Tom Waits - KPFK Folkscene, July 23th, 1974 (Remastered, Live On Broadcasting) '2025

Tracks list

Tracklist:

1. Intro / Better Off Without a Wife (Live) (02:14)
2. It's Good to See You (Live) (03:27)
3. Foggy Night (Live) (02:27)
4. You're Working on Your Second Album (Live) (05:45)
5. The Ghost of Saturday Night (Live) (01:37)
6. (Looking For) the Heart of Saturday Night (Live) (03:12)
7. That's Such a Fine Song (Live) (02:16)
8. Semi Suite (Live) (02:45)
9. Let Me Ask You Something (Live) (01:09)
10. Drunk on the Moon (Live) (03:22)
11. I Wonder (Live) (01:00)
12. Depot Depot (Live) (02:38)
13. For Those That May Have Just Joined Us (Live) (01:43)
14. Diamonds on My Windshield (Live) (01:57)
15. That's Great (Live) (02:48)
16. San Diego Seranade (Live) (03:01)
17. What Are You Plans Now (Live) (06:41)
18. Rosie (Live) (02:47)
19. Forthose of You (Live) (00:43)
20. Fumblin'with the Blues (Live) (02:30)


 moreHe has composed for and acted in movies and musicals as a character
actor. His list of supporting roles includes Paradise Alley, Rumblefish, The
Cotton Club, The Outsiders, and Bram Stoker's Dracula, to name a few. He has
also appeared in a number of director Jim Jarmusch's films including a starring
role in 1986's Down by Law. Waits received an Academy Award nomination for his
score and soundtrack for Francis Ford Coppola's One from the Heart.

Waits heard an abundance of American song forms -- from show tunes and crooners
to blues and hillbilly music -- while growing up in San Diego during the '50s
and early '60s; he was also under the sway of Border Radio's golden era and
exposed to everything from mariachi and banda to swing, jump blues, R&B, honky
tonk, folk, and early rock & roll. Wrapped up in music and Jack Kerouac's On the
Road, he taught himself piano and guitar as a teenager and began singing on San
Diego's burgeoning folk scene. He also began writing his own songs based on
snatches of overheard conversation. Leaving home while still an adolescent,
Waits hit the road for Los Angeles, where he lived out of his car while working
as a doorman at the L.A. nightclub The Heritage. He got his performing break in
1969 at the Troubadour (and freely borrowed from jazz comedian Lord Buckley's
stage persona) and eventually secured work as a songwriter before signing a
recording contract with Asylum Records. Relocating to the infamous Tropicana
Motor Hotel, he made fast friends with other aspiring artists and denizens of
the nighttime streets (including Chuck E. Weiss and Rickie Lee Jones), and
recorded and released his Jerry Yester-produced debut album Closing Time in
1973. The album included the track "Ol' '55," which was covered by the Eagles on
their first album, On the Border, and it eventually became a minor hit, securing
him his first steady income when the album went multi-platinum. In those early
days, Waits played anywhere and everywhere he could get a gig. He opened shows
for artists like Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention in theaters, and
headlined seedy bars and long-abandoned jazz clubs from coast to coast. In 1974,
Waits followed up with The Heart of Saturday Night, produced by Bones Howe. Less
folky and countrified than his debut, the album was positively received by
critics and sold well, entering the lower rungs of the Top 200 chart. Its title
track became a regional hit for Jerry Jeff Walker.

Seasoned by the road, Waits' live shows had become freewheeling encounters with
audiences. He not only played and sang, but told wryly humorous, sometimes
outrageous, sometimes bawdy stories that self-mythologized his persona and
offered character sketches of strippers, circus freaks, barflies, and other
streetwise ne'er-do-wells. These were captured on 1975's double-length classic
Nighthawks at the Diner; his band included all jazzmen, with drummer Jim
Hughart, pianist Michael Melvoin, and saxophonist Pete Christlieb. Waits stayed
with the rangy jazz tip for 1976's Small Change (number 89), a more melancholy,
lush affair that also brought the first hints of the raw, bluesy sound that
appeared on later albums. While his rhythm section included Hughart and West
Coast jazz icon Shelly Manne on drums, Waits and Howe also showed off the
songwriter's love for ballads by adding a string section. Some of its songs,
including "Tom Traubert's Blues" (aka "Waltzing Matilda") and "Step Right Up"
became staples in his setlist for decades. Waits doubled down on jazz and
low-key swing-blues for 1977's Foreign Affairs, whose best-known track was a
duet with Bette Midler on "I Never Talk to Strangers." It hit 111 on the Top
200. While touring and playing slightly bigger rooms, Waits sought to project a
more sinister sound and added an electric guitar (for the first time) to 1978's
brooding, menacing Blue Valentine, that confused fans of his more laid-back
style. In 1980, he issued Heartattack and Vine. Its electric blues and R&B slant
propelled it into the top half of the Top 200. It was his best-selling
full-length since Small Change. The set also included the song "Jersey Girl,"
later covered by Bruce Springsteen. It was his final recording for Asylum.

