Frank Rider's definitions

Bone Machine

This 1992 album was Tom Waits' darkest release yet. Full of dark "cyber drama" and vicious guitar strings, he had totally dropped his piano onto the city sidewalk. Here we find Goin' Out West, Murder In The Red Barn, and the delicate suicide story, The Ocean Doesn't Want Me. Waits' voice sounds stepped on and burned out, but the songs are more amazing than ever because of it.

An excerpt from Bone Machine's-
Black Wings

Well they've stopped trying to hold him
With mortar, stone and chain
He broke out of every prison
Well the boots mount the staircase
The door is flung back open
He's not there for he has risen
He's not there for he has risen
Well he once killed a man with a guitar string
He's been seen at the table with kings
Well, he once saved a baby from drowning
There are those who say beneath his coat there are wings

by Frank Rider August 23, 2009

Jaheseus

An odd way of saying Jesus, used by Tom Waits in the song Filipino Box Spring Hog. It has few practical conversational uses, but it is an interesting word.

An excerpt from Filipino Box Spring Hog-
From the album Mule Variations-
Tom Waits-

"Jaheseus Christ I can always
Make room, when they're
Cookin' up a filipino box spring hog"

by Frank Rider August 23, 2009

The Black Rider

This album was the studio version of the music from Tom Waits, Robert Wilson, and William S. Burroughs play; The Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets. And, it was Waits' twelfth album. It's quite beautiful, and also quite varying. It has some songs that are exciting; like The Black Rider, some that are depressing; like The Last Rose Of Summer, and some that are absolutely weird; like Oily Night. It's guaranteed to give you nightmares and steal your soul, but sorry - no money back.

An excerpt from The Black Rider's-
November

With my hair slicked back
With carrion shellac
With the blood from a pheasant
And the bone from a hare
Tied to the branches
Of a roebuck stag
Left to wave in the timber
Like a buck shot flag

by Frank Rider August 23, 2009

Mule Variations

This album was Tom Waits' 1999 release, and his thirteenth. The songs range from Big in Japan, a smooth but tough rock song, to Come On Up To the House, a powerful telling of a world's troubles. Waits did good again, striking a strange chord with Chocolate Jesus, and tugging your thought strings with Black Market Baby.

An excerpt from Mule Variations'-
Get Behind the Mule

Punctuated birds on the power line
In a Studebaker with the Birdie Joe Joaks
I'm diggin' all the way to China
With a silver spoon
While the hangman fumbles with the noose, boy
The hangman fumbles with the noose
Got to get behind the Mule
In the morning and plow

by Frank Rider August 23, 2009

Alice

From 2002, this is Tom Waits' fourteenth album, simultaneously released with Blood Money. For a third time, Waits made a studio version of the music that he used in a play, this is the second part of a trilogy involving The Black Rider. Waits' album is absolutely beautiful, but quite scary. Alice, the title track, is a song of obsession and love that pulls you into it's murky waters and holds you under. Table Top Joe is a great song, very full of life, and it reminds one of Straight Up To the Top. Reeperbahn is a sandpaper song with stories of various people, and their tragedies.

An excerpt from Alice's-
Reeperbahn

Now if you've lost your inheritance
And all you're left is common sense
And you're not too picky about the crowd you keep
Or the mattress where you sleep
Behind every window, behind every door
The apple's gone but there's always the core
The seeds will sprout up right through the floor
Down there in the Reeperbahn

by Frank Rider August 23, 2009

Blood Money

The second half of Tom Waits' 2002 simultaneous release with Alice, his fifteenth album, and it's even got magical abilities. Kind of. This album is a studio version of music from Waits' version of the play Woyzcec. It is a chilling set of songs, but it is an amazing peek into Waits' mind. Track five, God's Away On Business, is a happy seeming tune, disguising a horrific tale of the sinking ship we are all on.

An excerpt from Blood Money's-
Misery Is the River of the World

God builds a church
The devil builds a chapel
Like the thistles that are growing
'Round the trunk of a tree
All the good in the world
You can put inside a thimble
And still have room for you and me
If there's one thing you can say about Mankind
There's nothing kind about man
You can drive out nature with a pitch fork
But it always comes roaring back again

by Frank Rider August 23, 2009

Real Gone

The sixteenth album by "self proclaimed junk-man," Tom Waits, released in 2004. With fifteen full length tracks, and a hidden one, it's a beautiful seventy minutes. The music on the album seems to be a cross between waitsian and mechanical. Metropolitan Glide is one of the odd ones here, it's quite grainy and loud. Dead and Lovely is a sad story of a girl dying because she lied about who she was. Another great is How's It Gonna End, about murder, lies and gossip. Waits is darker than ever, and still just as beautiful.

An excerpt from Real Gone's-
Don't Go Into That Barn

Black cellophane sky at midnite
Big blue moon with three gold rings
I called Champion to the window
And I pointed up above the trees
That's where I heard my name in a scream
Coming from the woods, out there
I let my dog run off the chain
I locked my door real good with a chair

by Frank Rider August 23, 2009