black and tan eyes

Friday, January 26, 2007

Tom Waits Orphans

Tom Waits has characterised the 56 songs on his new three-disc anthology Orphans as “songs that fell behind the stove while making dinner”. Comprising outtakes from album sessions, songs that Waits and wife Kathleen Brennan wrote for film soundtracks and stage productions, cover versions and experiments that didn’t really fit anywhere else, Orphans is by turns a stomping, heartfelt, frightening set of tunes that should keep the ardent Waits admirer happy for a while. If a new album from this maverick musician and master songwriter is an event, a triple album should be the occasion for a parade of some sort. Anyway…

The first disc Brawlers reveals the rockier, bluesier side of Waits we last heard on his 1999 album Mule Variations. On this relatively uniform set of songs, Waits still manages to dabble in a variety of styles, ranging from rockabilly to mambo, rocksteady to backporch blues. The sound is characterised by grinding guitars, wheezing horns and railway-yard percussion, with Waits yowling, growling, crooning and rasping his way through all sixteen tracks. Highlights include the deranged Elvis stylings of “Lie to Me”, the down ’n’ dirty groove of “2:19”, the maniacal boast of a prisoner served with “Fish in the Jailhouse”, and the raw folk-blues “Buzz Fledderjohn” – a tale of suburban myth and mystery that sounds a hundred years old. Another noteworthy track is "Road To Peace", a bitter commentary on the grim stalemate that is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Waits’ most explicit political song to date.

Waits is one of the great American balladeers and Orphans’ second disc includes Bawlers from both of his two rough categories: a) piano-based jazz croons, lullabies and torch songs, and b) sepia-toned slices of Americana, evocative of long and lonely highways, dusty backstreets and abandoned roadhouses and populated by lost souls, repentant crooks, small-time hustlers and itinerant workers unable to leave the road. Of the first category we have here a new stunner “You Can Never Hold Back Spring” (which could well pass for a 1920s gramophone waltz number), the winsome “Bend Down The Branches” and the languid, reflective “World Keeps Turning”. One man’s wistful plea to a former love (“Tell It To Me”), a rueful caution against taking the wrong path in life (“Fannin Street”) and a heartrending tale of tragedy in a backwoods town (“The Fall of Troy”) are among the best of the second lot. Of course, there are also those tracks not so easily pigeonholed: "Widow’s Grove" is in the style of a French chanson, “Never Let Go” is a stirring hymn to fidelity, while “Take Care Of All Of My Children” sounds like an Irving Berlin ditty from the War years. For me, Waits is at his best when he does ballads and Bawlers contains some of the very best songs he has ever written and recorded. It’s a wonder they remained officially orphaned until now.

As suggested by its title, Bastards is the most eclectic of the three discs and the one most redolent of Waits’ exotic, erratic tastes and dark, earthy wit. During this hour-plus of esoterica, you will be exposed to, among other things, creepy spoken monologues (an unorthodox “Children’s Story”, a list of disturbing facts about insects on “Army Ants”), adaptations of Beat writers Kerouac and Bukowski (“Home I’ll Never Be”, “On The Road”, “Nirvana”) and engaging oddities laced with Waits’ patented vocal percussion (“Spidey’s Wild Ride” and a roaring, chest-beating cover of Daniel Johnston’s “King Kong”). Tom also turns the Disney tune “Heigh Ho” into a taskmaster’s chant, bleats out an Appalachian murder ballad on “Two Sisters” and goes electronic on “Dog Door”. Finally, this third disc is capped with two very entertaining hidden tracks: one is a piece of live between-song banter in which Waits relates his discovery of a sinister variety of dog treat, the other has Tom narrating the kind of adventure at a supermarket that only he could experience.

Though many of these tracks have been previously available on bootleg albums and a few more songs have been left behind the stove, Orphans satisfies this fan. My only nitpick are the liner notes, which are scanty on recording dates and vague on exactly which musicians played on which tracks. Lack of such information does reinforce a sense of continuity between the songs, but I wish Tom would have offered some of his usual documentary details in the listings. Waits neophytes probably shouldn’t start here (try Rain Dogs instead) but once one has acclimatised oneself to this legend of American music, Orphans should be an indispensable listen.

This review was published, with minor alterations, in the Summer School 2007 issue of Craccum.

Sunday, January 21, 2007

boy in the 'hood

Friday, January 19, 2007

Tim Finn and Richard Thompson - Persuasion

Thompson's lead guitar and backing vocals make a great song even better.

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Well Well Well

I'm flattered. Ellis Sharp has responded to my comments on his piece on Little Chef. Instead of debating any of my key points, he decides to ridicule me. No surprises there of course - I wasn't expecting him to descend to the level of us mere mortals.

I’ve been aware for some time that this blog has a small but zealous following in the troll nether-world. It is avidly monitored for the scandalous outrages it commits against The Only Democracy in the Middle East.

He said it, not me.

I am not going to supply any links because, where trolls and Klingons are concerned, I do not believe in decency and fair play.

No news there. Sharp doesn't believe in decency or fair play anyway.

As for my closed Comments box – guys, just think of it as a separation barrier and you’ll feel much better about it, won’t you?

I'm surprised he didn't ask us to think of it as an "Apartheid Wall".

Sharp takes me to task over my apparent misunderstanding Azorim's last plan for Little Chef. Seems it was just a sardonic comment on the food they serve. I'll take that, but it seems a rather gratuitous inclusion in what was just another "the Zionist Entity is Evil" rant.

I do wish people wouldn’t get obsessed about Israel and have to bring it into everything.

This from a man who tried to explain the previous year's Mumbai bombings by pointing to India's supposed pro-Zionist Hindutva foreign policy.