Waits jumped ship to Chris Blackwell's Island Records for 1983's
Swordfishtrombones. Frustrated by the limitations of standard instrumentation
that he was basically forced to use, his new label encouraged his freedom. Waits
established his "junkyard orchestral deviation" concept by using marimbas,
trashcan lids, kettle drums, and tympani as well as bleating trombones and muted
trumpets. While the shift in sonics was radical and the public didn’t
initially get it (it only reached 183 on the Top 200), it has since become one
of his most respected recordings. Prior to the album's issue, Waits and Crystal
Gayle had been working on the music for and their appearances in One from the
Heart. On set, he encountered actress and writer Kathleen Brennan for the first
time. They fell in love and were married in 1980. She became his constant
collaborator and co-writer. The iconic Rain Dogs followed in 1985 as Waits moved
deeper into an experimental direction where his now-ubiquitous megaphone, car
radios, and percussion instruments made from scrap metal carried the same place
in the mix as keyboards, electric guitars, and drums while offering a host of
more accessible songs including "Downtown Train" (later covered to hit status by
Rod Stewart, who cribbed the idea for his version from a conversation with Bob
Seger, who'd later cut "Blind Love"). Waits' tunes have since provided Marianne
Faithfull, Dion, and others with material. His profile in the world had risen.
He was able to secure all-star sidemen including guitarists Marc Ribot, Chris
Spedding, and Keith Richards, bassists Larry Taylor and Greg Cohen,
percussionists Michael Blair and Bobby Previte, and saxophonist Ralph Carney. In
addition to the army of percussion instruments, Waits began using a pump organ
in earnest, as evidenced by the Brennan song "Hang Down Your Head." Despite its
relative accessibility and return to formal song forms, the album only reached
185.

Frank's Wild Years fared far better. Released in 1987, it was Waits' ninth album
and subtitled "Un Operachi Romantico in Two Acts." Waits and Brennan co-wrote
most of the songs for a play of the same name which premiered the year before
with the two principals and Steppenwolf Theatre Company. The album peaked at 115
on the albums charts. Waits undertook a tour documented by the album Big Time,
and his fortunes turned for good. The experimentation of the trilogy had brought
his music to post-punk and indie rock audiences. Waits pushed his own envelope
with the rattling, clattering Bone Machine in 1992. winning his first Grammy as
Best Alternative Music album even though the album appeared near the bottom of
the Top 200. It was a banner year for the songwriter. He appeared on saxophonist
Teddy Edwards' album Mississippi Lad that year and released his score for
Jarmusch's film Night on Earth. He and Brennan next collaborated with writer
William S. Burroughs and director Robert Wilson on The Black Rider, a dark,
thematically connected series of vanguard cabaret songs deeply influenced by
'30s Weimar-era Berlin. Despite critics' complaints about its radical,
unrelenting bleakness and noisy soundscapes, it reached number 130 on the
charts.

Waits made a poignant guest appearance on British composer Gavin Bryars' Jesus'
Blood Never Failed Me Yet, a left-field hit in the U.K. in 1994. The song
appeared twice. The other version was Bryars orchestration of a found field
recording by a homeless man in London. Waits had attained the kind of artistic
freedom he sought with Island, but also wanted more freedom in his business
dealings. To that end, he signed to indie label Epitaph/Anti in 1999 and
released the now-classic Mule Variations. It sold better than any of his
previous recordings and hit number 24 on the Top 200. In the aftermath of his
first international tour in more than a decade, he won another Grammy, this time
for Best Contemporary folk album. Around the same time, Waits and Brennan worked
with Wilson again on a Czech adaptation of Woyzeck. The team of
Waits/Brennan/Wilson worked on two other theater works -- Blood Money and Alice
(based on Alice in Wonderland), that reflected a more introspective side of
Waits' music-making persona in that both were rife with ballads. Waits recorded
both scores and released them on the same day in 2002. The critical reaction was
mixed, but fans didn't care. They respectively reached 32 and 33 on the album
charts during the same week.

While Waits played select shows and entertained commissions from all over the
globe, he and Brennan were in retreat in their home studio working for the
better part of four years on Real Gone. Released in 2006, the set featured a
smaller cast of familiar faces including Les Claypool, Taylor, Ribot, and son
Casey Waits on drums and percussion. The set sold well and reached 28 on the Top
200. Two years later, Waits released the mammoth limited-edition, three-disc
collection Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards. Comprised of 26 rare and 30
previously unissued songs, Waits explained it thusly: "Some are from films, some
from compilations. Some is stuff that didn't fit on a record, things I recorded
in the garage with kids. Oddball things, orphaned tunes." The acclaim for this
sprawling set was universal. It hit number 74 on the albums chart, and was
nominated for a Grammy for best Contemporary Folk Album. Waits and Brennan once
more took to the road across the United States, Canada, and Europe. In 2009,
Glitter and Doom, the live document from the run, arrived and reached number 63.
Two years later, Waits issued Bad as Me, his first set of all-new original
material since Orphans. It was his highest-charting album ever, reaching number
six on the Top 200 and chosen as one of the best albums of the year by critics
across the web and in print. Bad as Me was also nominated for a Grammy for Best
Alternative Music Album.

Waits spent the next few years remastering and reissuing his first six
Elektra/Asylum albums: Closing Time, The Heart of Saturday Night, Nighthawks at
the Diner, Small Change, Foreign Affairs, Blue Valentine, and Heart Attack and
Vine. Likewise, the three individual volumes in Orphans (Brawlers, Bawlers, and
Bastards) were re-released. Waits also resumed his acting career in David
Lowery's feature film The Old Man and the Gun, co-starring Robert Redford (in
his final picture), Sissy Spacek, and Danny Glover. In 2018, Waits appeared as
one of several guest vocalists on Ribot's political album Songs of Resistance
1942-1918 (others included Steve Earle, Meshell Ndegeocello, Justin Vivian Bond,
and others), which benefitted The Indivisible Project, an organization that
helps individuals resist Donald Trump's agenda via grassroots movements in their
local communities. © Thom Jurek



Tom Waits - KPFK Folkscene, July 23th, 1974.rar -  249.0 MB

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