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March - April 1999 |
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Sunday 11th April 1999 - Song Lyrics After labouring day and night the Silver Cloud Lounge scribes have transcribed almost all the lyrics of Waits' releases as accurately as possible. Scanning the lyrics from the CD inserts was not deemed accurate enough, so the scribes toiled long and hard without sleep nor food to generate the text of the lyrics as sung. |
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Thursday 8th April 1999 - Mule Variations "You know, we'd done the song, Get Behind the Mule. We'd done it several times. We did it -- you know, we did a Chinese version and we did a cha-cha version and ah, you know, raga version and all these different -- and acappella. And so, at one point, somebody mentioned that we had all these different variations on the same song. We had these mule variations. So we started referring to the record as Mule Variations, but in kind of a humorous way. And then it stuck." Get Behind the Mule is featured on the CD bound to the cover of the May edition of the music & movies magazine 'Uncut'. A favourable review of Mule Variations is also contained within the pages. |
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Monday 5th April 1999 - Books Of Moses As well as the thrill of Mule Variations it emerges that there will be an additional fresh Waits recording arriving around the 20th April. Birdman Records are releasing More Oar : A Tribute To The Alexander "Skip" Spence Album with Tom doing a version of Books Of Moses. The album also embodies, The Sir Omaha Quintet, Alejandro Escovedo, Flying Saucer Attack, Alastair Galbraith Outrageous Cherry and other well known names. If you were wondering, Alexander 'Skip' Spence is formerly of Moby Grape and Jefferson Airplane. He entered the Syd Barrett school of brain cell destruction and made a record called Oar in 1969. |
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Saturday 3rd April 1999 - It Rains On Me Revisted Further to my erstwhile undertaking at ascertaining the lyrics to It Rains On Me, a sympathetic member of Rykodisk resolved the predicament by pointing me to the lyrics "as dictated to us by Mr. Weiss". The two problematic lines now deciphered are, 'Louie Lista and Marchese' and 'Robert Sheehan and Paul Body'. The aforementioned characters Paul Body, and Marchese also shared a curbstone with Tom and Chuck in Small Change (Jitterbug Boy). |
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Friday 2nd April 1999 - KCRW On 31st March 1998 Tom Waits meandered into the den of the Californian radio station, KCRW, with his grand piano beneath his arm and conversed for a stretch with Morning Becomes Eclectic master of ceremonies Chris Douridas. During this agreeable chat Tom set down his piano and accomplished a quartet of tunes. Then after Chris requesting Tom to maintain a blissful life and Tom requesting Chris to do likewise they parted. |
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Tuesday 30th March 1999 - Babbachichuija Orbitones, Spoon Harps & Bellowphones, which is the successor to 'Gravikords, Whirlies & Pyrophones', embraces recorded examples of homemade instruments for the lay listener (compiled by Experimental Music Journal editor Bart Hopkin's). It is for Orbitones that Mr Waits specially composed Babbachichuija. Tom Waits seems at home amongst such tracks as 'Motivational Music For Pedestrians', 'Bucephalus Bouncing Ball' and 'Cosmogenesis Excerpt'. If you took delight in You Know What I Idi Amin from Chuck E. Weiss's Extremely Cool you are sure to relish Babbachichuija. So summon your local radio station and plea, "Please accommodate my desire to hear Babbachichuija from Orbitones, Spoon Harps & Bellowphones." |
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Thursday 25th March 1999 - Jesus' Blood Many years ago Tom contacted composer Gavin Bryars to impart the knowledge that he had lost his recording of the original version of Jesus' blood which he said was his "favourite recording". So when Bryars developed the new orchestration he decided to ask Tom to join in. The result can be heard in the 1993 rendition of Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet. Can you withstand seventy four minutes of a looping tramp? |
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Tuesday 23th March 1999 - The Napoleonic Connection The French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte is to be held accountable for that ditty from West Side Story, Somewhere. This insurgent Corsican stirred a collection of his contemporaries. One such fellow was the German composer Ludwig Van Beethoven, whom in homage to the man dedicated his accomplished Piano concerto No. 5 in E flat Op. 73, entitled The "Emperor" (though not by Beethoven who dissipated admiration for Napoleon when the Frenchman proclaimed himself Emperor in 1804). It is from the second movement (adagio un poco mosso) that the twentieth century composer Leonard Berstein took the melody for Somewhere. Berstein transformed Beethoven's wonderfully provoking piece into a ballad for the love lorn insipid Tony. The musical sculptor Tom Waits recorded his rendition of the Beethoven/Berstein/Sondheilm composition for a soundtrack and his album Blue Valentine in 1978. It is interesting to minute that Mr Waits, in his former years, toiled in Napoleons Pizza House, California. Mr Waits now resides in Santa Rosa, Califonia and recorded Mule Variations a few miles from St Helena, which is the very epithet of the Island that Napoleon was banished to. |
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Wednesday 17th March 1999 - Mojo The April issue of the music magazine Mojo features Tom Waits on its cover and contains within fourteen pages devoted to the man. Mr Waits concludes the interview with, "In fact, all my songs are about Nancy Reagan..." |
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Tuesday 16th March 1999 - It Rains On Me Thought I'd try a spot of transcription. Due to it's Woody Guthrie simplicity I managed to resolve It Rains On Me within a few minutes. This was not the case with deciphering the lyrics near the end of the tune, 'Bluey lister and the ma k zee' and 'Prabers sheen and the call boat we' was the best I could come up with. I have a small suspicion that I may be erroneous. |
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Monday 15th March 1999 - Chuck E. Weiss Extremely Cool by Chuck E. Weiss is the CD to bolt out and procure for the latest Tom Waits recordings. Chuck E. Who? I hear you trumpet. Mr Weiss, a drummer and singer, is a long time chum of Tom's. Extremely Cool is Chucks's first recording for eighteen years and is produced by Tom and spouse. Tom co-wrote and sang on a duo of tracks, It Rains On Me and the serious You Know What I Idi Amin. Tom has mentioned Chuck a few times in his primordial recordings;
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Sunday 14th March 1999 - Sea Of Love An inebriated good evening to you all. Welcome to Tom Waits Silver Cloud Lounge. Seems that I have twenty-eight years of Waitsian music history to plot, from The Early Years recordings to the extended wait of Mule Variations. Oh what a chore. The song Sea of Love from the motion picture of the identical appellation has been buzzing circuitously about my head all week, I do not conceive that Del Shannon's rendition would have the equivalent effect upon me, not that I've heard Del's version, nor crave to. Can you conceive of Tom writing lyrics like that? |
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Saturday 13th March 1999 - The Birth of the Silver Cloud Lounge There was a blur drizzle down the plate glass and chance of showers into the afternoon. My disk was teeming with Waitsian matter. An impulse to give birth to sparkling HTML arose. Information about the man is dispersed upon haphazard servers around the globe. Henceforth, I postulated that it would be salient to bestow to the musically appreciative populace anything I possessed or gathered on the subject. So it will come to pass that I shall endeavour to update these pages in a regular manner. This is but a beginning. |
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