He's not outsider art. He played more traditionally structured songs for many years before changing his style up. His later music is intentionally experimental. He definitely leans into the weirdo persona sometimes. The guitar soloist for Clap Hands, Marc Ribot, is a legendary musician and composer who's worked with many big names in the industry.
Totally correct and "outsider art" is basically code for terrible art made by a person with severe mental illness or an IQ below 70 So yeah Tom is in no way "an outsider"
That is a very ignorant comment, though. @@MarvinMonroe I encourage you to look more into the subject matter, as I have a feeling your opinion is not necessarily a well educated one. Look at the work of Daniel Johnston and probably Bruce Bickford.
Your questioning of Tom Waits's musicality is fascinating, rather like those who question whether Bob Dylan can sing. It reminds me of the Leonard Cohen quote: ""Most music criticism is in the 19th century. It's so far behind, say, the criticism of painting. It's still based on 19th century art - cows beside a stream and trees and 'I know what I like'. There's no concession to the fact that Dylan might be a more sophisticated singer than Whitney Houston, that he's probably the most sophisticated singer we've had in a generation. Dylan's a Picasso - that exuberance, range, and assimilation of the whole history of music." When you say "the musical sphere" you seem to mean "my musical sphere", no doubt a wide one in its way but also it would seem a very narrow one, one that does not include the work of Henry Partch, Kurt Weill, Ornette Coleman, Charley Patton and Bob Dylan.
Just to counter some of the sentiments in the comments. I appreciate your honest reaction, so many people reacting just tries to please their audience. Either way, do yourself the favour of putting on some of his albums in the background while doing other stuff. You might discover a new world. I’ve turned most people I’ve met around by just forcing them listen for a while.
Waits is a living legend. His music is so diverse and fresh but it still feels aged and ancient . One of the few artists that creates songs that take me away to a strange place. The guitars on all his work is amazing and has been a major influence for me. I disagree with the statements that you need to understand every lyrical or musical reference to appreciate it, I love the fact I don’t .
Really think you hit the nail on the head with the Zappa comparison. They’re both visionary eccentrics who often flex their abilities as storytellers and character actors within their music that is, itself, often cutting edge and avant garde. The acting and film comparisons are also spot on, Tom was huge in the underground film scene with filmmakers like Jim Jarmusch, and this to me is key to understanding his character driven performance style. Also, edit: this is definitely an upper tier Waits album, but it’s not one I would use to introduce anyone to him just because he uses such frequently minimalist and confrontational ideas on here that could feel alienating. I think an album like Mule Variations or Bone Machine which are more heavily rooted in fuller sounds that adhere to more traditionally dynamic structures
I so agree, especially with the second paragraph. I don't think Waits doesn't know music - his earlier work is much more mainstream. As I said in another comment, Ol' 55 was covered by The Eagles in the same year Waits released it. I just feel like he knew he could do that stuff, but at the end of the day - so what? There's not much new or different about that. I've been singing since I was 4 or 5 years old but sadly, I wasn't taught music in a formal way so maybe I don't have the vocabulary for this - but having also gone to art school I can use the analogy of needing to know rules so you can break them and make something else. I think this album is a masterpiece, but I also love his lyrical work, so I'm drawn to that - and the atmosphere. A glance at the musicians Waits hired (jazz pianist Mike Melvoin on his early records, Robert Quine, G.E. Smith, Keith RIchards, and a host of jazz and great musicians on Rain Dogs) tells you the guy knew something. I also think this kind of experimental music going on in the 80s might be hard to translate in this decade. If you look up covers of Waits songs you can hear that many of these, though not all, can be played as songs that sound much more traditional - it's Waits choice here to make them sound anything but.
I find it more interesting then that he drops the avant-garde edge only 40% through the album and returns to conventional ideas. By the end of the album I was wanting a return to those experimental ideas that he front loaded the album with. He took the time to step out of line and do his own thing but it feels like he grew tired of that (or ran out of ideas?) and returned to the mainstream line.
I don't hear Zappa in Tom's music, to me, he's more a traditional songwriter with deep blues and vaudeville roots. When Zappa approached straightforward pop it was much more a parody of pop itself, his more intricate works, on the other hand, are influenced by Stravinsky, Varese, etc, and I can't find any of those references in Tom Waits neither. A more precise comparison would be Captain Beefheart, especially his last 3 albums. A song like hot head by the Captain sounds exactly like Rain Dogs, also other songs in the album are incredibly close to what Beefheart was doing during in his "new wave" period. I almost hear a carbon copy approach in some passages. Not to s on Tom Waits, he's obviously a talented songwriters BUT the Beefheart rip off is pretty clear.
