Tom Waits live vinyl! My Father's Place 1977

 [review by Bill Glahn]

Tom Waits: Live at My Father’s Place in Roslyn, NY 10 October 1977 (Radio Looploop RLL 043)

Venue: as titled

Sound Quality: Good WLIR radio broadcast, with some “tweaking” to raise the voice and audience levels that aren’t typical of known off-air master cassettes on other WLIR broadcasts. A mono-esque and saturated source tape leads to some distortion. A fine recording as bootlegs go, but one that could have been better considering the availability of vintage broadcast recordings these days.

Cover: Attractive single pocket jacket, black and white photos of Waits on front and back with red lettering.

Tracklist: (side a) Standing on the Corner/ I Never Talk To Strangers/ Depot, Depot/ Jitterbug Boy (side b) Pasties and a G-String/ Invitation To The Blues/ Eggs and Sausage/ Step Right Up (side c) I Wish I Was In New Orleans/ Small Change/ The Piano Has Been Drinking/ Emotional Weather Report (side d) Muriel/ California Here I Come/ Tom Traubert’s Blues

Comments: With his Satchmo voice, beatnik persona, and novelist heart, Tom Waits was clearly a man out of time when his first album, Closing Time, was released in 1973. That it was released on Asylum Records (a label that was distributed by the Warner Music Group) is no surprise, given that Warners had already established itself as an artist friendly label and distributor willing to take chances. By the time of this broadcast, Waits had already released 5 albums and garnered a growing and loyal audience. 

Waits projected a confident, if unusual singing style, with an affinity for writing about lost and wayward souls, street criminals, and the seedy underbelly of urban life. In essence, he was the counter-persona to Warners’ other “weird voice,” Randy Newman, a neurotic who was focused more on melody and world events. Where Newman wrote “Mama Told Me Not To Come,” Waits went and bathed himself in “forbidden” culture with no apologies. It was easy to see why Newman’s songs were more readily attractive to other artists at the time, although Waits’ first album did yield “Ol’ 55,” which The Eagles recorded an almost unrecognizably sterile version.

By the time of this recording, however, almost completely consumed by whiskey and cigarette-drenched talking lyrics over a jazz band (free-form), Waits was in immanent danger of self-parody. He wasn’t in any danger of maintaining his stature as a critics’ darling or popularity on NPR and college stations, but with narrowing formats on commercial radio (of which WLIR was one), Waits would be squeezed out of any notions of mass popularity. Despite his unyielding innovative approach (or because of it), Waits would become the object of fandom by sociology “geeks” as a conduit of the lives of everyday people to their more educated brethren. A pity, because Wait has only become more accessible (and his characters more fleshed out) as the years have rolled along. 

This broadcast contains only two songs from his just released (at the time) album, Foreign Affairs, mixed with his more popular earlier material such as “Invitation To The Blues,” “Tom Traubert’s Blues (Waltzing Matilda),” and a jazzbo cover of “Standing On The Corner.” While those songs keep the performance interesting, the new songs only added to a routine that was already becoming stale. Waits would recover. WLIR would become more streamlined. It’s a tough call on whether it’s Waits’ last hurrah on commercial radio or commercial radio’s last hurrah at presenting challenging artists. 

Grade: B- (half point reduction for sound quality)

Bonus view: