01	Singapore						02:45
	02	Clap Hands						03:48
	03	Cemetry Polka						01:46
	04	Jockey Full Of Bourbon						02:47
	05	Tango Till They're Sore						02:51
	06	Big Black Mariah						02:43
	07	Diamonds And Gold						02:32
	08	Hang Down Your Head						02:33
	09	Time						03:56
	10	Rain Dogs						02:57
	11	Midtown						01:03
	12	9th & Hennepin						01:56
	13	Gun Street Girl						04:37
	14	Union Square						02:24
	15	Blind Love						04:20
	16	Walking Spanish						03:07
	17	Downtown Train						03:53
	18	Bride Of Raindogs						01:09
	19	Anywhere I Lay My Head						02:47

Rain Dogs, 1985
(P) & c 1985 Island Records Inc. 7 90299-2. The copyright in this sound recording is owned by Island Records Inc
and is exclusively licensed to Island Records Ltd in the UK
Jalma Music (ASCAP)
Island Records ILPS9803.

Tom Waits: vocals, arranger, writer and producer, guitar ("Clap Hands", "Jockey Full Of Bourbon", "Time", "Downtown Train"), Farfisa organ, piano, pump organ, banjo, harmonium
Greg Cohen: double bass
Michael Blair: percussion, marimba, conga, drums, metal percussion, bowed saw, parade drum
Stephen Hodges: drums, parade drums
Larry Taylor: double bass
Marc Ribot: guitar, lead guitar
Ralph Carney: bass sax, sax, clarinet
Chris Spedding: guitar
William Shimmel: accordion ("Time")
Tony Garnier: double bass ("Clap Hands")
Robert Previte: percussion, marimba ("Clap Hands")
G.E. Smith: guitar ("Downtown Train")
Mickey Curry: drums ("Downtown Train")
Robert Kilgore: organ ("Downtown Train")
Tony Levine: bass ("Downtown Train")
Robert Quine: guitar ("Downtown Train")
Kathleen Brennan-Waits: co-writer ("Hang Down Your Head")
Keith Richards: guitar, backing vocals ("Blind Love")
John Lurie: alto sax
Arno Hecht: tenor
Hollywood Paul Litteral: trumpet
Crispin Cioe: sax
Bob Funk: trombone
Ross Levinson: violins
Robert Musso: engineer, mixer at RCA Studios, New York/ USA, banjo
Valerie Goodman: production coordinator
Howie Weinberg: engineer
Anders Petersen: cover photo
Robert Frank: back cover photo



RAIN DOGS

Year Of Release: 1985
Record rating = 10
Overall rating = 13

And this is just like a Thirties' hero catapulted to post-modernist ambience. Huh?
Best song: RAIN DOGS

Track listing: 1) Singapore; 2) Clap Hands; 3) Cemetery Polka; 4) Jockey Full Of Bourbon; 5) Tango Till They're Sore; 6) Big Black Mariah; 7) Diamonds & Gold; 8) Hang Down Your Head; 9) Time; 10) Rain Dogs; 11) Midtown; 12) 9th & Hennepin; 13) Gun Street Girl; 14) Union Square; 15) Blind Love; 16) Walking Spanish; 17) Downtown Train; 18) Bride Of Rain Dog; 19) Anywhere I Lay My Head.

