...when this album first came out this sounded so strange and "experimental." Well, it was the 80s, and nothing exactly sounded like this, especially if you'd missed Waits' transition to this style with Swordfishtrombones and it came out of nowhere...
Van Morrison's Astral Weeks is also a lot like that -- it's a mind-meld of Irish folk, jazz, and acoustic coffee-house-in-the-West-Village stuff. Probably why I like both Astral Weeks and Rain Dogs.
I actually first heard the whole album when my friend Richard brought it as music for a road trip; I recognized "Jockey Full of Bourbon" and "Tango Till You're Sore" from when they were used in Down By Law, but "Cemetery Polka" just made me sit up and ask, "What the Jesus is this?"
I recently read in a retrospective review of the Swordfishtrombones/Rain Dogs/Franks' Wild Years trilogy that Swordfishtrombones was as if Tom Waits were arriving at a new town, and in Rain Dogs he'd found a place to settle down -- albeit that place was a battered tin shack out by the highway.
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Date: 2006-12-15 09:33 pm (UTC)From:Van Morrison's Astral Weeks is also a lot like that -- it's a mind-meld of Irish folk, jazz, and acoustic coffee-house-in-the-West-Village stuff. Probably why I like both Astral Weeks and Rain Dogs.
I actually first heard the whole album when my friend Richard brought it as music for a road trip; I recognized "Jockey Full of Bourbon" and "Tango Till You're Sore" from when they were used in Down By Law, but "Cemetery Polka" just made me sit up and ask, "What the Jesus is this?"
I recently read in a retrospective review of the Swordfishtrombones/Rain Dogs/Franks' Wild Years trilogy that Swordfishtrombones was as if Tom Waits were arriving at a new town, and in Rain Dogs he'd found a place to settle down -- albeit that place was a battered tin shack out by the highway.