So Les mailed me and asked about Waits. He wants to get into Waits’ stuff but isn’t sure where to start. And I realized that I could just post my long, rambly answer instead of mailing him.

The problem is that Tom Waits works across so many genres, and has so much catalog open that where to start is different for pretty much everyone. It’s an interesting game finding the right song for the right person. Once you’ve hooked someone on a certain corner of Waits, it becomes easy for them to see the edges they normally wouldn’t respond to in a much fuller light.

The first Waits song I ever heard was Earth Died Screaming off of Bone Machine

I wasn’t a fan of it. I listened to a bunch of jazz, country, metal, rock, classical, opera and rap at that point but something about the song didn’t work for me. I went to a friend and started waving my hands around about it. “And then there was this sound, and he was atonal but it merged and wrapped and…” but I didn’t know who sang it or anything. And my friend laughed and said “Oh. Tom Waits. Try this.” and he handed me a cassette of Small Change. It started with Waits’ cover of “Somewhere” from West Side Story:

And I was madly in love. But then I heard the title song:

And Jesus, I was his forever. Sometimes that’s all it takes. The right song, the right album and you’re gone. Gone for good and happy about it. Small Change is the album that made me a fan. I’ve since fallen in love with Bone Machine as well as everything else in his catalog.

But in general I find that people either enter on the ballads, or the up-tempo - not that the ballads are never up-tempo or the up-tempo is all one sound or that the ballads are - but still. And then they populate from there. So let’s see. An example or three from each, perhaps.

Ballads

Up-Tempo

Of course for every song I list there are 14 I miss, easily. And I want to post them all. But I won’t. So yeah there is no real good Waits primer. It’s try a bunch of different things and then settle into an album from there. Then expand slowly and enjoy. It’s like cooking.