01	Tom Traubert's Blues (Four Sheets To The Wind In Copenhagen)						06:39
	02	Step Right Up						05:43
	03	Jitterbug Boy (Sharing A Curbstone With Chuck E. Weiss, Robert Marchese, Poul Body And The Mug And Artie)						03:44
	04	I Wish I Was In New Orleans (In The Ninth Ward)						04:53
	05	The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me) (An Evening With Pete King)						03:40
	06	Invitation To The Blues						05:24
	07	Pasties And A G-String (At The Two O'Clock Club)						02:32
	08	Bad Liver And A Broken Heart (In Lowell)						04:50
	09	The One That Got Away						04:07
	10	Small Change (Got Rained On With His Own)						05:07
	11	I Can't Wait to Get Off Work (And See My Baby on Montgomery Avenue)						03:17

ТОМ WAITS :vocals and piano accompanied by these great musicians:
SHELLY MANNE-drums;
JIM HUGHART-bass;
LEW TABACKIN-tenor sax.
Shelly Manne appears through the courtesy of Flying Dutchman Productions Ltd.
STRING SECTION ARRANGED AND CONDUCTED BY JERRY YESTER
Violins: Harry Bluestone (Concertmaster), Israel Baker, Nathan Kaproff, Nathan Ross, George Kast, Murray Adier, Marvin Limonick, Alfred Lustgarten, Sheldon Sanov.
Violas: Sam Boghossian, David Schwartz, Allan Harshman. Celli: Ed Lustgarten (Orchestra Manager), Kathleen Lustgarten, Ray Kelley, Jesse Ehriich.

Recorded complete and direct to 2-Track Stereo Tape at Wally Heider Recording, Hollywood, California on July 15,19,20,21,29, 1976.

Engineered by Bones Howe. 2nd Engineers: Geoff Howe and Bill Broms.
Disc Mastering: Terry Dunavan, Elektra Sound Recorders, Los Angeles. CD Mastering by Stephen Innocenzi, Atlantic Studios, NYC.
Cover Photography: Joel Brodsky; Back Cover Photography: Bruce Weber; Design: Cal Schenkel.

Special thanks to Shelly Manne for his drumistikiy pasturized conktribution and the 8х10 glossy and the neck tie. Thanks to Frank Vicari, Fitz Jenkins, Chip White, John Forsha (The Nocturnal Emmissions, N.Y.C.) Thanks to John Desko
Herb Cohen-AII night at Winchells Donut Shop, June 21, 1976.
PRODUCTION AND SOUND BY BONES HOWE A MR. BONES PRODUCTION



SMALL CHANGE

Year Of Release: 1976
Record rating = 10
Overall rating = 13

So goshdamn dirty, rough, smelly and sincere you don't even notice the musical primitivism.
Best song: TOM TRAUBERT'S BLUES

Track listing: 1) Tom Traubert's Blues (Four Sheets To The Wind In Copenhagen); 2) Step Right Up; 3) Jitterbug Boy (Sharing A Curbstone With Chuck E. Weiss, Robert Marchese, Paul Body And The Mug And Arte); 4) I Wish I Was In New Orleans (In The Ninth Ward); 5) The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me) (An Evening With Pete King); 6) Invitation To The Blues; 7) Pasties And A G-String (At The Two O'Clock Club); 8) Bad Liver And A Broken Heart (In Lowell); 9) The One That Got Away; 10) Small Change (Got Rained On With His Own .38); 11) I Can't Wait To Get Off Work (And See My Baby On Montgomery Avenue).

