For I am a Rain Dog Too

Tom Waits

Rain Dogs

RCA, 1985

singles-

• Downtown Train

So... Tom Waits. He is this legendary dude apparently, who has influenced a ton of musicians (M Ward from She&Him, the Pogues, Fiona Apple, Les Claypool, Mark Lanegan from the Screaming Trees, Nick Cave, and even Bruce Springsteen although they are contemporaries). Rain Dogs is supposed to be one of his best albums, the first of only two to be certified gold in the US. It is certainly interesting, and totally not what I expected. But I can tell how this became an influence for so many artists.

Waits blends traditional blues (which I like) with other weird shit (sometimes I like). Most of the tracks on the record are around two minutes, which is great, because I don't think I could handle four minutes of Cemetery Polka. This is definitely not a record (or a musician for that matter) for anyone looking for anything resembling a pop tune. Waits decided, in the 80s, that new gimmicky equipment, and devices for making music (such as synthesizers, drum machines, and sampling) were worthless, and couldn't be matched by conventional means of creating sound. This is awesome, considering these are the very things I hate about the late 70s, 80s, and early 90s. So, instead of creating a bass drum sound on a machine in a studio, he used 2x4s on the bathroom doors (that rhymed, by the way). 

I'm sure Tom Waits would be considered a throwback today, as his material seems to stem from early Americana folk, traditional blues, and other ethnic folk genres. In the mid 80's as American Hardcore wound down, Glam Metal wound up, and Hip Hop started to come into its own, Waits tried to put the brakes on, and it turned out great.