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"...Drive It Away Today...Step Right Up!..."
As I said in my review of
the 2018 CD reissue for "The Heart Of Saturday Night" - DAMN and
DOUBLE DRAT! What you get here folks is fantastic audio (really, really great)
for the albums but bare bones anything else – and all of it housed in very
lacklustre even (in some cases) sloppy packaging.
Like so many lifetime fans
I've been waiting just that for decent affordable Remasters of Tom Waits
stunning Asylum Years catalogue stretching from 1973 to 1980. And here they are
in March 2018 on Anti Records CDs, DLs and LPs – his musical home since
"Mule Variations" won awards galore in 1999. But even though the CDs
are priced at just under a tenner in the UK (and the corresponding dollar rate
in the USA) – knowing what Anti could have been given us and outside of the
sound – they’re hugely disappointing on almost every other front.
Each reissue is housed in a
faded card digipak, has a picture CD of sorts, a booklet and new Tom
Waits/Kathleen Brennan/Karl Derfler supervised tape transfers – mastered in
turn by Peter Lyman at his Infrasonic Mastering Studios in California (a
renowned studio with Grammy award-winners on their resume). The 20-page booklet
provides lyrics and album credits but bugger all else. In a booklet with only
lyrics on offer - instead of actually giving you the myriad words to the witty
"Step Right Up" – we get the original album credit that asks you to
send off an SAE and get the lyrics by return from a Young Tom Waits! You open
the digipak to "Small Change" and you're confronted with nothing - no
photo on the left and nothing beneath the tray on the right. As with the
booklet for "The Heart Of Saturday Night" – there are no new liner
notes, no history (not even a catalogue number for the original release) and
worse not a single extra track when these reissues have been screaming out for
deluxe editions for years. It's hugely disappointing. But at least the first
four Remastered titles are also to be released on 180-GRAM VINYL with a
download code built in (see list below). So what do you get from your CD...what
has the piano been drinking (and not me)...
UK and EUROPE released
Friday, 9 March 2018 - "Small Change" by TOM WAITS on Anti 7566-2
(Barcode 8714092756821) is a straightforward CD Reissue and Remaster of the
11-Track 1976 album originally on Asylum Records USA (1977 UK release) and
plays out as follows (49:57 minutes):
1. Tom Traubert's Blues
(Four Sheets To The Wind In Copenhagen) [Side 1]
2. Step Right Up
3. Jitterbug Boy (Sharing a
Curbstone with Chuck E. Weiss, Robert Marchese, Paul Body and the Mug and
Artie)
4. I Wish I Was In New
Orleans (In The Ninth Ward)
5. The Piano Has Been
Drinking (Not Me)
6. Invitation To The Blues
[Side 2]
7. Pasties And A G-String
(At The Two O'Clock Club)
8. Bad Liver And A Broken
Heart (In Lowell)
9. The One That Got Away
10. Small Change (Got Rained
On With His Own .38)
11. I Can't Wait To Get Off
Work (And See My Baby On Montgomery Avenue)
Tracks 1 to 11 are his
fourth album "Small Change" - released October 1976 in the USA on
Asylum Records 7E-1078 and May 1977 (belatedly) in the UK on Asylum K 53050.
Produced by BONES HOWE with all songs written by Tom Waits - it peaked at No.
89 on the US LP charts (didn't chart in the UK).
TOM WAITS - Vocals and Piano
on all Tracks
LEW TABACKIN - Tenor
Saxophone
JIM HUGHART - Upright Bass
SHELLY MANNE – Drums
JERRY YESTER - String Section
Arrangements and Conducting of Violins, Violas and Cellos
The digipaks are pretty -
each coming with a generic 'Newly Remastered with Waits/Brennan' sticker
(Kathleen Brennan is his wife). But when you open this digipak to be confronted
by a smoking-cigarette picture disc with nothing else on the flap or beneath
the see-through tray - it all feels staggeringly lazy. Worse - instead of being
a celebration of this American songwriter's magnificent catalogue – it comes
across the same way the Neil Young reissues did – what could be gotten away
with instead of giving fans something to get their teeth into. The inevitable
‘unreleased stuff’ Box Set will follow on Anti no doubt - thereby costing fans
more dosh and yet another purchase. But let's concentrate on what is awesome -
the amazing Audio...
Weighing in at just under
50-minutes, "Small Change" was always a sonically compromised beast
on original vinyl – no such problem here. This CD is incredible sounding –
Mastering Engineer PETER LYMAN having brought out every nuance of the original
quality Production job done by Bones Howe back in July 1976 when the album was
recorded at Wally Heider Studios in California. Every song feels new and up for
grabs.
