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Tom Waits - Small Change Audio CD

A fair review of the Tom Waits "Small Change" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all Tom Waits reviews here, or go back to the Tom Waits tabs.

Tom Waits Band: Tom Waits
Title: Small Change
Rating:
Release Date: 1990-10-25
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Tom Traubert's Blues (Four Sheets to the Wind in Copenhagen) 2: Step Right Up 3: Jitterbug Boy 4: I Wish I Was in New Orleans 5: Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me) 6: Invitation to the Blues 7: Pasties and a G-String 8: Bad Liver and a Broken Heart 9: One That Got Away 10: Small Change 11: I Can't Wait to Get off Work

Tom Waits at his best.
It makes me laugh and cry, sometimes in the same song. This is my favorite Tom Waits album.


A great album
I was introduced to this by a friend and had to have it. If you like old-time blues, you will like this album.


On The Mean Streets Of Saturday Night


The inner lives of the denizens of that late night diner in the famous painting by the American realist artist Edward Hopper, "Nighthawks" (1942). This comments posted here are also being used to comment on other Tom Waits albums. The scorching literary sketches of the rich and famous and the skid row bums provided by the late "Gonzo" journalist Doctor Hunter Thompson, accompanied by the renderings of the artist Ralph Steadman. The jingle-jangle high side lyrics of the legendary folk musician Bob Dylan of the "Blood On The Tracks" period. The reach into the far side of the part of the psyche exhibited by those down at the base of American society in an earlier period by the novelist Nelson Algren in "Walk On The Wild Side". And that same reach later by the man of the "mean" Los Angeles streets, Charles Bukowski. Wrap them all up in a whiskey-soaked, cigarette-scarred, gravelly, rasping voice and you have the idiosyncratic musician Tom Waits. Placed in that same company as above? Yes, by all means. Not a bad place to be, right?

Although I have been listening to the music of one Tom Waits for decades, every since I heard Jerry Jeff Walker do a cover of his classic song of loneliness, longing and reaching for the elusive promise of Saturday night dreams in "Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night", I am not familiar with his biography. All I know is that aside from his own far-reaching musical endeavors, as expressed in numerous albums over the years, he has acted in some motion pictures, most notably as a skid row philosopher of sorts in the movie version of William Kennedy's "Ironweed" (a natural, right?) and has provided the soundtrack music to many movies, most notably the Al Pacino-starring "Sea Of Love". That Waits soundtrack version of the late 1950's, early 1960's classic teenage anthem to longing and love is just the right example of what Brother Waits means musically to this reviewer. Taking that simple song of teenage longing, Waits' husky-voiced rendition reaches back and turns it into something almost primordial, something that goes back beyond time to our first understandings that we are `alone' in the universe. Enough said.

But so much for all of that because what I really want to mention is the "Waits effect". Every once in a while I `need' to listen to words and sounds that express the dark, misbegotten side of the human experience. You know, sagas of Gun Street girls, guys talking "Spanish in the halls', people lost out there on the edge of society and the like. Is there anyone today who can musically put it better? If you need to hear about hope, dope, the rope. Wine, women and song or no wine, no women or no song. About whiskey-caked barroom floors, floozies, boozies, flotsam, jetsam, stale motel rooms, cigarette-infested hotels, wrong gees, jokers, smokers and ten-cent croakers. Drifters, grifters, no good midnight sifters. Life on the fast lane, nowhere lane, some back street alley, perhaps, out in the valley. This, my friends is you address. Listen up. Professor Waits is at the lectern.

Small Change, Tom Waits, Electra/Asylum Records, 1976

This is another early Waits album with some now classic material . "Tom Traubert's Blues", the prophetic pre- Hurricane Katrina "I Wish I Was in New Orleans (In The Ninth Ward) and the title track "Small Change" stick out here.
.


An Amazing Album. His Best Work Ever.

"Invitation to the Blues" and "Jitterbug Boy" are the albums highlights. This album commands your full attention and transports you to a world of Boozers, Prostitutes, Gamblers, and the true "Underbelly" of society.
Listening to this collection of somber and morose selections actually bring you into these songs ,which are actually like short little stories.
They rip your heart out and force you to visualize characters that only Tom Waits can introduce you to. Lets face it, Tom Waits is not for everyone but for anyone who enjoys great melodies and songs that tell stories, this is a must. This is nothing short than a wonderful album and a true piece of art. .


Vintage Tom Waits
For fans of the singer's more recent works, this CD will take them back to the strip clubs and night life described in his earlier songs. A little scat, a little be-bop, a little blues--but all Tom Waits. It took me a while to get acclimated to this album, but now I like it just fine.


You can see a complete list of all Tom Waits discography, or go back to the Tom Waits tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.

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