@@gabrielegagliardi3956 my comparison is more spiritually and broadly artistic than anything tangibly sonic, though I think it’s quite notable that Zappa and Waits both cited Beefheart as an influence on both of their work
@@JamsandTea Zappa, to me, was emotionally detached, cynical, sometimes cruel, attracted by both abstract ideas and social commentary. I see Tom Waits much closer to classical songwriters and blues musicians, bukowskian poetry with a film noir influence. When I listen to Waits I feel emotions, when I listen to Zappa I see ideas, Frank except disgust or anger rarely expressed something intimate. That's my perception of those two artists.
I have just pressed play for this video - I LOVE Waits and this album. This isn't to everyone's taste for sure - so I appreciate anyone opening themselves up to his music. Waits is FULLY capable of writing mainstream-ish hit songs and his first two albums (The Eagles covered Ol' 55 the same year it came out in 1974.) see him more or less in that direction (though not fully), he made a conscious choice to express himself in music that interested him and didn't give a $hit if the whole world loved it or not. Can you imagine making this album in the mid-1980s!? It's completely opposite of any dance pop or even most independent music then. Richard Burton was a very famous British actor and was notoriously married to Elizabeth Taylor. He's an poet of jaw dropping beauty and is respected by lots of other artists. That said, when I first heard him at 15 years old in the mid-80s I was completely perplexed - even more so when I found out he'd already made 7 or so albums (as in, who let this guy make bunches of records? LOL). But he intrigued me and I kept listening, trying to break my brain out of the top 40 mold. He's easily one of my absolute favorite artists. Rain Dogs sits in the middle of the Frank's Wild Years trilogy - Swordfishtrombones, Rain Dogs, and Frank's Wild Years - prior to this he'd ended the first part of his career when Electra Asylum dropped him the label after his seventh album Heartattack and Vine - his contract fulfilled. He made music for three Francis Ford Coppola films - signed with Island Records and entered the stage of his career you're listening to here. ;)
I replied to a comment you made to someone else but if you don't see that I'll post something similar here. You said Waits is capable of writing mainstream-ish music and that's actually on display on this album and is something I commented on. The experimental sounds are frontloaded on the album with the back half being conventional music.
damn dude, you're like the Jordan Peterson of music reactions. You're saying a whole lot but clearly, to those of us who know, have no fucking idea what you're talking about.
I started listening to this guy talking, and I was so annoyed by him that I looked through the comments to see if anyone had the same reaction as me. And here you are. ❤ Thank you for getting the ball rolling. I do not think that this is the person to be evaluating Tom Waits. Rain Dogs is a masterpiece and needs someone with more subtle analytical skills.
I don't have any particular firm basis on it, but I always felt this album was akin to going through a night of drinking out in the streets, then finding yourself lost in drunken thoughts and memories, and ultimately heading home alone knowing you'll be back the next night to do it all over again. That's how I interpreted the split in the sides, and how the end of the album parading him 'home' This album has so much texture, it's just a lot of fun, even if some of the lyrics can be a bit dated
I think the use of describing people by their race is more to reinforce the melting pot that the urban environment a lot of these songs take place in is, more than anything else. Either way, I don't think it's inherently problematic to describe someone by their race either; i just think current society/culture has made everyone a tad overly-sensitive to any mention of race these days, no matter the context or intent.
It was also totally normal in multi-cultural neighborhoods and immigrant living streets, in New York, Chicago, LA, and other places the singer wants to evoke
I'm listening to the commentary after Singapore, and i already feel like this guy doesn't really get Waits. It's ok, not everyone does. I'll listen to another song or two,
I remember having a discussion with a friend who is a filmmaker about Avatar. My friend was very taken with Cameron's technical achievement. Yet at the end of the day, Avatar isn't (to my mind) a good film. I raise this because I think this is a mistake one can make in approaching art. Technical proficiency in creating art is undoubtedly impressive in and of itself... but I consider aesthetics to be of greater importance in the ultimate value of the art. "Clap Hands" is not a technically impressive piece of music, yet I find it to be powerfully evocative from a purely aesthetic standpoint. I find Tom Waits to be an artist who has a powerful sense of the vibe he wants to create. Obviously that didn't work for you, but I definitely find the song's simplistic and repetitive structure to be almost hypnotic.
I totally agree. I'll take affective art regardless of quality over boring art that's polished any day. But like you brought up, "affective" is a subjective thing. I'm glad that people really connect with it though -- Tom is a fantastic artist and certainly deserves to be more well known.
Tom Waits was influenced by Harry Partch. In Swordfishtrombones, there's a track-Shore Leave- where Waits uses a drum full of rice that's supposed to replicate the sound of waves hitting the sand.