The two points of CD
Remaster reference for this 1976 material are Lee Herschberg and his work on
the 1986 truncated CD reissue of the 1984 double-album "Asylum Years"
- and then later by Elektra/Rhino's Dan Hersch and Bill Inglot on the fabulous
"Used Songs 1973-1980" CD compilation from 2001 (see separate review
for that release). But here the audio is so much more – amazing clarity and not
uber-trebled for the sake of it. Even more prominent than the fretwork he
showed on 1974’s "The Heart Of Saturday Night" - the sliding upright
double-bass notes of James Hughart leap off almost every song like a dancing
dervish. When you then take the near 15-piece mini-orchestra Waits used on
emotional ballads like the Waltzing Mathilda song "Tom Traubert’s
Blues", the whiskey-drinking pool-playing friends singing When The Saints
Go Marching In during "I Wish I Was In New Orleans..." or the World
War II jitterbug rhythms and sales patter in the mighty "Step Right
Up" – the effect is powerful to say the least. One minute he’s ripping
your broken-soldier heart out – the next making you howl with laughter at that
slipper at large behind the chase lounge for months.
But what gets me about
"Small Change" the album is that not only is his cigarette-ash
crumpled-suit Bukowski-persona in full throttle and with devastating wit and
pathos taboot – the whole record is good – Waits’ ability to move both your
head and heart is on fire - like a Bursen Burner aimed at your vital areas and
it ain’t gonna miss. Songs like "Jitterbug Boy" feature him growling
on a piano as he sings about Mulligans, Rocky Marciano and Minnesota Fats, Fast
Women and even Faster Horses and Unreliable Sources – but amidst all this
gigglesome mirth is a low-life, a bum just hoping for a break and somehow Waits
make you empathise with him and his huge dreams. Again in "The Piano Has
Been Drinking" he manages to make his plinking notes seem Jack Daniels legless
– with the balcony on the make and the carpet needs a haircut and the tuner’s
got a hearing aid and the owner is a mental midget with the IQ of a
fencepost...
Other mini operas include
the greasy spoon images of "Invitation To The Blues" where the waitress
stands by the register with an apron and a spatula and used dockets from
bachelors who battle with the booze. Waits scats "Pasties & A
G-String" as he eulogises Chesty Morgan and Watermelon Rose in their
fishnet-stockings and spiked high-heels hustling the early-bird suckers at the
burlesque show. It isn’t long before he’s melancholy again – a
gargles-gravel-for-breakfast voice tells us he hasn’t got a drinking problem
unless he can’t get a drink in "Bad Liver And A Broken Heart" – sat
precariously on a barstool looking for quarters to call his baby – but is
unable to get away from the bottom of a bottle of bargain scotch. He goes
full-on easy-street sleaze with the brilliant "The One That Got Away"
where shroud tailors and tired ambulance drivers and stage door johnnies and
whiskey spilling Andre are singing songs and talking about the...you guessed
it! The lyrics in "Small Change (Got Rained On With His Own .38)" may
one day end up in textbooks as far as I’m concerned - topics include fire
hydrants that plead the Fifth Amendment, furniture bargains, drugstore
prophylactics and a lunatic Newsboy with questionable stains on his pants – all
while a lonesome saxophone accompanies Tom and his Lucky Strike warbling.
Busting your chops baby...
So – storming great audio
and musically the album is a stone five-star singer-songwriter winner - but
naught a lot else. Fans will have to own them for sure given the sonic upgrade
– but it’s just such a shame that Anti Records haven’t risen to his now
legendary status and provided us with something actually worth getting giddy
about - especially when it comes to an artist that so many of us have adored
for so long.
Tom Waits' "Small
Change" is a forgotten masterpiece for me – the kind of Seventies album
they really don’t make anymore and something that needs and should be
celebrated. Much like the great man himself. Buy and enjoy...
TOM WAITS - March 2018
Reissue Series of CDs, LPs and Downloads on Anti Records
All CDs are in Card Digipaks, come with Booklets and Pic CDs but No Extras
"Closing Time" and "The Heart Of Saturday Night" released Friday, 9 March 2018
The others all released Friday, 23 March 2018
The others all released Friday, 23 March 2018
1. "Closing Time" (1973) - Anti 7565-2 (Barcode 8714092756524) - CD/LP is Anti 7565-1 (Barcode 8714092756517)
2. "The Heart Of Saturday Night" (1974) - Anti 7566-2 (Barcode 8714092756623)/LP due May 2018
3. "Nighthawks At The Diner" (1975 Live Double onto 1CD) - Anti 7567-2 (Barcode 8714092756722)/LP due May 2018
4. "Small Change" (1976) - Anti 7568-2 (Barcode 8714092756821)/LP due May 2018
5. "Foreign Affairs" (1977) - Anti 7569-2 (Barcode 8714092756920)
6. "Blue Valentine" (1978) - Anti 7570-2 (Barcode 8714092757026)
7. "Heartattack And Vine"(1980) - Anti 7571-2 (Barcode 8714092757125)
