Lionel Ritchie? Holy shit!

I know! and Neil Diamond!

I am not yet convinced that NYC will have a summer this year.

As threatened, I am now going to start posting Tom Waits covers up at the usual repository. This is a thinking-out-loud process for me. Listening to the covers has been a useful process for me. Once they're pulled away from Tom's distinctive voice and unique production the craft and art of his songwriting becomes more evident. I also know that Tom's voice and production (aka, beating on bedframes with tire irons) has been a barrier to entry for some music fans so I want to give a backdoor into these songs for the unconvinced.

For these postings, I won't be doing a traditional CD burn limited set that's sequenced, but rather will be posting songs paired by genre/approach.

Tom's wife and collaborator, Kathleen Brenann, once characterized his songwriting as "Grim Reapers and Grand Weepers." Fair enough. We'll start with two of his greatest Grand Weepers.

Tom Waits Covers

Grand Weepers

"Rainbow Sleeves" - Ricki Lee Jones. Ricki was (famously) Tom's girlfriend for several years in the late seventies (where she's featured on the album covers for Foreign Affairs, and the back of Blue Valentine where she's the slender blonde he's leaning up against a car). Her breakthrough hit, "Chuck E.'s In Love" is about Chuck Weiss - one of Tom's best friends. They all lived at the Tropicana Motel in Los Angeles for several wild and wooly years of drunken antics. Tom broke things off with Ricki and she did this EP not long after. The EP's title Girl at Her Volcano is a nod to Malcolm Lowry's epic novel of drunken dissipation. Tom's never released a version of this song (the lyrics are a little soft by his standards), but the melody and this performance are riveting. Gorgeous. Also available on the King of Comedy soundtrack.

"On the Nickel" - Carla Bozulich. Tom wrote this song at the request of Ralph Waite (Pa Walton) who did a movie about LA's skidrow drunks. Carla - who knows a thing or two about being downlow in Los Angeles - was in the bands Ethyl Meatplow and the alt-country band Geraldine Fibbers (featuring Nels Cline, who'll show up later in these proceedings). The title of the song refers to a particular flophouse hotel on 5th Street (I think). When you were down and out, just inches from being on the street you were "on the nickel." Note particularly how he plays with and turns the coin imagery over.

South Street Seaport, Pier 17 seems the place to be. Amy Rigby, Ted Leo + The Pharmacists and Alex Chilton.

Also, Puffy Amiyumi. I'm excited like I'm getting to go.

I know! and Neil Diamond!

I like Neil Diamond

(I kinda do, too, but he's a fun one to pick on, anyway.)

but he's a fun one to pick on, anyway.

Well yeah, he really is.

A clip from KISS: Phantom of the Park

I watched that when it was first broadcast! I also had the KISS comic book (long since sold).

I have that on tape at home. I also watched it when it first appeared on tv and used to talk about it in semi-reverent tones. An old girlfriend, half-amused & half-mortified by my tendency to sit around playing Kiss riffs on my guitar while watching TV, bought it for me. It's horrible (Kiss doesn't even make an appearance until halfway in, and the so-called Phantom of the Park is just a disgruntled park employee/mad scientist - seeing as how it's a Hanna-Barbera production, the plot is basically a Scooby-Doo mystery with Kiss as the Scooby gang), but somehow mesmerizing, too. Especially for Paul's incredibly-stupid-but-he-thinks-profound pronouncements and Ace's drunken duck squacks. Oh, and the Asian guy in Ace Frehley makeup who's the stunt double for the fight scenes. And the mysterious Kiss power amulets that glow gold in a briefcase like Marcellus Wallace's soul. That's good stuff.