Monday, January 08, 2007

A Pair o' Pxts

These were taken with my Motorola V360 - they won't win any awards for composition, but they have a "rugged" charm (or at least I think so...)

The gates to the old Jewish cemetery, at the corner of K Road and Symonds Street, Auckland

A full moon - as seen through my bedroom window sometime around 3AM...

Saturday, January 06, 2007

Richard and Linda Thompson - A Heart Needs A Home (Old Grey Whistle Test, 1975)

Do yourself a favour and watch this beautiful performance of a beautiful song.

Friday, January 05, 2007

David Malouf on Patrick White

Via The Complete Review. The Times has just published a piece by Australian novelist David Malouf on fellow Aussie author, Nobel Laureate Patrick White, who seems to have fallen into disrepute in his native land: Patrick White Reappraised

Incidentally, I am just about to begin White's novel The Tree of Man. The only White novel I have read so far is The Solid Mandala (which Malouf mentions in some detail). It's literature of the highest quality and I heartily recommend it.

The Sharp Files

Ellis Sharp is a Marxist blogger with a Manichean outlook on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He has been relatively quiet lately, but a recent, seemingly inconsequential bit of news has pricked his interest. It appears that Israeli property firm Azorim has invested in the British restaurant chain Little Chef. And as everything Israeli is marked with taint in the mind of Ellis Sharp, he takes the opportunity to launch a veiled attack on the State of Israel, listing his own, "satirical" speculations on "Arazim’s future plans for the chain":
1. All land within a radius of 100 miles of each Little Chef will be seized by troops and tanks under the slogan “After 2000 years, Little Chef comes home.” All residents will be evicted and their homes bulldozed. Businesses will be seized. There will be no compensation paid. The land will be used for car parking and homes for Little Chef employees.

As I pointed out in my last piece on Sharp, Ellis is adament in his belief that Jews, who suddenly decided, for no apparent reason, that after 2000 years it was time to reclaim the homeland, burst into Palestine, dispossessed the peaceable Palestinians and destroyed their homes. Of course, the complexities of real history fly in the face of such a reductionary narrative.
2. Little Chef does not discriminate. However customers of a swarthy complexion may be restricted to the fried egg menu and asked to eat in the Portaloo at the back, next to the waste containers. This is for security reasons.

Here Sharp interprets, as others are fond of doing, Israeli security measures in a discourse of Western colonial oppression. In reality, most Israeli Jews are "of a swarthy complexion", and this is especially true of the hundreds of thousands of Jews expelled from the Arab world (with businesses seized and no compensation paid) - Jews which warrant nary a mention on The Sharp Side (I wonder if Sharp is even aware of their existence?) In addition, that these Sephardi and Mizrachi Jews are physically nearly indistinguishable from Israel's Palestinian neighbours is probably the reason why suicide bombing operations are so successful, as all the attacker need do is blend in with the crowd; he would be relatively easy to spot if the rest of the diners or bystanders were Aryan. It is also worth noting that Israeli restaurants (or any other public facility for that matter) don't discrimate against Arab citizens of Israel - they are certainly not restricted to an inferior menu and required to sit out back near the portaloos.
3. Children who do not finish their meals, who play with their food, or who throw buns will be shot. Little Chef anticipates around 300-500 child fatalities in its first year of operation. The Blair government has agreed to supply free rifles and automatic weapons to all Little Chef employees.

Browsing through his blog, one receives the impression that Sharp believes that Israelis regularly murder Palestinian children for sport. They are (generally) not tragic accidents that occur during Israeli operations in the occupied territories but the intentional actions of a demoniacal people and their state. Yet, if one were to understand the killing of Palestinian children as being intentional, one should also presume that there would be more than "300-500" fatalities a year (and even that number is suspect).
4. All dissatisfied customers will be referred to by the BBC as ‘militants’ and ‘rogue elements’.

In case you didn't know, the BBC is actually a Zionist organ. That's sarcasm, by the way.

5. Visitors who call by just to use the toilets and who leave without buying even so much as a cup of coffee will be pursued down the motorway by a helicopter gunship and blasted from the face of the earth. Little Chef also strongly advises that no customers using wheelchairs attempt to patronise the chain.

Again, Sharp believes Israel sends helicopter gunships after Palestinians for little reason save to murder them for kicks. There have been reports of wheelchair-bound persons who have been killed during Israeli incursions in the West Bank, but I think the wheelchair reference is to Sheikh Yassin, the "spiritual leader" of Hamas that Israel assassinated in 2004. Israel was condemned by nearly everyone for targeting a "defenceless old man in a wheelchair" in spite of his deeds; no doubt Sharp, who refuses to interpret Israeli actions as anything other than malign, was in the chorus.
6. The exciting new ‘traveller’s menu’ will consist of (i) sliced melon starter (ii) spaghetti and chips with optional grated cheese topping (iii) Black Forest gateau (iv) complementary cup of Nescafe. The ‘kid’s fun menu’ will consist of (i) toast (available cold or lukewarm with optional toppings: marmite, minced pilchard). (ii) bowl of icecream (flavours: Cape white or Venetian mint).

I'm not sure what point Sharp is trying to make here. Perhaps the "travellers" are the Israelis "privileged" with a lavish menu, whereas the Palestinians are the "kids" who need to make do with scraps? Whatever...

Even ReadySteadyBook, the literary blog that often links Sharp's articles has expressed concern at his obsession with Israel. But Sharp, who has constructed something of an ivory tower for himself (neither of his blogs lists an email address and comments are disabled) will most likely continue to expectorate his bilious rants into cyberspace. Ah, the Net.

Monday, January 01, 2007


Make of it what you will