from movie soundtracks (The Fall Of Troy from Dead Man Walking, and Little Drop Of Poison from Shrek, and Heigh Ho from that Disney album) it’s all stuff I haven’t heard before. Yay!
Where are these tracks from? Well, some are dug up from the vaults, and some are shiny and new. Some of them are covers. Hell, some of it is Waits doing Kerouac and Bukowski. Or, as Tom would say:
Gathering all this material together was like rounding up chickens at the beach. It’s not like you go into vault and check out what you need. Most of it was lost or buried under the house. Some of the tapes I had to pay ransom for to a plumber in Russia. You fall into the vat. We started to write just to climb out of the vat. Then you start listening and sorting and start writing in response to what you hear. And more recording. And then you get bit by a spider, go down the gopher hole, and make a whole different record. That was the process pretty much the last three years.
If you want MP3s to check out some of the songs, or to see some other reviews, there are lots of music blogs covering this. I certainly can’t review it. “I love Tom, this is awesome” is not really an insightful review.
I do want to note that the booklet includes a page titled ‘bastard musicians’, and don’t think I don’t know that part of the appeal of titling the album the way he did was that the booklet could include such a page.
I can’t imagine there are a lot of fence-sitters on this. Either you heard this was out and immediately rushed off to go buy a copy, or else it’s not something for you. However, just in case there are some people who don’t understand why this is awesome, but perhaps could be convinced, here’s Waits talking about some of what is on the album:
On Orphans there is a mambo about a convict who breaks out of jail with a fishbone, a gospel train song about Charlie Whitman and John Wilkes Boothe, a delta blues about a disturbing neighbor, a spoken word piece about a woman who was struck by lightening, an 18th century Scottish madrigal about murderous sibling rivalry, an American backwoods a cappella about a hanging. Even a song by Jack Kerouac and a spiritual with my own personal petition to the Lord with prayer…There’s even a show tune about an old altar boy and a rockabilly song about a young man who’s begging to be lied to.
If that paragraph alone doesn’t sell you, then Tom’s probably not for you.
He is, however, definitely for me, and having this disc on pretty constant play for the last couple of days has destroyed any remanants of my sour mood, leaving me well prepared for the wild celebrations that are sure to occur tonight.
