Saturday 22 January 2011

Free Music Friday #86: Tom Waits again

In my education blog I have been going on lately about a conference I attended (see Learning Without Frontiers). As well as enjoying the conference, I enjoyed the chance to meet people that I otherwise only know by their Twitter avatar.

There is one such meeting however that I feel a bit guilty about. Poor @OliverQuinlan got stuck between two slightly ranting Scots (@DerekRobertson and myself). I'm afraid we got a bit enthusiastic about music. Derek, of course, was waxing lyrical about John Shuttleworth and associated characters - even bursting into song on occasion by way of illustration. Somehow or other, we got onto Tom Waits. Derek is a fan but Oliver wasn't really aware of him, so I mentioned my Tom Waits download post on this blog (which included one of my favourite tracks - Bottom Of The World) as well as the Peter Gabriel cover (also on this site).

Unfortunately, when I went to look for Bottom Of The World, I was disappointed to see it was no longer available from the Epitaph Records site (although some of the other tracks are still there). I went looking for it to see if it was available somewhere else and in the process found two live tracks for download on the Spinner Music site instead.

The tracks can be found on a page titled Exclusive: Tom Waits MP3 Download, Part Deux but unfortunately, the free download (of Bottom Of The World) on Part One has expired. The tracks that are still available on the "Part Deux" page are excellent. The first is Falling Down (Live) and Mr Waits is positively bellowing the lyrics. it sounds fantastic and it must have been spine chilling to be in the audience. The second is Eye Ball Kid (Live) which is essentially just percussion and Tom barking out the words. Now I know that doesn't sound very appealing but trust me, it's Tom Waits and it's brilliant.

Has anyone reading this post seen Tom Waits in concert? Hearing tracks like these makes me think it would be an experience you'd never forget.

P.S. I think Oliver has forgiven us because he sent a message to say he'd enjoyed the evening but that having listened to some Tom Waits, he said it was, "...not massively my thing". Well, at least we tried!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad. (By way of experiment!)

4 comments:

Unknown said...

I haven't seen Tom Waits in concert but I am loving the live CD Glitter and Doom. This is a beautiful thing: http://glo.li/fmDJEA

Thanks for the download links :-)

David said...

Hello Derek

Thanks for sharing the link. The only live tracks I have from Mr Waits are the two downloads I share in this post. I think I may have to go look for Gltter And Doom.

Oliver said...

Thanks for the links David. I need to thank you rather than forgive you for exposing me to new things! It was good to meet you both :).

David said...

Hello Oliver

You are very welcome. It was good to meet you too.