Same as before, only more radical. This has been often chosen as Tom's masterpiece, and usually recommended as the best place to start with his 'schizophrenic' period. And I won't necessarily disagree with that statement... when you start discussing Waits' post-1980 albums, it's essentially a matter of consistency, and since I'd be hard pressed to pinpoint a less-than-solid tune on Rain Dogs, it might as well go as presupposed. Okay, so it's not like I'm exactly pleased with more of those pointless instrumentals, but then again, there's only two of them here and they're a minute each.
And on the other hand, there are seventeen first-rate Waits compositions here, making up for a nearly hour-long experience (don't ask me how the bastard fitted all that stuff on one LP), and they might be even more complex and risky than before. The further he advances, the less links with the past remain: there's but a small small bunch of normal-sounding ballads on here, and even the lyrics are getting less and less normal, with Waits often going for stream-of-consciousness spurts of imagery rather than concise storylines or coherent character impersonations. But these are great spurts of imagery, all rooted deep down in Tom's experience of portraying the dirty streets and seedy bars, so how can you go wrong with lyrics like 'Sane, sane, they're all insane, fireman's blind, the conductor is lame, a Cincinnati jacket and a sad-luck dame, hanging out the window with a bottle full of rain' ('Clap Hands') or 'Edna Million in a drop dead suit, Dutch Pink on a downtown train, two-dollar pistol but the gun won't shoot, I'm in the corner in the pouring rain' ('Jockey Full Of Bourbon')... hmm, say, these lyrics don't look at all unlike. But they all make their point quite efficiently.
What is perhaps so goddamn good about the record is that it fully and firmly establishes Tom's function: he can now be seen as a propagator of old cabaret and lounge values projected onto a post-modernist platform. Result? This record, with a little bit of itching, could please both the 'normal' and the 'elitist' listener - elitists can admire the album's bizarre instrumentation and multiple twists of complex time signatures and arrangements, not to mention the lyrics, while 'normal' listeners could just take this as a 'strange' take on Twenties/Thirties music. Granted they can tolerate Tom's grizzly grunts, of course. No really, I mean it: these are, deep down at the core, all normal songs - and they betray it in the titles, too. 'Cemetery Polka' is a polka, 'Tango Till They're Sore' is a tango. They're just twisted, kinda like the Police twisted 'Roxanne' so that everybody thought it was reggae when in fact it was a tango too. Plus, there's some basic blues, some basic jazz, and even some basic Latin rhythms ('Jockey Full Of Bourbon'). It's just that when you arrange this stuff so that each instrument plays slightly 'against' every other one, and above it all Tom sings a bit early or a bit late or a bit never-minding-the-rhythm at all, it all starts giving you a truly unearthly feel.
In amidst all this craziness, the more 'normal' numbers come in from time to time, particularly in the second part, and provide a great amount of diversity. Thus, 'Hang Down Your Head' is a genteel Springsteen-like ballad with a truly resonant and heartfelt vocal delivery. And 'Time' wouldn't at all feel out of place on Closing Time, featuring the exact same late night mood as the overall feel of that album. And 'Blind Love' is a country ballad, nothing less - with slide guitar and all the necessary attributes, and pretty catchy at that. And then there's 'Downtown Train', a basic love song with poppy overtones; the 'will I see you tonight on the downtown train' with its accompanying guitar line could be a great hit for Boston... or somebody like that...
...but it's still the "weird" stuff that really makes the record. Like the fast cabaret sendup 'Singapore', lyrically somewhat of a follow-up to 'Shore Leave', musically more of a follow-up to 'Underground' with its wild marimbas and minimal instrumentation. Or the dark, dark, truly evil sounding 'Clap Hands' with more marimbas and sparse, economic lead guitar lines. Or 'Cemetery Polka' with the immortal line about Uncle Vernon, 'independent as a hog on ice', whatever that might mean, and weird organ lines that seem to come straight from a some Twenties' number but are set against that strange, strange beat. Or 'Big Black Mariah', a song reveling in its aggressivity and rawness - lyrically almost like an ode to Al Capone, musically just the usual hell. Or the title track, which I chose as my favourite - after a long debate with myself - because the moment when Tom sings 'for I am a ra-a-a-a-a-a-ain dog, too' might just be the culmination of the record. Or might it be that closing number, the "quasi-accappella" 'Anywhere I Lay My Head', which a normal soul-loving person might write off as abysmal but we who know better will call genius? Sarcastic genius, of course... that vocal-wrecking exercise is clearly a little bit tongue-in-cheek (Tom parodying Aretha Franklin, anybody?), but it's also painfully resonant in its function of sincere "vagabond anthem".
Which is just the main point of this album - it will always stay a little bit enigmatic to you, just because it mixes the funny, the serious, the experimental, and the traditional in such an unpredictable and essentianly "unguessable" way. Like any true work of art should, of course. Ever wondered why the Ramones are so great? Because if somebody asks you 'Is a song like 'Blitzkrieg Bop' supposed to be a serious anthemic call or a hilarious tongue-in-cheek sendup?', you really couldn't give a definite answer - if you could, that'd only mean you entirely missed one of the band's crucial strengths. Same with Rain Dogs, an album that'll always leave you a little bit unsteady and a little bit wondering. And a good bit emotionally satisfied, too.