“Lyrically, Waits' songs frequently present atmospheric portrayals of grotesque, often seedy characters and places – although he has also shown a penchant for more conventional ballads. He has a cult following and has influenced subsequent songwriters despite having little radio or music video support.
His songs are best-known to the general public in the form of cover versions by more visible artists, "Jersey Girl," performed by Bruce Springsteen and "Downtown Train," performed by Rod Stewart. Although Waits' albums have met with mixed commercial success in his native United States, they have occasionally achieved gold album sales status in other countries.
He has been nominated for a number of major music awards and has won Grammy Awards for two albums, Bone Machine and Mule Variations.
Waits wrote the majority of the album [Rain Dogs] in a two month stint in the fall of 1984 in a basement room at the corner of Washington and Horatio Streets in Manhattan. According to Waits it was, “kind of a rough area, Lower Manhattan between Canal and 14th Street, just about a block from the river, it was a good place for me to work. Very quiet, except for the water coming through the pipes every now and then. Sort of like being in a vault.”
In preparation for the album, Waits recorded street sounds and other ambient noises on a cassette recorder in order to get the sound of the city that would be the album's subject matter.
A wide range of instruments were employed to achieve the album's sound, including marimba, accordion, double bass, trombone and banjo, indicating the many different musical directions spread across Rain Dogs. Coming as it did in the mid 1980s—when most musicians depended on synthesizers, drum machines, and studio techniques to create their music—the album is notable for its organic sound, and the means by which it was achieved.
Waits, discussing his mistrust of then fashionable studio techniques, said:
“If I want a sound, I usually feel better if I've chased it and killed it, skinned it and cooked it. Most things you can get with a button nowadays. So if I was trying for a certain drum sound, my engineer would say: "Oh, for Christ’s sake, why are we wasting our time? Let's just hit this little cup with a stick here, sample something (take a drum sound from another record) and make it bigger in the mix, don't worry about it." I'd say, "No, I would rather go in the bathroom and hit the door with a piece of two-by-four very hard.””
Tom Waits is the definition of fucking cool, the first album of many to come around here…
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