Due to unforseen circumstances Mayor Dixon has prevented Chris from posting today, so as an apology for missing last Friday (and the many Fridays before it) I will do a special post for the day. I just got back from a great trip to San Francisco (a recommend all in itself!) and visited my favorite record store in the world, Ameoba Records. If you are ever on the West Coast, a visit to Ameobo is the strongest recommendation I can give. If I walk out of that store spending less than $100 I am suprised, proud, and ashamed of myself all at the same time. It doesn't rival the iternet for amount of music (obviously) but I often miss walking into a record store and being able to actually find something that I want.
I had been looking for this recording of Gavin Bryars' "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet" for a while now. It actually came via recommendation from TJ a couple of years ago. He played it for me, and I really liked it, and then I forgot about it. Recently one of my bosses at Loyola mentioned it, and since we've had this love/hate debate of Tom Waits going on at Friends Recommend this seemed like a good chance to bring it up.
Gavin Bryars is a well-known English classical composer. If you really want to know of his background that is what this Wikipedia entry is for...although he is also a double bassist which earns him points in my book. Basically the whole piece is built around a homeless man singing a folk song. The original recording was for a documentary about homelessness in England. When Bryars heard this particular clip he noticed that it was in tune. He made a loop out of it and played it over and over again, improvising harmonies on the piano to match the vocal part. Apparently while he was doing this he would loop the sample again and again at his place of employment and after time everyone around would be crying. I don't know how valid this is but just hearing the original vocal part (the original singer is labeled Tramp on the recording) caused people around to start crying. It is pretty powerful, so I could believe it.
The essential CD of the recording is 74 minutes long. It begins with just the tramp singing Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet, and you have no idea what is going on. Is this a joke? It goes on for a couple of minutes with him just singing alone. Eventually a quiet string quartet enters in the background, and it sneaks it so perfectly that you barely know it's happening. Throughout the course of the recording it gets the full-blown orchestral treatment, but the finale is where it's at. At the very end Bryars enlisted none other than Tom Waits to sing with the orchestra and loop of the tramp, and it is fantastic. This is one of the lesser known Waits pieces among a lot of his fans, so I wanted to put it on the table.
The Youtube clip I've included is of the ending with Waits singing. The way the whole piece unfolds is pretty special, but this gives it to you in a much smaller and still special package. OK, see you Friday:
This post is actually specifically about Rain Dogs. The reason for the title just being Tom Waits is because a number of people have recommended him as a general artist (George mentioned Tom Waits, and Jessica Tom Waits early(ier) years, whatever time period that means). Chris Laun recommended Rain Dogs specifically, so I am going to chalk this up as an 80% Laun recommends with 10% George and 10% JeskA thrown in. OK?
I've been meaning to post about Rain Dogs for some time now. My problem was that even though a number of people have told me how great of an album it is, it never really hit me as a Tom Waits favorite. Before two weeks ago my favorite Tom Waits album was without question Mule Variations. I would have nothing of anyone ever telling me that there was a better Tom Waits album, because Mule Variations is near perfect. It has goofy tracks, painful heart-wrenching ballads, Primusy tracks, creepy tracks about creepy neighbors, and everything in between. I was pretty much set with my favorite Tom Waits album for the rest of my life. About two weeks ago I decided to do a post on the Chris Laun Rain Dogs recommendation. After listening to Rain Dogs a couple times through I can now only say that Mule Variations is probably my favorite Tom Waits album, it is no longer definite. P.S. before I completely move on from Mule Variations. I recommend the whole album, that is for sure. It works well in it's entirety, and I think from start to finish it is extremely well crafted. A lot of variety from song to song, but that gives the album a great overall arch. Also, there are some top notch musicians on it, including bassist Greg Cohen (Masada, Ornette Coleman), Les Claypool (Primus), Marc Ribot (to be discussed further), and others. While I love all the tracks, some standouts for me are Big In Japan, Hold On, House Where Nobody Lives, Black Markey Baby, Chocolate Jesus, and maybe you should just buy the album.
After all of this praise for Mule Variations I can honestly say that I highly recommend Rain Dogs as well. Where the mood of Mule Variations is overall that of a rainy day and leans towards the depressing side, Rain Dogs sounds like a circus of pirates and muppets overall. It is pretty far to the outer edges of pop music in terms of accessibility, and actually took me a couple listens before I even decided that I liked it. And now I am listening as I type this post and realize that I love this album. Clap Hands just came on and I feel myself almost singing along. Anyway, one of my favorite parts of Rain Dogs is the wide range of instruments Waits used to get the sound. A quick visit to the Rain Dogs Wikipedia entry and a quick scroll down to personell will give you the rundown of exactly which instruments are on the album, but some strange highlights are the use of percussion instruments (most standout being marimba), organ, accordian, banjo, and a variety of horn, string and woodwind instruments. This wide scope of instruments paired with Waits' voice gives us an album that is completely unlike any other. It is also notable for being the first time that Waits hired jazz-based guitar wizard Marc Ribot, and Keith Richards of some famous rock band contributes additional guitar. Check out this one for sure. If you don't like it at first, I suggest you keep listening and it might grow. It did for me.