Damn, I'll probably have a hard time trying to explain why I castigate Born To Run so nastily and yet award this almost totally melodyless record one of the highest ratings available. Sheez, I can't even hum a single line off it, apart from maybe 'go waltzing Matilda with me'. Crap, I'm in a real mess this time.
That was an intentionally confused intro to a review of an intentionally confused album. See, Tom Waits got drunk. Not in a literal sense, of course (I honestly don't know the story of Tom's relations with alcohol and other substances, although I guess it must have had its moments). It's just that Small Change is in the same style of Tom's previous albums, only this time all the stories and descriptions and rantings are done by the protagonist in a completely and irreversibly soaken state of mind. Waits' voice is on the move, too - down the scale, that is, as the grunts and growls step about an octave lower than they used to be placed. And just about every delivery on here is fascinating.
Like I said, musically it's no great shakes; same orchestrated piano ballads and drums'n'bass-led jazzy shuffles with no clearly defined instrumental (nor, in many cases, vocal) melody. It's clearly a mood album, and simply put, it's one of the greatest mood albums of all time. It's as dirty, messy, confused, and mean as the front cover with the unshaven Tom and the striptease dancer suggests; every bit of that and more. The central theme, more or less, is (again) night life, either in New Orleans or in general, but Tom's lyrics had already gone a long way from where they were before - instead of simple, minimalistic word-pictures he now mostly sticks to endless streams-of-conscience, all let through this prism of the perspective of a disillusioned, disspirited, yet still hopeful, sleazy old drunkard. It's all highly artistic, yet it has a shivering realism of its own. It's a record that should be the best friend of every unhappy, tired, degraded clochard in the world; how come it isn't one is a question I cannot answer. The only thing that matches this spirit, in my humble opinion, is Dire Straits' debut album (not that I'm really comparing the two - but there's a lot of similarities in style to be found).
Let's just dig it track by track, it really deserves this. You've probably heard 'Tom Traubert's Blues' already - one of Waits' most famous songs (hey, even Rod Stewart covered it, which is kind of a crowning achievement, I guess, isn't it?). It's about 'vomiting in a foreign country', as Tom expressly put it while introducing the song at concerts. It's also exceedingly beautiful - a picture of an old drunken guy hopelessly lost in a foreign land where 'no one speaks English' and the only link he's managed to preserve with reality is this 'waltzing Matilda' tune which he keeps humming to himself at any given time. ('Waltzing Matilda' is an old Australian hymn that inspired Tom into penning this one). You may dislike the sappy strings; I don't even notice them, as I'm entirely concentrated on Tom's "black" vocals and all the desperation he puts forward in his voice. Don't songs like these make you sorry for their protagonists?
Next up is a 180-degree turnover with 'Step Right Up', a straightforward jazzy ranting that's almost dangerously close to rap - in structure and spirit the closest link you can find is Dylan's 'Subterranean Homesick Blues'. In structure and spirit, as Tom's goals and means almost coincide with Bob's: with a clever use of old tired cliches, catch phrases, classic and self-made aphorisms and sneery remarks on the subject of night (and occasionally day) life in the big city, all delivered in a rapid fire thunderstorm of blurry raps, he recreates that atmosphere of the hideous, soul-annihilating fuss of modern life to a tee.
'Jitterbug Boy' is a breather - an endearing set of "memoirs" from a guy who has 'eaten Mulligan stew, got drunk with Louis Armstrong'. Good thing, too, as we need breathers on here; yet even a breather on a Tom Waits album actually means more than you can guess at first sight. But then there's also 'I Wish I Was In New Orleans', a tune that didn't at first sit too comfy with me because I thought that Tom was trying to push his "old jazzman imitation" a bit too hard on this one, but then I remembered that, heck, after all, he just impersonated an old drunkard, whatever the race is. Don't let your little children listen to the song - that raspy vocal will make them run for cover, even if you yourself will be overwhelmed by the radiant power of that nostalgic anthem.
Even better is the next song - 'The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)'. You can tell by the title what it's about. It's undoubtedly got the best lyrics on the album. Just listen: 'The piano has been drinking... my necktie is asleep... and the combo went back to New York... the jukebox has to take a leak... and the carpet needs a haircut... and the spotlight looks like a prison break... cause the telephone's out of cigarettes... and the balcony's on the make... and the piano has been drinking...'. Even better, Tom managed to select some really nifty deep piano chords to go along with this stuff. Just the kind of stuff you want to be playing after a lengthy exhausting party when the guests are all gone and you're left, you know, in the proper condition and in confusion, too.
'Invitation To The Blues' is an absolute stunner as well, a bit more traditionally-oriented, I guess, an ode to a waitress in a casino or something like that, as if the unlucky 'pianist' whose piano had been drinking has just managed to open his bleary eyes half an inch and now stares at the first person around. 'Pasties And A G-String' is another rappy chant, this time really close to a hip-hop stylization with nothing but a few wild percussion rhythms to support Tom as he's wailing about the atmosphere at a late night burlesque show. Can't even quote no lyrics or I'd have to give out the whole damn thing. Then there's 'Bad Liver And A Broken Heart'... surely the title speaks for itself, now doesn't it? Would have made a far more representative album title than Small Change, I guess.
As usual, I feel a little bit let down and worn out towards the end... neither 'The One That Got Away' nor the title track speak volumes to me (the former seems like a very pale shadow of 'Step Right Up' while the best thing about the title track OF COURSE is the lighting of the cigar at the beginning of the song and the well recorded, satisfactory puff at its end, symbolizing the absolute finale of all things to come, I guess), but they're good. And the album finishes off on a brilliantly humble and normal song, with the only normal title on the whole record - 'I Can't Wait To Get Off Work (And See My Baby On Montgomery Avenue)'. Have I yet mentioned that almost all the songs on here have these 'parenthesed', almost ridiculously long, titles? Like, 'Jitterbug Boy' is really 'Jitterbug Boy (Sharing A Curbstone With Chuck E. Weiss, Robert Marchese, Paul Body And The Mug And Artie)', and so on. Well, this one's the only normal title, and the song's the only more or less normal song, unless you simply cannot accept a song that begins with the lines 'well I don't mind working 'cause I used to be jerkin' off most of my time in bars'. It's almost as if all the alcohol has cleared out of our heads by the end of the record and we're back to our ordinary self - a bit more self-conscious, a bit more restrained and logical, yet still very very human.
Anyway, the whole album is an experience - even more so than the previous three. It should definitely be listened to in one session without ever trying to tear the songs apart, as, for once, it's the spirit, not the music, that makes the difference. A wonderful spirit - highly artistic and powerfully realist at the same time. And ooh, that voice. You gotta hear it once. Then you can die happy. Or unhappy - this is not exactly a consolating record.