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Great albums, Music Calendar, Tom Waits

September 8: Bone Machine by Tom Waits was released in 1992

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Bone Machine 1

September 8: Bone Machine by Tom Waits was released in 1992

“it ain’t no sin, to take off your skin and dance around in your bones”
~Tom Waits

From Wikipedia:

Released September 8, 1992
Recorded Prairie Sun Recording, Cotati, California
Genre Rock, experimental rock, blues rock
Length 53:30
Label Island
Producer Tom Waits

Bone Machine is a critically acclaimed and award-winning album by Tom Waits, released in 1992 on Island Records. It won a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album, and features guest appearances by Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo, Primus’ Les Claypool, and The Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards.

Bone Machine marked a return to studio material for Waits, coming a full five years after his previous studio album, Franks Wild Years (1987). The album is often noted for its dark lyrical themes of death and murder, and for its rough, stripped-down, percussion-heavy blues rock style.

Tom Waits

Recording & production:

Bone Machine was recorded and produced entirely at the Prairie Sun Recording studios in Cotati, California in a room of Studio C known as “the Waits Room,” in the old cement hatchery rooms of the cellar of the buildings.

Mark “Mooka” Rennick, Prairie Sun studio chief said:

[Waits] gravitated toward these “echo” rooms and created the Bone Machine aural landscape. […] What we like about Tom is that he is a musicologist. And he has a tremendous ear. His talent is a national treasure.

Waits said of the bare-bones studio, “I found a great room to work in, it’s just a cement floor and a hot water heater. Okay, we’ll do it here. It’s got some good echo.” References to the recording environment and process were made in the field-recorded interview segments made for the promotional CD release, Bone Machine: The Operator’s Manual, which threaded together full studio tracks and conversation for a pre-recorded radio show format.

Artwork:

The cover photo, which consists of a blurred black-and-white, close-up image of Waits in a leather skullcap with horns and protective goggles, was taken by Jesse Dylan, the son of Bob Dylan. He wears this same outfit in the video for “Goin’ Out West” and “I Don’t Wanna Grow up”.

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Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan covers Grateful Dead and Buddy Holly

Dylan Lesh

Bob Dylan covers Grateful Dead and Buddy Holly

In the Dark is the 12th studio album by the Grateful Dead. It was recorded between January 6 and 13, 1987, and originally released on July 6, 1987.

In the Dark was the band’s first album in six years, and its first studio album since 1980’s Go to Heaven. It became unexpectedly popular, achieving double platinum certification in the U.S. It reached #6 on the Billboard 200 chart, the Grateful Dead’s only top ten album. It has the great song, West LA fadeaway.

Not Fade Away is a song credited to Buddy Holly (originally under his first and middle names, Charles Hardin) and Norman Petty (although Petty’s co-writing credit is most likely a formality) and first recorded by Holly’s band The Crickets.

It was released in 1957 as the b-side on the single O-boy.

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Great albums, Ryan Adams

September 5: Ryan Adams released Heartbreaker in 2000

ryan adams heartbreaker

September 5: Ryan Adams released Heartbreaker in 2000

“On Heartbreaker, I had to sing those songs. I drank the way I did those songs. I ate the way I did those songs. I communicated the way I did those songs”
~Ryan Adams – Spin Dec 2003

“I don’t know if Heartbreaker was influential as a record so much as the idea of it. There weren’t a lot of people out there doing that kind of thing. That’s all. But it was a terrible price to pay because I’ve never lived it down. I don’t regard that record as great art. I’m not even sure I put the right songs on the record. There are a lot of tracks that didn’t make it which with hindsight should have been on there.”
~Ryan Adams – Uncut Jan 2004

 

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Bruce Springsteen, The Best Songs

Bruce Springsteen Racing In The Street – 5 decades 5 Versions

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Bruce Springsteen Racing In The Street – 5 decades 5 Versions

Racing in the Street is a ballad written by Bruce Springsteen, it was originally released on his album Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978). The song has been referred to as Springsteen’s best song by a number of commentators. I think it’s at least in the top 3 of my favourite Springsteen songs.

“…And “Racing in the Streets” is still perhaps the best Springsteen song ever.”

– Rolling Stone magazine

Like so many times, before and since, the car is a symbol of freedom in Springsteen’s universe. Driving a car gives you the ultimate feeling of freedom in this world.

The song begins with two friends fixing up an old car. The story is made believable through Bruce’s attention to detail, he seems to know what he is talking about, “I got a ’69 Chevy with a 396, Fuelie heads and a Hurst on the floor”.  The two friends needs the car to go racing, to earn money from street racing. As the story is told, they go from town to town and win easy money. They’re like cowboys in the old west, riding where the work is, no strings attached.

The protagonist/the racer and his friend Sonny hasn’t stopped living, even if they have ordinary day jobs. They come home from work, get cleaned up and starts living, they go racing in the streets.

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Great albums, Great Bands, Rolling Stones

September 4: Get Yer Ya-Ya’s out! The Rolling Stones in Concert was released in 1970

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September 4: Get Yer Ya-Ya’s out! The Rolling Stones in Concert was released in 1970

“I have no doubt that it’s the best rock concert ever put on record.”
~Lester Bangs

“Recorded during their American tour in late 1969, and centered around live versions of material from the Beggars Banquet-Let It Bleed era. Often acclaimed as one of the top live rock albums of all time, its appeal has dimmed a little today…  it’s certainly the Stones’ best official live recording.”
~Richie Unterberger (allmusic.com)

Carol – 27 Nov 1969:

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