Tom Waits - Frank's Wild Years
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Tom WaitsBrand: WAITS,TOM
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language)
CD Release Date: 1990-06-15
Music Label: Island
Soundtracks:
- Hang On St. Christopher
- Straight To TheTop (Rhumba)
- Blow Wind Blow
- Temptation
- Innocent When You Dream
- I'll Be Gone
- Yesterday Is Here
- Please Wake Me Up
- Franks Theme
- More Than Rain
- Way Down In The Hole
- Straight To The Top (Vegas)
- I'll Take New York
- Telephone Call From Istanbul
- Cold Cold Ground
- Train Song
- Innocent When You Dream (78)
Free Music Notes for Frank's Wild Years
Free Music Review: An Ode to Frank's Wild Years
Hit: 5 Stars
Before Blockbuster wiped them out, there were all kinds of small video stores you could rent from in Simi Valley. At its height and glory along a one block stretch you could find three shops equidistant from each other. My favorite was a mom and pop video store in a strip mall right next to the Albertsons called "the video shop", and their catch was that a person could rent five movies for five dollars for five nights. Due to the luxurious demands of community college, I blazed through all my choices in two or three nights. I don't even remember most of the movies I rented, they just blew by. Sometimes a movie like Night Flyer or TapeHeads will start playing on cable and I'd say, "oh yeah, I saw that! I rented that from the shop!"
One of the reasons for so many return visits was the lady behind the counter. Her hair was dark red and arched up in what could be described as a poodle's pony tail. In hindsight she was probably in her early thirties, but I didn't have that kind of eye to judge yet. Greedy little assumptions assured me she was in her mid twenties with only a trace of husky, which is as skinny as you are going to get if you are a woman working in my hometown. Petit and slender are for trophy wives.
We would talk about show business. I read books on becoming an actor as a kind of fantastical wish fulfillment, and she wanted to work as an administrative assistant in a movie studio. Past that it was the usual video store shop talk. Talking about the guy who wants a refund on porn he rented, or praising clerks while mallrats plays on a tv screen behind the counter.
Deep down, all there were was wishes in a slow, rolling illusion for her to look at me like she wanted me, and then touch my hand in understanding. To go in that little bathroom in the corridor that lead into the alley and kiss, grab, knee, rub, hold, elbow, sweep, cheek, slide in that tiny little room like it meant something more.
As Blockbuster slid closer and closer to perfecting its hold on the video rental market, mom and pop video stores started to close all around Simi. First Video Super Store, which was below a now defunct Fuddruckers. Then the Shop went next, followed by Music Plus and finally just this last year, The Wherehouse. I remember I didn't buy anything, or pillage, I just let it go. My only act of surrender was a Variety magazine to give to the lady behind the counter, "and help her on her way". It just stayed in the back of my trunk, because she wasn't there anymore. I ran into her about a year later in a local coffee shop called "Dr Conkey's". She was there with a fierce looking construction worker who drove a supe'd up high and tall pickup truck. We didn't speak.
The strangest of mementos came from that shop. The movie that stuck with me the most was Smoke staring Harvey Keitel and William Hurt. An ensemble piece about the relationships revolving around a cigar shop in Brooklyn, it is a very eccentric, erratic work and one of the first screenplays by Paul Auster. I finally found a DVD in a Virgin superstore in San Francisco, lost it, and bought another copy online.
A copy is kept for sentimental reasons. Over the credits the film reenacts a short story of Paul Auster, "Augie's Christmas Story". The movement is a montage in black and white, with Tom Waits' "You're innocent when you dream" playing underneath. That was the very first time I heard a Tom Waits song. I thought "Who is this? I have never heard anything like this in my entire life!" When Christmas came around I got beautiful maladies, best of Tom Waits :Island years, which became one of the top three in my rotation for that year along with Enema of the State by blink-182 and 1965 by the Afghan Whigs.
A little while rolled along and I realized I must dig deeper. The Black Rider was too dark and disjointed. Rain Dogs seemed inevitable and didn't give me the thrill of the chase. But Frank's Wild Years, had my song, that settled it. The sampling of beautiful maladies was no preparation for the awesome power of the album, which I received (along with Rain Dogs). That Album blew me away. It is one of the few I can listen to all the way through without skipping or complaint. More jazzy, upbeat and concentrated than his other works, each song pops on its own and adds to the overall experience with an album crescendo in the last three songs of "cold, cold, ground", "train song", and another reprise of "you're innocent when you dream". This album is a Bebop Americana wet dream.
My favorite song is "train song", which could be described as ebullient tragedy, or a sad celebration. A melancholic Frank sings of the train that is coming to take him back to where he came from, back home. After he finishes singing the tune picks up to Dixieland swing sending him off. It made such an impression on me that I choose the song to perform a modern dance piece for an Intro to Modern Dance class. Mercifully, these performances are very rare, and if it weren't for my joy of the song holding me up saying "yeah, this is sane! I look great, and not at all undignified!" it would have been a train wreck.
Time marched on to other CDs and artists grabbing for my attention. My CD collection grew and expanded as I rolled along, but from time to time Frank was pulled out to anchor myself. The piles of CDs finally surpassed the 600 CD blue cabinet in my room and out onto the floor. Then one day I moved and it took about 7 boxes of various shapes to crate all the CDs from my parent's home in Moorpark to my room for rent in Westlake Village.
Typing on a cheap plastic cabinet with rollers and desk exempt, I started humming "Hang on St. Christopher". Forgetting the lyrics, the only words mumbled out are about "Forth and Hennepin" forcibly splintered into the rhythm of the song. My body starts kneeling to the floor and crawling on all fours with eyes hunting for the case in one of the post-moving mangled stacks surrounding the light socket closest to the closet. Pulling out Madman across the Water from the boom box and switching, I type and I listen. Jeez, I forgot how good "yesterday is here" is. Somewhere in the beginning of "cold, cold ground", Tom is howling out a "yeahoowww!" and the CD skips then repeats over and over again. It's a pretty scary, fearsome noise that I let repeat for a little while because moments like these are pretty rare.
The CD had this weird splotch on the bottom. The milky cloud wouldn't rinse and just stayed ingrained. The Boom Box wouldn't read past track 15. The disc was done. Placed on a shelf away from the music area and then out to the trash in the morning. I had worn out my first CD, and the happy compliment goes to Tom Waits. What kind of salute do you give this? A nod of the head in recognition and a smile in thanks for the work that went into making a piece of music that meant so much to me.
Frank's Wild Years Poster
180gm vinyl LP repressing of this classic album. Cobra. 2007.All the voices in Tom Waits' head come out on this CD: the growler (of course), the crooner, the preacher, the screecher, and the Vegas cheese ball. The instrumentation is equally eclectic. (Yep, that's Waits himself playing the "rooster" on the album's best song, "I'll Be Gone.") More memorable moments: "Innocent When You Dream" (both times), the vocal howling at the end of "Blow Wind Blow," and the lovely coughing fit after "I'll Take New York." Frank's Wild Years is the musical remains of a theatrical collaboration between Waits and Kathleen Brennan, originally staged in 1986. It contains nuggets of important practical advice, sure--"never drive a car when you're dead" (from "Telephone Call from Istanbul")--but mostly these songs are fantasy freaks. Frank's is big-time dreamer. It's a dreamy album. Sweet dreams. --Dan Leone
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