Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells A Story
Rod the Mod finds his solo footing, headed for stardom, with the Faces in his wake.
6:00 AM GMT 22/06/2011
(Island, 1985)
Vagrant evocation of life's beautiful hellishness. Trebles all round.
"Play it like a midget's bar mitzvah," Tom Waits told guitarist Marc Ribot when recording this 1985 album. If only more groups would follow suit. Named for hounds that have lost the scent of home in a rain storm and are forced to roam the streets, Rain Dogs was inspired by Waits' tenure in pre-money New York. The bruised and lost populate its ragged city songs of brutality and tenderness; death is at Waits' elbow, and there's nothing for it but poetic melancholy and maybe a few laughs. There are no half-measures here; recorded using an eclectic array of instruments including accordions, pump organs, angle-ground guitars and, so the story goes, an old chest of drawers as a drum kit, what resulted was a complete inter-relation of lyric, voice and melody. When Waits croaks his sideways visions of mundane horror on 9th & Hennepin, for example, the clarinet, marimba, musical saw and piano shadow every word; the gulpingly sad Time, meanwhile, becomes even more luminous in its overgrown junkyard surroundings. And though it might look like him, the cover star isn't the artiste, but some nestling drunk from photographer Anders Petersen's 1978 book Café Lehmitz (a swinging dive bar on the Reeperbahn in sunny Hamburg).
Ian Harrison
Posted by Ross_Bennett at 6:00 AM GMT 17/06/2009
Tom Waits – Mule Variations (Epitaph, 1999)
Howlin’ Wolf – Moanin’ In The Moonlight (Chess, 1959)
Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band – Safe As Milk (Buddah, 1967)
Rod the Mod finds his solo footing, headed for stardom, with the Faces in his wake.
6:00 AM GMT 22/06/2011
Last salvo of Ginsters Pasty-Warholism from Britpop ramraiders.
12:04 PM GMT 08/06/2011
An overlooked small wonder from an unpredictable career.
6:00 AM GMT 03/06/2011
Dry computer club Futurists, upon hitting implausible chart paydirt.
6:00 AM GMT 17/05/2011
Epic Danish jams, for when the neighbours get you down.
6:00 AM GMT 12/05/2011
Comments
Comment on this post
Comment on this post