Tom Waits new Record "Bad as Me," Out 10/24 Two Singles Released from Anti

So......It turns out that it's true. Waits has a new record coming out on Anti and judging by the two singles already released it seems as though it's going to get the usual reaction. The hard core fan base will go ape s**t, "New record of all original material! First in 7 years!" Meanwhile, "Bad as Me", the title track, which seems most closely related to "Phillipino Box Spring Hog" (Cool Story, Uncompelling Track) is the first single released and will make it easy for the critics and haters to say that this new release is just more of the same old Waits: "Cliche, deranged caricature of his former jazzbo self," etc., etc., you know the lines. Waits is one of those characters in popular culture that evokes such a wide range of strange commentary. From intellectuals attempting to show off their personal knowledge of brake drums and piano strings whipped against dumpsters to rock classicists who haven't changed their opinions on the guy since 1972. Sure, he loves to feed this fire and fights to control his ridiculous fabled persona by attempting to keep it that way via any means necessary including not authorizing biographies or even interviews these days, but critics write about him like he's John Cage. They just don't know what the f**k is going on. Personally, I'm way more in to this here ballad, "Back in the Crowd", than "Bad as Me" at this time, but the other little snippets that fly out of the vintage stereo equipment and the ratty old car in the "Private Listening Party" video, which included something that sounded like a new rockabilly track reminiscent of "Lie to Me," have me ready to fork over some dough for a hard copy and maybe even the LP.

Book Review: Complicated Shadows "The Life and Music of Elvis Costello"

I stumbled across this gem a few months ago at a store called "Mr. Music Head," in Hollywood. The store sells rock-and-roll photography, no, brilliant rock-and-roll photography. Stage shots, candid shots, concert posters, all from the past and present "big hitters," including Dylan, Cream, the Dead, Foo Fighters, Ben Harper, Deathcab, Aerosmith.....and on it goes. They also represent photographers and therefore can show you countless pics online or in their archives that can be printed and framed for a price. In the front of the store on some tables were books of photography and some just on music. The one that rally caught my eye was a big hard-bound book on Tom Waits (they also had a beautiful photo of the eclectic Waits sitting in front of an old pickup truck in the country- possibly that Ol' 55????- but that mama was like $35 so I decided to pick up the biography on Elvis ($7) since I was listening to both of these brilliant songwriters damn near exclusively at this point. The Costello biography is magnificent. It is a scholarly text that could easily be used in a college setting complete with endnotes and a detailed index. Graeme Thomson has personally interviewed many of the characters surrounding Costello and has not held anything back. I find it also works well as an extremely descriptive discography for the prolific musician. The chapters are labeled by the years of Costello's life and one can easily look up albums in this manner or by the index (which has album and song titles) to find out who played on individual tracks and records and what style Costello was going for- which we know varied greatly-  and etc., down the line. The book is especially good in the beginning and starts to drag a bit in the third act, but only because it continues to be significantly precise and detailed and as a reader I started to "push on,"compared to the slow weeks I spent on the first third, reading, absorbing, and stopping to buy the albums and compare my thoughts to the author's. Still, Thomson tells all and one can't really complain about his thoroughness, especially when the narrative reads much like a novel despite its similarities to a college text. Four and a half stars at least and certainly well-worth the sale price of seven dollars. Thanks Mr. Music Head.

RVOW: 1978's Excitable Boy, by Warren Zevon

Random Vinyl of the Week is a new installment to the NewbLog that will look back at miscellaneous titles as they spin around my $99 dollar Newmark belt-drive turntable. The first album up for discussion has been stuck on said record player since I picked it up for $1.99 at Soundsations in Westchester a few weeks back...

Warren Zevon is probably most widely known for a track on the first side of this LP entitled “Werewolves of London,” with its catchy piano riff and some of the best lines in Rock-and-Roll history. These lines include, but are certainly not limited to: “Little old lady got mutilated late last night...” and “I saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic’s... and his hair was perfect.” Other gems on Excitable Boy are the title track, “Roland, the Headless Thompson Gunner,” and “Lawyers, Guns, and Money.” The album also has some great rock ballads including the brilliant “Accidentally Like a Martyr,” where the songwriter laments that “The hurt gets worse and the heart gets harder...” Zevon writes touching ballads and slots them next to tales of the darkest characters in both serious and humorous fashion in his records, not unlike contemporary Tom Waits, but without purposefully destroying his voice for the sake of his characters. Instead Zevon often juxtaposes the seedy tales next to bouncy music and always retains the warm baritone colors of his vocal timbre. He is known as a brilliant song writer among music critics and buffs, but is still mainly a cult figure in popular music history. Whether this is due to his personal character or the sordid themes he consistently returns to is debatable, but it is probably a mixture of the two. I am but a young buck who has loved Zevon since studying “Carmelita,” in a songwriting class taught by Dr. Clark at Santa Barbara City College just before Zevon was diagnosed with cancer and had a resurgence at the beginning of this decade before sadly passing in 2003. So... for more on Zevon pick up “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead,” by Crystal Zevon or for a more in depth look at Excitable Boy and Zevon’s self titled release of two years prior see Eric’s Music Ramblings and Indie Musings...

Internet Radio is big and Slacker has features that Trump Pandora

Slacker is a internet radio station similar to Pandora or Last.fm based out of Rancho Bernardo in north San Diego County. The difference? Slacker has about 3 million songs in their database vs. the mere 700,000 on Pandora. There is an article in today’s issue or USA Today about the growing site...

Pandora is a cool site and I know a lot of people love to turn it on at work or punch in an artist and let it ride during dinner parties, but I have been drawn to Last.fm for scrobbling and itunes library coordination. USA Today reported today about this smaller company from San Diego called Slacker, which has a lot in common with both Pandora and Last.fm, but boasts a huge library and is available for free on BlackBerry. I’m listening to Devendra Banhart radio on Slacker right now and they have Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon, which is very diverse and could stand on its own, but they also have Nino Rojo and probably more. The similar artists seem just as on point as Pandora’s, including Elliott Smith, Iron and Wine, Deer Tick, and Cat Power, yet Tim Westergen, founder of Pandora, claims the man hours involved in matching artists put a cap on his library at 700,000. Well Boo friggin’ hoo. Slacker seems worth checking out so I downloaded it for my BlackBerry... Other features include user suggestions of songs or artists for stations and the ability to save stations to your SD card for listening on airplanes or areas with no service in case you have T-Mobile. At this point I still sing praises for Last.fm and for switching it up on these services from time to time, but we will see if Slacker has take-over power. The USA Today article wont tell you that they have commercials every ten songs or so, but adverts make the money honey. If you want to pay a little they can make that go away. I’ll just wait my thirty seconds and enjoy my fee stream...