{"id":2537,"date":"2010-01-31T19:29:21","date_gmt":"2010-02-01T00:29:21","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-01-31T19:30:44","modified_gmt":"2010-01-31T19:30:44","slug":"for-those-who-really-like-tom-waits-or-c","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/for-those-who-really-like-tom-waits-or-c\/","title":{"rendered":"For Those Who Really Like Tom Waits OR Captain Beefheart BUT Are Lukewarm About the Other&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/MB9M6tzANNk?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nThe title of this thread is more specific than it needs to be, but in an All-Star Jam comment on the current SHOWDOWN poll (ie, <em>SHOWDOWN: Tom Waits or Captain Beefheart?<\/em>), <strong>Townsman geo<\/strong> began to get at some of the issues I&#8217;m hoping we can explore:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I voted Captain Beefheart in the current poll, but I also really like Waits. Despite their apparent surface similarities, big, deep hollering voices and a tendency toward the aggressively harsh sound, they really come from different places. Waits is much more of a traditionalist. He brings a junkyard&#8217;s worth of musical detritus to what is, at heart, a traditional approach to songcraft. Beefheart, at his best, almost completely obliterates the most basic conventions of the electric blues based music that he started out in.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been revisiting Tom Waits recently, through his new live album, <em>Glitter and Doom<\/em>. The song selection is pretty good, the band sounds great, the recording is nice and live sounding&#8230; There&#8217;s a lot to like about this as a live album, including a second CD entitled <em>Tom&#8217;s Tales<\/em>, which I&#8217;ve yet to spend time with and which I suspect may be the best part of the concert. However, I can&#8217;t help but thinking that, compared with Captain Beefheart, an artist I love and an artist who must have been influential in Waits&#8217; early-80s refashioning of his musical arrangements along &#8220;junkyard&#8221; lines, I am lukewarm on Waits.<\/p>\n<p>For me, as geo notes, Waits is still a traditionalist at heart. I find his vocal style and all the junkyard trimmings to be a little distracting. &#8220;You don&#8217;t have to work junkyard,&#8221; I want to tell him.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/MaFuHwBvw5c?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nThe funny thing is, before Waits ever &#8220;worked junkyard&#8221; I couldn&#8217;t stand his music. The percussive elements and seeming Beefheart influence drew me in and allowed me to enjoy him on any level. These days, when I go back and listen to the two pre-junkyard albums I own, even they sound pretty good. Nevertheless, in my book Waits will always be supermarket-bought Jarlsberg (ie, fancy Swiss cheese) to Beefheart&#8217;s Italian Market-bought Oro di Sardenia, my favorite aged sheep&#8217;s cheese. His voice, in particular, is so over the top on this live album and other more recent albums that I&#8217;ve heard. The songs, which could be great, sound like they&#8217;re coming through a veil. I&#8217;d rather just hear the songs.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But Mod,&#8221; you might be thinking, &#8220;if anyone&#8217;s singing is over the top it&#8217;s Captain Beefheart&#8217;s voice!&#8221; That&#8217;s true, but to my ears his vocal approach is key to <em>sound<\/em> of the music &#8211; and his music is almost all about sound. There&#8217;s not really a veil over the arrangements of a Beefheart song; each song&#8217;s skeleton is essentially the artifice. Not even the most pipe-tamping, tweed jacket with courdoroy elbow patches-wearing Beefheart fan among us would clear his throat and say, &#8220;You know, the <em>songwriting<\/em> of the Captain is grossly overlooked.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The title of this thread is more specific than it needs to be, but in an All-Star Jam comment on the current SHOWDOWN poll (ie, SHOWDOWN: Tom Waits or Captain Beefheart?), Townsman geo began to get at some of the issues I&#8217;m hoping we can explore: I voted Captain Beefheart in the current poll, but <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/for-those-who-really-like-tom-waits-or-c\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[86],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2537"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2537\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}