Details
Track Listing
1. Hang on St. Christopher
2. Temptation
3. Clap Hands
4. Black Rider, The
5. Underground
6. Jockey Full of Bourbon
7. Earth Died Screaming
8. Innocent When You Dream (78)
9. Straight to the Top
10. Frank's Wild Years
11. Singapore
12. Shore Leave
13. Johnsburg, Illinois
14. Way Down in the Hole
15. Strange Weather
16. Cold, Cold Ground
17. November
18. Downtown Train
19. 16 Shells From a Thirty-Ought Six
20. Jesus Gonna Be Here
21. Good Old World (Waltz)
22. I Don't Wanna Grow Up
23. Time
Album Notes
Personnel includes: Tom Waits (vocals, guitar, piano, optigon); Fred Tackett (electric guitar, banjo); Marc Ribot, Chris Spedding, G.E. Smith, Robert Quine (guitar); Ralph Carney (bass & tenor saxophones); Greg Cohen (alto horn, synthesizer); Randy Aldcroft (baritone horn, trombone); Joe Romano (trombone); Ronnie Barron, Robert Kilgore (organ); William Shimmel (accordian, pump organ, synthesizer); Victor Feldman (marimba, bass marimba, shaker, bass drum, brake drum, bell plate, snare); Robert Previte, Michael Blair (marimba, drums, conga, percussion); Larry Taylor, Tony Garnier (acoustic bass); Tony Levine (bass); Chuck Dimonico (bass); Stephen Hodges, Mickey Curry (drums); Francis Thumm (metal aunglongs).
Engineers include: Biff Dawes, Tim Boyle, Robert Musso, Danny Leake, Gerd Bessler.
Even if Tom Waits had ended his career in the early 1980s, before he moved over to Island Records, he would still be regarded as a mighty member of the singer/songwriter elite. This makes it all the more impressive that he completely re-invented himself after switching labels in the mid-'80s, most notably with the Holy Trinity of SWORDFISHTROMBONES, RAIN DOGS, and FRANK'S WILD YEARS. On these albums, whose highlights make up the meat of BEAUTIFUL MALADIES, Waits abandoned the jazzy, piano-bound beatnik persona he'd carefully maintained throughout the '70s. Instead he created a groundbreaking patchwork that encompassed polkas, blues, deranged cabaret, the avant-garde, and more, in a funhouse-mirror reflection of Howlin' Wolf, Kurt Weill, and Harry Partch. The fact that he'd lost none of his masterful songwriting acumen in the process insured that Waits's Island recordings, so definitively represented here, would be his lasting legacy.
Industry Reviews
...Using callipoes, Balinese metal angklungs, accordion, bnjo, mellotron, and mroe, this Dyland of the disconsolate has created what is arguably the decade's most compelling and original body of work. - Rating: A
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