01	cinny's waltz						02:17
	02	muriel						03:33
	03	i never talk to strangers						03:38
	04	medley: jack & neal/ california, here I come						05:01
	05	a sight for sore eyes						04:40
	06	potter's field						08:40
	07	burma-shave						06:34
	08	barber shop						03:54
	09	foreign affair						03:46

Foreign Affairs, 1977
(P) & c 1977 Elektra Entertainment 7E-1117 for the US
and WEA International Inc. for the world outside the US.
c 1977 Fifth Floor Music, Inc. (ASCAP)
Asylum Records K50368.
Tom Waits: piano and vocals (all songs written by Tom Waits)
Bette Midler: co-starring on "I Never Talk To Strangers"
Bones Howe: engineer, production and sound
Jim Hughart: bass
Shelly Manne: drums
Frank Vicari: tenor saxophone solos
Jack Sheldon: trumpet solos
Gene Cipriano: clarinet solos on "Potter's Field"
Bob Alcivar: orchestra arranger and conductor
Edgar Lustgarden: orchestra manager
Jim Robak: orchestra manager
Geoff Howe: second engineer
Norman Savage: thanks
David "Doc" Feuer: thanks
Bobby Savage: thanks
Dee Barnett: thanks
Roberta McKernan: thanks
Glen Christensen: art direction and design
George Hurrell: photography


FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Year Of Release: 1977
Record rating = 6
Overall rating = 9

Too little progress for me to really evaluate it higher. The melodies are rote, too.
Best song: BARBER SHOP

Track listing: 1) Cinny's Waltz; 2) Muriel; 3) I Never Talk To Strangers; 4) Jack & Neal/California Here I Come; 5) A Sight For Sore Eyes; 6) Potter's Field; 7) Burma Shave; 8) Barber Shop; 9) Foregn Affair.

Uh, eh, this is one of those small 'n' rare exceptions I mentioned - a record with very little progress and clearly inferior to everything else that surrounds it. Even if it does contain yet another all-time Waits classic in 'Burma Shave' (not one of my favourites, though), even the fans don't usually have a lot of nice words to say about it. It's... well, it's not bad. As a first impression of Tom Waits, it might even convert you. But it's, dammit, it's boring. Take this from a non-fan who's nevertheless absolutely convinced in Waits' genius - Foreign Affairs is boring, and in this way, the first serious misstep in Tom's career.
And why is it boring? Why, because it's nothing special! There's an ocassional orchestrated ballad, and there's an occasional jazzy rant, as usual, but they're not fresh, and they're not so original. Even the wall-rattling hoarse tooth-spitting bombastic vocal of Small Change seems to get lost along the way, as Tom 'sobers' his personage down and switches on to a collection of rather incoherent half stream-of-conscience, half personal philosophy ravings that are very hard to come by and almost completely lack in humour. And yet, serious as it all may be, there's almost nothing on the album that really grips me as tight as, say, 'Tom Traubert's Blues' or 'I Wish I Was In New Orleans'.
What's really bugging is that at times, Tom seems to be drifting a bit too close to generic mainstreamish schlock. Any album that opens with a thing like 'Cinny's Waltz', a pathetic two-minute Hollywood pastiche, just gotta cause some seedy uncertain looks. Okay, put that stuff as an intro to Small Change and it would work perfectly in the context of the entire setting, a sorta tongue-in-cheek intro to the whole drunken biz. But sheez, on Foreign Affairs, the third track is 'I Never Talk To Strangers', one of the most uninteresting things Tom ever did. A duet with Bette Midler, for Christ's sake; it's very nice that the song is based on an actual overheard conversation, but that doesn't mean the song itself - outside of any outside knowledge about it - sounds just like a generic piece of cabaret crap. No cool vocals (unless you think, of course, that Bette Midler is the queen of 'em all), no melody to speak of, pah.
Absolutely the same goes for Hollywoodish ballads like 'Muriel' and the title track, which do absolutely nothing to me. Maybe multiple repeated listens will endear the songs to the hardcore Waits fan, but to me, it simply sounds as if all this stuff was produced by Tom so he could get deeper into his Hollywoodish emploi to star in several upcoming movies. There's no tongue-in-cheek attitude here, at least, I don't feel any, and neither do I feel any particularly original atmosphere. It's all, you know, kind of a Selfportrait to Tom, except that I far prefer Selfportrait because it has actual hummable melodies, while all the sappy ballads on Foreign Affairs have nothing but 100-percent 'authentic' Hollywood atmosphere.
Oh well, at least the middle part's got some good stuff up there. Relatively good stuff. The 'Jack & Neal/California Here I Come' 'medley' comes across as one of Waits' best Kerouac-isms, funny in its own way, if not tremendously memorable. Conceptually, I think it's the first time Waits' lyrical subjects get out of the limits of big city life and start spreading across The Road - so if that sounds right up your alley, you better grab it fast. Another small innovation is the first appearance of a true grandiose "epic" in Waits' catalog, the nearly nine-minute 'Potter's Field'. I have not the least idea of what the song is about, but I wouldn't be me if I didn't mention that the alternation of grand orchestral interludes with bass-based rappy rants was a trick Waits hadn't employed before, and it lends the song a certain aura of universality. What kind of universality, though, I'm a bit baffled at that, I guess. Not that I even like the song. If it's atmosphere we're babbling about, I'd sure like the atmosphere to engulf me, and it doesn't. Who's the potter anyway?
And my favourite on here actually is not 'Burma Shave', an almost Springsteen-like story about a young 'delinquent' guy making it away with a gal and ending in a car wreck by the side of the road. It's a good song (probably), but a bit, er, uh, er, uh, repetitive if you get me. Now wait a minute, whadja mean, 'repetitive'? Name me a Tom Waits song that isn't repetitive! Oh, okay, the thing is, it just flaunts its repetitiveness because it's about the main thing about the song I gets to notice. No real melody, no really cool impersonation, just kind of a sad story. I pity the gal. I pity the guy. I know how it goes. I still insist my favourite here is and will always be 'Barber Shop', a cute little ditty that's almost upbeat in a certain way. Dig the jangly bass line and the weird percussion outbursts that predict some of the stuff on Rain Dogs (well, actually, it shares the same style with 'Pasties And A G-String' except that this one's more of a real song) and dig the lyrics and the 'good morning mister snip snip snip' introduction. The only song on here that you can tap your foot to, a little bit. The only song with a wee bit of humor. In short, the only song that really stands out from all the rest and so it draws my attention immediately.
Still, even 'Barber Shop' isn't enough to conceal the fact that this is one of the weakest records in the entire Waits catalog. It's not a crime: it's hardly unlistenable, and hey, you can't go off making genius records all the time. But I sure am glad he didn't continue working in this direction, or we might have ended up with a snotty Hollywoodish graphomaniac songwriter, instead of everybody's favourite alternative hero.