01	Hang on St. Christopher						02:46
	02	Straight to the Top (Rhumba)						02:30
	03	Blow Wind Blow						03:35
	04	Temptation						03:53
	05	Innocent When You Dream (Barroom)						04:16
	06	I'll Be Gone						03:12
	07	Yesterday is Here						02:31
	08	Please Wake Me Up						03:35
	09	Frank's Theme						01:49
	10	More Than Rain						03:52
	11	Way Down In The Hole						03:30
	12	Straight to the Top (Vegas)						03:26
	13	I'll Take New York						03:58
	14	Telephone Call From Istanbul						03:11
	15	Cold Cold Ground						04:07
	16	Train Song						03:20
	17	Innocent When You Dream (78)						03:12

Un Operachi Romantico in Two Acts

Frank's Wild Years, 1987
(P) & c 1987 Island Records Ltd. 422-842 357-2
c 1987 Jalma Music (ASCAP)
Island ITW3.

Tom Waits: vocals, pump organ ("Blow Wind Blow", "Innocent When You Dream", Frank's Theme", "Train Song"), optigon ("Temptation", "Yesterday Is Here", "More Than Rain"), rooster ("I'll Be Gone), guitar: ("Yesterday Is Here", "Cold Cold Ground"), tambourine: ("Yesterday Is Here"), farfisa: ("Telephone Call From Istanbul"), drums: ("Telephone Call From Istanbul"), producer (all songs written by Tom Waits)
Greg Cohen: horn arrangement ("Hang On St. Christopher", "Temptation"), alto horn ("Hang On St. Christopher", "Blow Wind Blow", "Train Song"), co-writer ("Straight To The Top - Rhumba"), Leslie bas pedals ("Straight To The Top- Rhumba"), bass ("Temptation", "Innocent When You Dream", "I'll Be Gone", "Please Wake me Up", "More Than Rain", "Way Down In The Hole", "Straight To The Top - Vegas", "I'll Take New York", "Telephone Call From Istanbul")
Ralph Carney: tenor sax ("Hang On St. Christopher", "Straight To The Top - Vegas"), saxes ("Straight To The Top - Rhumba", "Way Down In The Hole", "I'll Take New York"), violin ("Innocent When You Dream"), baritone horn ("I'll Be Gone", "Please Wake me Up", "More Than Rain")
Marc Ribot: guitar ("Hang On St. Christopher", "Temptation", "Way Down In The Hole"), banjo: ("Telephone Call From Istanbul")
Wiliam Schimmel: Leslie bass pedals ("Hang On St. Christopher"), pump organ ("Straight To The Top - Rhumba", "I'll Take New York"), piano ("Innocent When You Dream"), accordion ("I'll Be Gone", "More Than Rain"), cocktail piano ("Straight To The Top - Vegas")
Michael Blair: drums ("Hang On St. Christopher", "Straight To The Top - Vegas", "I'll Take New York", "Telephone Call From Istanbul"), conga ("Straight To The Top - Rhumba", "Temptation"), Glockenspiel ("Blow Wind Blow"), percussion ("Temptation", "Way Down In The Hole"), marachas ("Temptation"), Marimba ("I'll Be Gone"), orchestra bells ("More Than Rain")
Larry Taylor: bass ("Straight To The Top - Rhumba", "Yesterday Is Here", "Cold Cold Ground", "Train Song")
Francis Thumm: pump organ ("Blow Wind Blow"), prepared piano ("More Than Rain")
Kathleen Brennan-Waits: vocal arrangements ("Temptation"), co-writer ("I'll Be Gone", "Yesterday Is Here")
Morris Tepper: guitar ("Temptation", "I'll Be Gone", "More Than Rain", "Telephone Call From Istanbul")
Jay Anderson: bass ("Please Wake me Up")
Angela Brown: background vocals ("Way Down In The Hole")
Leslie Holland: background vocals ("Way Down In The Hole")
Lynne Jordan: background vocals ("Way Down In The Hole")
David Hidalgo: accordion ("Cold Cold Ground", "Train Song")
Ellen Smith: producer's assistant
Danny Leake: recorder
Biff Dawes: recorder, mixer
Tchad Blake: additional engineer
J.B. Mondino: conception & photography
Jeff Price: art direction




RAINVILLE. HARLDY EVER DID THOUGH. RAIN THAT
IS. IT WAS NOWHERE. RAILROAD TRACKS RAN UP
THE BACK OF THE STATE LIKE STITCHES. TELE-
PHONE LINES SLASHED THE ORANGE DAWNS LIKE
A WRECKED SHIP'S RIGGING..AND WHEN IT RAINED
THE WHOLE TOWN WENT MAD. DOGS RAN WILD IN
THE STREETS. FRANK WAS SQUEEZED BETWEEN
SCRAP IRON PLACES AND RADIATOR REPAIR SHOPS
...RAINVILLE, GOOD PLACE TO DREAM YOURSELF
AWAY FROM. WHEN THE TRAINS THUNDERED PAST
THE BACKYARD FENCE, BOUND FOR OXNARD,
LOMPOC, GILA BEND, STANFIELD AND PARTS SOUTH
WHERE THE WIND BLEW BIG, FRANK WOULD COUNT
THE CARS AND MAKE A WISH JUST LIKE HE DID
WHEN HE WAS A KID... AT LEAST SOMETHING WAS
GETTING OUT OF TOWN ALIVE...
ONE MOONLIT NIGHT FRANK PACKED UP HIS
ACCORDION AND SAID BLOW WIND BLOW WHEREVER
YOU MAY GO... CAUSE I'M GOING STRAIGHT TO
THE TOP..UP WHERE THE AIR IS FRESH AND CLEAN.