I have to make a special note of the sequence of the last three songs on the album, Downtown Train, Bride of Rain Dog, and Anywhere I Lay My Head. This might be the best concluding sequence of any album I've ever heard. It really ties the whole thing together. I don't have a link to Bride of Rain Dog, but here is a great video for Downtown Train followed by a live recording of Anywhere I Lay My Head from 2008. It is really great to listen to the Rain Dogs version and then listen to the 2008 version and hear how much lower his voice is now. Amazing! Enjoy. Also, I am too tired to go back and edit this post (which I normally do). You can just deal with it!
Not only does our most recent poster TJ Huff recommend this book, but I also strongly urge you to read it. If I were to submit one of these silly lists this would be in the top-5 of my must read picks. After a year or two of TJ telling me I had to read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close I finally broke down and bought it used off Amazon.com for $4.00. You can currently get it there at the amazingly low price of $3.05. Crazy!
It usually takes me a long time to read a book...like months. This isn't because I am stupid (it may be partially because I am stupid) or a slow reader. It just tends to take me a while to get involved in a book, and I end up reading most of them a few pages at a time over the course of a couple of months. This, however, is one of those books that as soon as I picked up I couldn't stop reading and ended up finishing it in two days. If you want a nice big-word explanation of the book you can check this summary out over at Wikipedia.
Basically it is the story of a boy named Oskar (I think he is 12, he might be 9, but I think 12, but maybe 9 now that I really think about it) dealing with the loss of his father who was killed in the Septemeber 11 attacks. He goes on a city-wide search (in NYC) looking for the owner of a key he found in his father's room. Now, the book has its share of very saddening moments as could be expected. As Oskar would say some of it makes you "wear heavy boots." But what I loved most about the book is how these sad parts are paired with funny...really funny, like some of the funniest things I have read in a book, like LOL funny, parts. The overall effect of this is what TJ calls happy-sad, or beautiful-sad...I'm sure everyone can think of an example of a happy-sad thing they love. Happy-sad is sort of the same as salty-sweet, which is why things like chocolate-covered pretzels are so good. It is also why life-long friend (and weirdo) Matthayes dips his french fries in his frosty when eating at Wendy's. A lot of songs are happy-sad, one of my favorites being Martha by Tom Waits, which you can check out here. Sad because what he's talking about is so depressing, but happy because the song is just so good. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is this same kind of thing. I urge fellow Friends Recommend readers to leave their favorite happy-sad things in comment form. I'm dying to know! I'll leave you with this excerpt from the second page of Extremely Loud:
My first jujitsu class was three and a half months ago. Self-defense was something that I was extremely curious about, for obvious reasons, and Mom thought it would be good for me to have a physical activity besides tambourining, so my first jujitsu class was three and a half months ago. There were fourteen kids in the class, and we all had on neat white robes. We practiced bowing, and then we were all sitting down Native American style, and then Sensei Mark asked me to go over to him. "Kick my privates," he told me. That made me feel self-conscious. "Excusez-moi?" I told him. He spread his legs and told me, "I want you to kick my privates as hard as you can." He put his hands at his sides, and took a breath in, and closed his eyes, and that's how I knew that he actually meant business. "Jose," I told him, and inside I was thinking, What the? He told me, "Go on, guy. Destroy my privates." "Destroy your privates?" With his eyes still closed he cracked up a lot and said, "You couldn't destroy my privates if you tried. That's what's going on here. This is a demonstration of the well-trained body's ability to absorb a direct blow. Now destroy my privates." I told him, "I'm a pacifist," and since most people my age don't know what that means, I turned around and told the others, "I don't think it's right to destroy people's privates. Ever." Sensei Mark said, "Can I ask you something?" I turned back around and told him "'Can I ask you something?' is asking me something." He said, "Do you have dreams of becoming a jujitsu master?" "No," I told him, even thought I don't have dreams of running the family jewelry business anymore. He said "Do you want to know how a jujitsu student becomes a jujitsu master?" "I want to know everything," I told him, but that isn't true anymore either. He told me "A jujitsu student becomes a jujitsu master by destroying his master's privates." I told him, "That's fascinating." My last jujitsu class was three and a half months ago.
