No comments about Tom Waits - The Black Rider Letras.

No comments about Sometimes We Wait.

No comments about The Lyrics of Tom Waits: 1973-1982.

No comments about Tom Waits: Blood Money.

2 comments about Tom Waits: Mule Variations.

1. If you're a fan of the album and a musician (or at least pretend to try and be), this songbook is a must-have. The blow-ups of the album artwork are great!



2. The scariest thing about buying a songbook is wondering how well it matches the actual music - beginners don't want anything too complex, but serious musicians want the legitimate scores. Personally, I was very pleased to find that this songbook matched exactly what was on the album, but it isn't unapproachable for beginners.
   
   A lot of the songs really aren't that hard to figure out, and so if you have a decent ear you might not have much of a use for this book. It is helpful for the trickier bits though, on songs like Take It With Me and Black Market Baby, and the chords are always dead on if you just feel like being lazy. Also, as anyone who has studied Tom's piano playing knows, there are a lot of songs in less common keys (like Eb, Db, Ab, etc.). Most songbooks seem to cater to guitar players by charting the chords in capo'd format, which is damn obnoxious to piano players, or else to piano players by using the proper chords, which is damn obnoxious to guitar players. This book, however, utilises both the proper chords and capo'd chords ( A7 / Bb7 for instance), which is helpful for playing together with a few friends.
   
   There is no tablature here, so don't go looking for guitar solos or fills. And songs like Cold Water take a little experience and intuition to get right. Some music is so outdated that it will be difficult for beginners to play, but it's not because anything is lacking from the book. Overall I would definitely recommend getting this if you have been considering it, no matter your skill level. Some songs will be very easy (like Hold On or Picture In A Frame) but others will be a real [...] if you don't have much experience.

1 comments about Tom Waits: Alice.

1. As always - he produced a great album. I have all of his albums and this is ONE OF MY FAVES! If you love WAITS - buy this!

3 comments about The Early Years: The Lyrics of Tom Waits 1971-1983.

1. I think song lyrics in general
   suffer from being read
   without hearing the presentation
   Waits is no exception to this rule
   Buy it if you love his music
   Skip it if you haven't heard it



2. I find some of the songs haunting. Tom has a great feel for a symbol that cuts deep. The song Broken Bicycles is especially good. Heartattack and Vine, etc. are classics for Tom Waits buffs. I found myself yearning for the music and atmosphere that Tom creates in his work. Nonetheless, the lyrics all on their own a worth reading.



3. I'm caught between the extant reviews. The key is to be old enough to have heard these songs, even if it's years since the experience. What great fun to find out what he really said in pieces like "Step Right Up" and "Pasties and a G String".
   Those of us who've crossed the bar of a half-century will take "Martha" so much more to heart, now that our own Martha's are gone. We know the 'Heart of Saturday Night' - Saturday night back then - is still the best that could ever be. Pity the youngsters who never had the brilliance of a slow dance, who never had three or four too many but made it to work the next day and kept going because your 'baby' was waitin up for you. Get it, recall it, make up your own melodies when the memory's going fuzzy - it's all to the good.

5 comments about Tom Waits: Beautiful Maladies.

1. This is a HUGE collection of great songs, in piano/vocal/guitar format. Contents include: 16 shells from a thirty-ought-six / anywhere i lay my head / back in the good old world / big black mariah / black wings / the briar and the rose / cemetery polka / cold cold ground / dirt in the ground / downtown train / earth died screaming / fall of troy / falling down / filipino box spring hog / frank's wild years / gun street girl / hang down your head / hang on st. christopher / i don't wanna grow up / innocent when you dream / i'll shoot the moon / i'll take new york / jesus gonna be here / jockey full of bourbon / johnsburg, illinois / the last rose of summer / a little rain / lucky day / murder in the red barn / november / rain dogs / shore leave / singapore / soldier's things / straight to the top (vegas) / strange weather / tango till they're sore / telephone call from istanbul / temptation / that feel / time / train song / underground / walk away / way down in the hole / whistle down the wind / who are you / yesterday is here



2. The below reviews pretty well nail it, but I wanted to mention a couple other things:

   1. There are a few pages of Waits photos at the front of the book you can tear out, if you like, and put on your wall or wherever. Some of the photos are really good, and it's a great bonus.

   2. Don't expect to be able to play about half of these songs without some kind of accompaniment. "Filipino Box Spring Hog," for example, is definitely NOT the kind of song you can effectively belt out with just the tab provided. But if you're just looking for a springboard to do your own arrangement, this is certainly the place to look.

   Great songs, great transcriptions, great price. Reccommended.




3. The compilation of songs represented in this book is amazing - all the best of Waits's golden years, you've got to love his art. But the transcription stinks: terrible, over-simplified arrangements for piano. All the funky pieces sound lame, and the only ones that work are the few simple, originally piano-driven slow songs like Innocent When You Dream. It's a lost opportunity that the book was done this way, a talented musician with vision and style could have made good adaptations of these brilliant songs.



4. Tom Waits' ballads are the gems of this compilation, but the piano parts in the transcriptions do not match the recordings. This would make sense where the piano was absent in the original version, as in much of the more raucous material...but the songs in which Waits sings over his own piano accompaniment (Whistle Down the Wind, Soldiers' Things etc.) should have been more faithfully rendered. Only a basic outline of the chord progressions is preserved, with sections missing in some cases. Fortunately, most of Waits' solo introductions are transcribed relatively faithfully. A competent pianist could reconstruct the parts by studying the recordings, but I'm disappointed at what seems to be laziness on the part of the publisher in producing accurate transcriptions.



5. The man is a barroom genius, writing the scripts for the aftermath of back alley brawls and suds soaked sentiments. Flophouse Rock mixed with Death-drama waltzing and toss in some growling regret flung out of a half empty bowl of peanut shells from where you lay half in the bag by the swinging front door.
   
   Gotta love this guy. especially if you've ever howled at the moon after finishing a quart of jack

2 comments about Tom Waits Anthology.

1. A wonderful collection of Waits rubato numbers (mostly), in piano/guitar-tab/vocal format. Invitation to the Blues, Tom Trauberts Blues, Wish I was in New Orleans, Annie's Back in Town, Old Boyfriends, Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis, Foreign Affair, Blue Valentines, more. Nice transcriptions of the piano introductions. Best of all, there's NO overlap with the Beautiful Maladies collection, so you can buy them both without hesitation.



2. For starters, the piano parts are so watered down it is difficult to figure out what they originally sounded like. This is par for the course as far as printed versions of popular music go. What really sets this book apart is that the piano part are no only watered down, they are bad. Any half-decent pianist could do better faking it. Not only that, but the rhythms on the printed vocals are often nowhere close to those on the albums. To top it all off, large sections are completely cut out of many of the songs (Considering the quality of the piano parts, however, these missing instrumental sections will hardly be missed). The song selection is good but not enough to balance all its faults. Overall, I could only consider recommending this book to beginning piano students who are hard-core Tom Waits fans. Otherwise, save your money, cross your fingers, and hope a book containing decent transcriptions of these songs becomes available.

1 comments about Swordfishtrombones (33 1/3).

1. And it turns out, this one keeps the spirit of the album by not being a dry reporting or an academic exercise. The author honors this key turning point album in Waits' career with the creative dignity it deserves. I kept finding info bits in it that I liked, that I didn't know and I'm a bit Waits fan. As per the 33 1/3 series he breaks down the album song by song and appears to strive to not have any bland sentences. Don't think I found one. Glad I bought it. If yer a fan, you really should. If yer not into Tom Waits, forget it, this is a fan's delight.