I know I’ve been posting a bunch tonight, but I needed to do some catching up. In any case, I found this (albeit 7 months late) cool video cover of Waits’ “Back in the Good Old World” performed by none other than the ultimate trader, art work genius and all around interesting fellow Pascal Fricke (AKA WaitsWatcher). I thought it would be a good way to sign off for the night so enjoy:
Back in 1990, Tom Waits was involved in an AIDS research tribute album featuring artists renditions of Cole Porter songs. Tom contributed a very unusual rendition of “It’s All Right With Me”. Other artists featured in the project include David Byrne, The Neville Brothers and U2. Along with the recordings there was a VHS release of music videos of the songs. Mr. Waits’ video was directed by Jim Jarmusch.
Well, now 16 years later, there is a new DVD release available which comes packaged with the original album recordings. As before, proceeds from all purchases go to AIDS research.
The music video for “It’s All Right With Me” is also available on the Criterion Collection release of Down By Law. Thanks to Jarlath for the heads up.
Well, this is a sign of how far behind I am. I got an email from Katrina Whalen over at corduroyroads.com last February which I’m just now getting to.
In any case, she put together a really amazing stop animation film set to the song Table Top Joe from Alice. It was created as her senior thesis. It’s really worth a watch.
Clarke Green has put together a little music video for “Circus” off of Real Gone using clips from the public domain Prelinger Archives:
Thanks to Jarlath.
Here is one of a ton of the stories I missed posting during my recent work frenzy. Coverville, a podcast dedicated to the art of the cover song, did a Tom Waits podcast in celebration of his birthday back in December. The podcast primarily focuses on covers of his tunes by other artists such as Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and Shawn Colvin, but also includes Mr. Waits’ covers of “Papa’s got a Brand New Bag” (a fabulous cut) and Somewhere.
Hear it here.
Thanks to Jarlath.
I found the following brief notice about a movement to find “PodSafe” music for the multitudes of Postcasters out there:
But the PodSafe Music Network (www.music.podshow.com) is only one part of the PodShow’s auspices. “[PodSafe]’s a place for podcasters to go find music for their shows,” Butler said. PodSafe makes artists usable for airplay in all podcasts, which is something akin to a Creative Commons license. Butler’s new agreement brings tracks by big-league artists like Bad Religion, Merle Haggard, Tom Waits, the Dropkick Murphys, Elliott Smith, and NOFX into the world of podcasting. Punk label Fat Wreck Chords and Saddle Creek Records, home to indie-emo phenoms Cursive and Bright Eyes, also signed on to PodSafe at Butler’s behest, though many indie labels continue to balk at authorizing music for PodSafe usage.
[Via: San Francisco Bay Guardian | Arts and Entertainment]
According to the PodSafe site, Epitaph(the parent label of Anti-) has made the following four Tom Waits songs safe for Podcasting:
I was unable to find out if there is any licensing costs for these songs, but at least it’s nice to know that there is some cool tunes to put in those podcasts.
Jarlath wrote about this awhile back and I’m just now getting a chance to post it. In any case, there is a treasure trove of Tom Waits videos available at YouTube. There are some great classic clips as well as music videos and concert performances. If you are a fan, I suggest you check it out. Two posters on the sight worth checking out are GhostMoth and the frequently mentioned SarahV. It’s a great site, and worth checking out. Thanks again to Jarlath.
Update (11/08/2005): Oh, check out Jim (Pod) as well, he’s got some great rare stuff.
I found this weird little flash movie over at tomwaitsfan.com. It’s a flash video for Cemetery Polka by the famous Norwegian animator Starkraven Madd.
Mr. J. Helmus attended the Katrina Benefit Concert and took quite a few pictures including a few of the Tom Waits set. You can check them all out at Flickr:
The “heavy, beautiful, dark, slow” music collective The Book of Knots has a new track called “Hammer” that features Tom Waits. You can hear a rough cut of the track at their MySpace page. It’s very much in line with his stuff on “Real Gone” and as such is pretty cool.
UPDATE- I just noticed that this was posted back in May, so it’s probably a little misleading to call it new. However, it’s the first I’ve heard of it so it’s still worth passing along. Enjoy . . .
Well, considering all of the catching up I have to do, I might as well be thorough and clean up everything. I have a long stack of emails and links that I had been meaning to post but just never got around to it. So here’s my chance and I’m taking it . . .
This link was posted on the Raindog’s Mailing List back last November. It’s a video clip of composer (”Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind”), producer (”Extraordinary Machine”, Fiona Apple) and one-man-band guy, Jon Brion doing a pretty dead on imitation of Tom Waits covering Radiohead’s angst epic “Creep”. There’s also a pretty good representation, despite the poor video and sound quality, of Brion’s unique one-man-band act.
Anti- released a press release announcing an expanded selection of Tom Waits downloads on WarchildMusic.com. They have tracks from Used Songs, Heartattack and Vine, Small Change and The Heart of Saturday Night. They also have an exclusive recording of “Baby Gonna Leave Me” available as well. All proceeds from the downloads go to support the following mission:
By harnessing the commitment to the commonly held belief that children should never be the victims of armed conflict, War Child exists to:
- prevent, wherever possible, children from being affected by armed conflict,
- protect children who live in areas of armed conflict
- provide emergency relief to children and those people they depend upon in areas of armed conflict
- work with local communities, their organisations and local authorities in areas of long term conflict as well as in areas where it has recently ceased in order to ensure sustainable security and livelihood opportunities for their children and address the effects of armed conflict
[Via: WARCHILD: History]
Here’s the full press release:
Tom Waits tracks now on www.warchildmusic.com!
Thursday April 21, 2005
Here’s a very quick and easy way to help War Child, the charity that works with the many children affected by conflict around the world.
Tom Waits tracks are now available on http://www.warchildmusic.com for a very competitive £7.99, or 99p per track. Each individual back catalogue track raises 20p, and albums up to £1.50 for War Child. Also, you can download our exclusive Tom Waits track “Baby Gonna Leave Me” at http://www.warchildmusic.com.
Whilst at the site you can download from www.warchildmusic.com ’s catalogue of exclusive tracks. This includes music unavailable elsewhere from Radiohead, The Bravery, Bjork, Tom Waits and many others. Because these tracks are exclusive to http://www.warchildmusic.com the charity gets even more money - 70 pence per track.
War Child is currently rehabilitating child soldiers in DR Congo, operating a music therapy project in Bosnia, reconstructing livelihoods in Iraq and working with juvenile offenders in Afghanistan.
[Via: ANTI-]
Sarah V. of the Raindogs Mailing List has a wonderful internet radio show dedicated to all things Waits on Krankit.com every Wednesday morning from Midnight to 3:00 AM, Eastern Time. The show is appropriately titled “Tom Waits’ World of Adventure”. I’ve been listening for the last 20 minutes and it’s great stuff. Lots of live tracks. If you can stay up that late, it is well worth the listen.
Tom Waits and Dave Brubeck are the features on this week’s American Routes’ Cool Ivories show. Check it out, it is very much worth a listen.
[Via: The Eyeball Kid: American Routes interview]
Anti has a new promotional flash movie up their site. It’s pretty cool and even better it lets you download one of the songs from the new album. You can find it here.
If you would like to download a copy of the movie, right click here and save the target.
