Tom Waits
Dime-Store Novels, Volume One
NMC Music

by Dr. Christian Carey

This is a solo show; no help from sidemen here. The sound quality balances the levels between Waits' voice and his piano and guitar far better than the commercially released Big Time which, for all of the great material that it contains, is often hard to listen to because it just sounds SO lousy. At first, Waits is testing his distance from the mic, but once he takes its measure, it is certainly decent sounding for a bootleg.

Waits' schtick at this point was still far more conventional in demeanor than it would devolve toward by the next decade - he presented himself as one-part cocktail pianist, one part Beatnik raconteur, and one part Folkie - a palatable mixture which still allowed him to be slightly off-kilter. As such, his voice is clearer than the bourbon and cigarette pummeled rasp that he settled into in middle age, although it was gruff enough for Jim Henson to steal his persona for Rolf the Muppet just a few short years after this gig. Waits' plays passable rhythm guitar and his touch at the piano is particularly lovely and even adroit (see "Ice Cream Man" and "The Ghost of Saturday Night"). This suggests that some of the awkwardness of his approach to instruments in the 80's and 90's may have been due to his attempt to coax an "uglier beauty" out of the instrument (befitting the challenging music on his Rain Dogs and Swordfish Trombones).

In fact, you would hardly recognize the Waits as the same pianist who stunk up the joint in 1988 on A Black and White Night, the Roy Orbison concert film. (Favorite moment: in a jam session where Roy is calling solos, he walks over to Waits and gesticulates. Waits keeps playing chords, seemingly demurring. Roy keeps looking over to him, hoping that some Rockabilly licks are going to come flying across the keys. Orbison then notices that Waits is basically banging away, in a bizarre Cowell-Monk hybridization, with his fists on a semblance of the chords, with oodles of clusters between the "right notes." Disgusted, Roy turns away, shoulders slumped).

Filled mostly with originals, Waits performs two covers in this set: "Good Night-Loving Trail," by Bruce "Utah" Phillips, and "Big Joe and Phantom 309," by Tommy Faile. Both are catches, previously only available on other semi-legitimate bootlegs. The former finds Waits in old-time country ballad mode, strumming a bumptious stroll (worthy at least of Mel Bay's Country Songs for Guitar, Book 2!). The latter finds Waits in full-blown Dylan-cribbing mode; it is kind of scary to hear him add even a little bit of Bob's nasal whine to his already-burgeoning rusty growl.

We are also treated to Waits inimitable stage patter and even some unaccompanied readings on this recording (though you can almost feel the absence of Beat bongos), including one that receives its own track, "Diamonds on my Windshield." Beatnikeque though it may be, the poem's cadence and rhythms are very similar to Charlie Daniels' "The Devil Went Down to Georgia."

However, the meat of this release is live versions of songs; material from Closing Time and The Heart of Saturday Night. Several of the cuts here number among Waits' best early work. Particularly affecting are the ballads: "I Hope that I don't Fall in Love With You," "Ol' 55," and "Martha." The funny thing about these is that, for all of Waits' affinity for entropic arrangements, for all the grittiness and howling that he indulges in when singing "character songs," and for all the dark humor he exhibits in many of his lyrics, his ballads take on another life altogether. It is almost as if he embraces sentimentality, not to lampoon it, but to exorcise himself of it through purgative measures.

On songs like "Ol' 55," it would be easy for us chuckle at the open emotionality of Waits' performance; positively warbling and wringing every last "lost chord" that he can from the piano. But there is a commitment there that allows the (presumably jaded) Waits fan to indulge himself, lapping around irony back to sincerely receiving the emotional content of the piece, sans nudges and winks. In this way, Waits is able to provide a much-needed foil for the sarcasm and irony that populate his darker works and ensure himself an audience that is not ENTIRELY populated by miserable weird bastards. Just weird ones.

Do you need this CD? That's what it always boils down to. As if prescient to the sticker shock that imports induce in a recession, the label has even included a fictional story ("Confessions of a Melancholic Soul" by Brian I. McNeill) in the liner notes to help you tussle with whether you should go out of your way to grab this one. Mr. McNeill is under the impression that, if you really are a Waits fan, you will appreciate this record a lot. Not only does it include strong individual performances of some important early songs, but you get a sense for what was to come from his stage demeanor, banter, and formidable performance persona, even if this gig predates Waits hitting the Big Time.

-Dr. Christian Carey, September 2003