Why can't Tom Waits release a good live album?

Home sick, cleaning the living room, decided to put on something I don't think I've listened all the way through before: Tom Waits' "Glitter and Doom" live album documenting his last tour. I don't know if it's just the subpar sound quality or less than optimum choice in songs, but it just isn't that great.

Particularly for an artist so renowned for his live show, neither this or "Big Time" are albums I have played more than once or twice. I have quite a few unofficial live recordings, particularly from the first phase of his career, that are just draw droppingly incredible.

As a huge fan of everything he's pretty much done, I feel like this i in his discography that I feel like this needs to be rectified.

Also as much as I love "Nighthawks at the diner" it has some real clunkers and is a bit overlong

 

I don't really consider Nighthawks At The Diner to be a live album. It was recorded in a studio with an invited audience and was really more performance art than what we traditionally think of as a "live album".

I tend to agree that Waits' two true live albums do leave something to be desired, as good as they are. Big Time was sort of an afterthought accompaniment to the theatrical film of the same name (which needs to be reissued on Blu Ray), and the inclusion of one studio track sort of makes it a disjointed listen.

I think perhaps the biggest thing preventing Waits from releasing a truly representative live album is that he essentially has refused to perform much material from the first one-third of his career for many years now. In my view, a great Waits live album would need to include several songs from that time period (pre-Swordfishtrombones), as well as highlights from his later career. I've only seen Waits in concert once, and while it was fantastic, the setlist was primarily focused on his then-current album (Mule Variations), and there's not much value to me in having another Waits live release that essentially echoes his most recent studio album. I'd like something that is much more career spanning in scope, and Waits just doesn't seem that interested in performing concerts or a tour with that sort of setlist.

 

I love Glitter and Doom. But it does lean heavily on the tunes from Real Gone and other newer stuff, and I would also love to see a more definitive live release rom him.

 

I always though we'll get a GLITTER & DOOM dvd,i saw cameras on the show i went.

 

Nighthawks at the Diner is one of my favorites. I had no idea it was recorded in the studio until this thread!

 

I really like "Big Time". It's a shame the sound is so bad.

 

I really like both these albums. I mean, I especially can't trash talk Glitter & Doom considering it has the best version of Dirt In The Ground on it. Also, Make It Rain is so much better live, and that version of Going Out West is great.

Not really, only 4 songs sound iffy, and I've heard worse recordings. They just sound flat is all. Everything else is fine.

But if that's not to your appeal, there are plenty of great live shows online.

 

It was!

"Raphael's Silver Cloud Lounge" was actually the old Los Angeles Record Plant studios on 3rd Street (torn down in the early 80s to make way for the Beverly Connection shopping/entertainment complex). They invited about 200 friends/associates to come down over two nights of recording and they made up the studio to look like a nightclub, apparently (I haven't seen any photos anywhere). Apparently a burlesque dancer from the Ivar Theater in Hollywood was the opening "act".

 

Big Time is one of my favorite live albums ever

 

Has Waits ever explained this refusal satisfactorily?

 

he's just not feelin' it

 

Wow. Thanks.
I saw Waits live in Grand Rapids, MI, in either '78 or '79. It was a great show but all I can remember for sure is the bashing on a metal trash can and that he made up a song from the local newspaper (from that day).

 

Not to my knowledge, but from reading Barney Hoskyns' biography of Waits, it's not hard to connect the dots. After Waits married Kathleen Brennan and quit drinking, he mostly dispensed with all vestiges of his former life: producer Bones Howe, Elektra/Asylum Records, and the Tropicana Motor Hotel. He also dropped his drunken stage performance shtick (a good thing, I'd say). It's not particularly surprising that he doesn't want to sing many of those songs any longer. I give him credit for not wanting to be a nostalgia act and generally focusing on his new material in his (all too rare) concerts (he doesn't play all that much from the later 80s classic albums these days either), but it would be nice if he could go back and look at some of his 1973-1981 material with a fresh eye. There are so many gems in there.

 

Haha. Lucky you. I've read about him doing that back in those days; you were lucky enough to bear witness!

 

I will never understand that choice, but then again, I don't understand why he decided to become a Captain Beefheart/Harry Partch copycat after he married that woman.

 

Big Time is pretty good. He's more of a visual/performance live spectacle guy anyways.

 

To me those 2 lp's are quite representative of his live shows (several of which I attended, in both eras) both sound and material wise. If you don't like those releases you might not have liked his shows. If you are saying you wanted him to be something different, I understand, but he wasn't and isn't.

 

Wow, I love Nighthawks at the Diner. In my top three of his albums and think it's a great "live" document.

 

Ya know, I've often said that, except that the exceptions to the Beefheart/Partch sound zone remain valid. F'instance, Rain Dogs is brilliant, and is the album after the transition to the 'new Tom' with Swordfishtrombones. And there's enough variations on Orphans to keep things interesting. To me Frank's Wild Years was the begining of the eccentricity-for-eccentricity's-sake era.

Ultimately, as much as I like Tom (and thought he was a great racontuer on his Letterman appearances), I sometimes hear his recent stuff and I say 'this guy's been making the same song for 30 years now'.

 

I've never really seen many strong similarities between Waits' post-1982 work and Beefheart. Vocally, perhaps yes. But from what I've heard of Beefheart (and I only have one 2-disc career-spanning compilation of his), his work was far more blues-based than Waits'. They also worked in different realms from a lyrical standpoint, with Beefheart being comically surreal and Waits having stronger sentimental and cinematic tones to his songs.

As for Harry Partch, well, Waits has acknowledged the tremendous influence he had on his work starting in the early 1980s. But Partch is hardly a well-known reference point for most listeners. How many people have actually heard any of his work? I tend to think it was more that Waits picked up where Partch left off and built his own unique thing with some of the same raw materials than a matter of copying anything.

 

I agree, I was underwhelmed by the Glitter and Doom record. His early solo stuff that isn't officially released is great, I get that he doesn't want to go back to it though, but I would love to see a solo Tom Waits unplugged type performance. I ignored him for most of my life and than fell into his music pretty hard a few years back. Very interesting guy and musician.

I love his stuff like this:

 

No one that likes his early stuff should be without this live recording in Australia in 1979. A truly magical recording that should have an official release.



The whole set list is here:
https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL699C9529099F2F39

 

Would he have the rights to release his 1970's FM broadcast shows?

 

I can't believe Tom didn't release Surfin' Minneapolis, a superb FM recording from Minneapolis in 1975. I have a lot of live Waits recordings, but this is my absolute favorite - I like it a lot better than Nighthawks.

 

He has a great retrospective recording of his career if he could cherry pick songs that have been booted thru the years. So many good sources. Somebody should release that Austin City Limits show on DVD.