FRANKS WILD YEARS

Year Of Release: 1987
Record rating = 9
Overall rating = 12

Tom goes Broadway here, but not that kind of Broadway.
Best song: HANG ON ST CHRISTOPHER

Track listing: 1) Hang On St Christopher; 2) Straight To The Top; 3) Blow Wind Blow; 4) Temptation; 5) Innocent When You Dream (Ballroom); 6) I'll Be Gone; 7) Yesterday Is Here; 8) Please Wake Me Up; 9) Frank's Theme; 10) More Than Rain; 11) Way Down In The Hole; 12) Straight To The Top (Vegas); 13) I'll Take New York; 14) Telephone Call From Istanbul; 15) Cold Cold Ground; 16) Train Song; 17) Innocent When You Dream (78).

This one is sometimes grouped together with the preceding two albums as the final touch to Tom's 'trilogy' of weird albums, but essentially that's more of a strictly chronological grouping than anything else - in this way, it's pretty handy to categorize Tom's output of the Eighties as "monolithic", especially considering the obvious 'summation' of this period with the live Big Time a year later. However, Franks Wild Years is, in fact, seriously different from the previous two albums, and in this way, I was a wee bit disappointed at first. But it's the kind of album that really takes some time to grow on you.
What happens here is that Tom, together with his almost equally eccentric wife and companion Kathleen Brennan (who is actually credited as co-writer for many of the songs on here), wrote a concise musical play, loosely based on the 'storyline' of the song 'Frank's Wild Years' from Swordfishtrombones, toured with it in 1986 and a year later released the 'soundtrack' for it. Having read the actual play, I'm not too sure what to think about it... essentially it just deals with the ordinary everyday life and the unrealistic dreams of an average guy named Frank, all stringed together without anything like a concise plot and heavily borrowing from XXth century French theater, I guess. Or maybe not. Tom himself played Frank, and I'm not sure if he got standing ovations (for the play itself, at least), but really, that needn't matter, I'm pretty sure the musical material was at the center of attention anyway.
The music here is a little bit more normal-sounding than on the preceding albums - after all, the basic idea was not to spook off the listener here, but to attract him, and so, I guess, the usual weirdo trimmings are a bit smeared, which means it might be the best introduction to Tom's post-1980 output if you're a little scared to wade in straight ahead. Of course, you'll still have Tom singing "abominably" on almost every track, but at least he'll be doing this backed not so much by a primal marimba beat as rather by some basic accordeon, or some adequately sounding pump organ, with the music rarely showing the dissonance and schizophrenia of Rain Dogs. Which doesn't mean it's really normal: Tom still likes to play tricks on the listener by splurging together the most unpredictable arrangements for his songs, so that you can never guess which instrument is going to play the next second, how many overdubbed Toms will be singing the next melody, where that particular instrumental is going to end up, etc., etc. It's only after a couple listens, though, that you start noticing this weirdness - upon first listen, I was actually a little bit distracted by the 'normalness' of it all. Not to be!
And besides, the album has some great material on it. A couple of ballads, for instance, that are to be held among Tom's best ever - the magnificent 'Innocent When You Dream', for instance, with its heartbreaking (and catchy!) chorus, present here in two versions; I by far prefer the second version, subtitled '78' and adequately represented as an old hissy jazzy recording, and think it's a wonderful ending for the entire record, but the first version, with Tom wailing uncontrollably, is tops as well. Just a good old barroom jazzy ballad, carried by a fat pump organ part and a couple pompous piano chords. 'Yesterday Is Here' is maybe even more of a tear-jerker, with that echoey early-Sixties Shadows-like guitar tone and Tom's heartfelt singing: 'Well today is grey skies, tomorrow is tears, you'll have to wait till yesterday is here'. 'Cold Cold Ground', also borrowing its melody from some early Sixties' hit whose name escapes me at the moment, is beautiful too, with more of that chaotic lyrical imagery that Tom does so well ('now don't be a cry baby when there's wood in the shed, there's a bird in the chimney and a stone in my bed...') and pretty romantic accordeon. And so on.
Again, though, I think it's the more energetic numbers that really make the grade. What a better way to kick off the album than with 'Hang On St Christopher', perhaps the most hard-rocking, sharp'n'shrill number Tom ever put down on record up to that point? Just have a go at it in headphones to feel the rumbling pulse of that bassline, the economic percussion which sounds more like a jack-screw than a human, the menacing brass puffs going in and out, and Tom's threatening vocals over it all - 'hang on St Christopher on the passenger side, open it up tonight the devil can ride'. A couple of the songs do sound like they were some Rain Dogs outtakes, though, and they're great at that - 'Telephone Call From Istanbul' is a major highlight, with percussion and sparse... sparse... what is that instrument anyway? Sounds like a cross between an electric piano and an overamplified lower string of the acoustic.
And as usual, the 'minor' highlights are just way too many to mention - the lounge jazz of 'Blow Wind Blow', the hilarious rooster crowing and fast quasi-clownish tempo of 'I'll Be Gone', the German-style pump organ extravaganza of 'More Than Rain', the mock-Broadway raving 'I'll Take New York'... just about every song on here qualifies in some respect or other. And thus, considering that the album has - granted, a very diluted and twisted - but still a concept, it would really be easier for a neophyte to get into this than into Rain Dogs. This isn't exactly a compliment, but neither it is a negative comment: in fact, I'm quite pleased to see that even after two albums of near-total avantgarde extravagance, Tom still had his feet firmly routed in the ground, not to mention in good melodies. As solid a nine as I ever gave out, although as a post-scriptum I'll add that I don't really like the album cover (what's up with the muddy yellow colours?) and I don't really like Tom's singing on 'Temptation'. Oh well, I must voice a complaint, mustn't I?