germank106's Full Review: Small Change by Tom Waits
Dang it, I should have never started writing in the music
category. Now I feel obligated to review an actual album instead of just my top ten list :-)
This review is for the Vinyl version of this album. After talking to one of the advisors in this category, I decided to let the review stand as is. If you own the CD, your listening experience may be very different than mine. But both myself and the advisor feel that this review gives you enough detail to at least find out if you like this type of music and if you should buy this album.
If you first listen to Tom Waits you might think that there is something wrong with the audio controls on your stereo. There isn't. Tom Waits' voice has been described as something that has been soaked in a Vat of Whiskey, hung out in the smokehouse for a few months and then taken
outside and run over by a truck. I have to shamelessly borrow from a critic here, but it's the only way to describe his voice accurately.
Small Change is a Vinyl album that I have held on to for over 30 years. It does not come out often and is the one album that I have only ever listened to by myself. I don't know why I don't share this experience with a friend, there's just something about it that makes me not want to do that.
When I first listened to the album, I wanted to give Waits a prescription for Prozac and the phone number of a really good therapist. At first glance the lyrics are depressing. But the more often I listened, I realized that Waits had just stripped the glitz and glamour of familiar song subjects.
Listening to this album I always imagine going into my favorite Bar right before closing time. Waits describes this best with the lyrics of "The Piano has been drinking":
"...and you can't find your waitress
with a geiger counter
and she hates you and your friends
and you just can't get served
without her
and the box office is drooling
and bar stools are on fire
and the newspapers were fooling
and the ashtrays have retired
and the piano has been drinking
the piano has been drinking
the piano has been drinking
not me, not me, not me....".
Waits being Waits, he did all that with tounge-in-cheek humor. Often it's subtle, like in JitterbugBoy: "Well, I'm a jitterbug boy, by the shoeshine resting on my laurels and my Hardys too".
Sometimes it's more obvious, like in the lyrics to 'Step right up'. Waits has included the lyrics for all the songs except that one. For "Step right up" lyrics he asks me to send in a photo of myself,two dead creeping charlies and a SASE.
Waits style is as varied as the subjects he touches on. Each one matches musical style with lyrics almost perfectly and even the discordant notes in "Pasties and a G-string" are only there to underscore the story. This makes Waits a storyteller and an actor, but never just a singer.
Waits does not sugar coat. In "Tom Traubert's blues" Waits describes a lost love like this:
"...and it's a battered old suitcase
to a hotel someplace
and a wound that will never heal
no prima donna the perfume is on
an old shirt that is stained with blood and whiskey
and good night to the street sweepers
the night watchman flame keepers
and good night Matilda too."
What you won't find on this album is a cacophony of musical instruments. There is a small string section, but nothing that overpowers the lyrics. The basic arrangement is Piano, drums, bass and tenor saxophone. That's it. No hype, no special effects. Waits certainly doesn't need it, his voice is special effect enough.
Waits keeps good musical company on all of his albums. Drummer Shelly Manne has played Jazz with the country's finest. Bass player Jim Hugheart has played with Jazz and Rock notables on over 200 albums and Lew Tabackin is a tenor saxophonist and flutist in his own right.
When first listening to this I thought I could categorize it as Blues. But a few listenings later I wasn't sure. Then it was shelfed with my Jazz albums for a while, but that didn't really work either. There really is no category for his style. Each song is different, each musical score just there to change the words from a poem to a song. But damn, the word "song" is so inadequate. Ballads doesn't really fit either. In the title track "Small Change" the words are more spoken than sung and the musical score is beyond minimal.
Even in the acknowledgements at the back of the album cover Waits has allowed for a bit of humor. He thanks drummer Shelly Manne like this "Special thanks to Shelly Manne for his drumistikly pasturized conktribution and the 8x10 glossy and the neck tie."
Tracks:
Waits has sub-titled some of his tracks. Whenever that happens I have included the subtitle in italics.
Side One:
Tom Traubert's Blues Four sheets to the Wind in Copenhagen
Step right up
Jitterbug Boysharing a curbstone with Chuck E. Weiss, Robert Marchese, Paul Brody and the Mug and Artie
I wish I was in New Orleans In the Ninth Ward
The Piano has been drinking (not me) an evening with Pete King
Side Two:
Invitation to the Blues
Pasties and a G-string at the two o'clock club
Bad liver and a broken heart in Lowell
The one that got away
Small Change (got rained on with his own .38)
I can't wait (and see my baby on Montgomery Avenue)
CREW
Tom Waits - vocals and piano
Shelly Manne - drums; Jim Hughart - bass; Lew Tarackin-tenor sax.
The album was recorded in only 5 days and is distributed by Asylum Records.
DISCLAIMER: I purchased this album in Germany. Sometimes German and American recordings vary, so if a title is not on your album, or your album looks somewhat different, it's not my fault.
I have first listened to this album when I was 15 and knew nothing. Now that I am in my mid-forties I still don't know much, but as long as there's music like that,I really don't care.
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