Waits' work before meeting his wife and collaborator Kathleen Brennan is quite different from this and other later stuff. She introduced him to a lot of music that influenced him. I think Captain Beefheart was one of the most important of those. (Richard Burton was a Victorian explorer who was the first European to discover the source of the Nile.) I suggest you listen to "The Heart of Saturday Night," which I think was his second album. Hearing his early songwriting and piano playing and knowing what he moved away from will give you a lot of insight into the guy, I think. As for "Downtown Train," did it sound like a Bruce Springsteen song to you? (It was also covered by both Rod Stewart and Bob Seger.)
Waits began his career as a sort of smokey piano bar / lounge lizard type of performer. He cultivated an image that was a bit like Frank Sinatra in a funhouse mirror. He had a hat. He had a cigarette loosely dangling out of his mouth. He wore vests. The whole bit. And he put out a number of good to excellent albums full of piano-centric narratives, usually focused on people at the margins of society: hookers, hobos, junkies, roadies, carnies, etc. And then he met his future wife, Kathleen Brennan. She is widely credited with helping to move Tom Waits into a much more experimental place in his music. Over the course of three albums (Swordfishtrombones, Rain Dogs, and Franks Wild Years) his style changed focus from relatively simple piano music to an almost incomprehensibly wide array of musical styles. From Dark Cabaret to Country, from Blues to New Orleans funeral tunes, from Sea Shanties to Salsa to straight up Rock and Roll, Waits tried his hand at almost any style you can think of. I think he's an absolute master. He's a songwriter's songwriter. And he's relentlessly odd. I am a massive fan of his art.
you should check out the live album big time if you ever feel another tom waits kick. The avant, Caberet, and jazz all cone together in a few of those live performances and it's a pretty amazing time in my opinion. A good single track to look at would be telephone call from Istanbul off the album :)
If you listen to the fully live audience assembled Big Time, you can hear a less disciplined Tom Waits really laying into some of these tracks. It of course has songs from more than just Rain Dogs. I'd recommend "16 Shells from a 30 Ought-Six", "Telephone Call From Istanbul", "Falling Down" and of course "Ruby's Arms", which is the most heart rending song ever and is so full of lament that you'll be reluctant to give it a second listen, unless you like the version of yourself as a blubbering lunatic. I like it, but only in private when my children can't see me. Shit! Sometimes they do see me.
Your analysis of the great Marc Ribot's guitar solo on "Clap Hands" is about to make my head explode. Cutting this album apart track-by-track without first hearing the album as a whole is a bit like the blind men touching various parts of an elephant and drawing conclusions without all of the information at hand. It's not a snake (the trunk), it's not a paint brush (the tail), it's not a wall (the side of the body) and it's not a tree trunk (the legs.) It's a f*cking elephant. But you can't know that until you experience the entirety of the animal. This album BARELY scratched the Billboard Top 200 in the U.S. (#188.) It hit the top 30 in the UK. It's certified gold in the U.S. with sales of about 500,000 copies, but it took TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS to get that certification (certified gold in 2013.) It wasn't really a hit. But it was influential with other musicians.
"Cutting this album apart track-by-track without first hearing the album as a whole" I don't think even hearing this album as a whole would save this review. He's just not ready for it...
Richard Burton was a distinguished Welsh actor who played Shakespearian and other roles on stage and in movies. He is also famous for his marriages to Elizabeth Taylor. I don't think Tom really succeeded in copying Burton's 'melliflous baritone voice'! I own this album and appreciate your comments.
My first listens were in college, the year this came out, I checked this album out of the local library, and I probably felt about the same way as you. Years later I picked it back up and it's become one of my favorites of all time and certainly a top Tom Waits pick for me. I would add that "bride" is a reprise, and that "Anywhere I Lay My Head" is a New Orleans style send off. They start slow and almost overly mournful, turn on a dime and become a joyful celebration. It does what was intended. (and yes I think Tom usually has his tongue resting in his cheek).
Fun fact! Tom waits serves as one of the musicial influences to another musician you reacted to a while back, will wood, as he pulled stage style and vocal performance for several years from him. I think you may find that interesting is all!
with your comments on the lyricism and depth, i feel like the lyrics are specifically meant to paint a picture alongside the off kilter instrumentals more than anything else. the draw is entering the macabre, nocturnal world tom evokes throughout the album. imo its less of a "what does that mean," its like a visually told story youre meant to take as a whole, like a play almost
Waits is in my musical artist rushmore alongside Joanna Newsom, Modest Mouse and Death Grips. I think something that unites all these acts is their common choice of focusing on expression. I feel like style over substance doesn’t quite work to summarize - but you are right about feeling, rather than thinking. Only they all get me thinking a lot too in a musical sense. But yeah, Waits has lots of influences, this era specifically I think is Captain Beefheart inspired as well as lots of older acts like Screamin Jay Hawkins and the like. Love the video so far - of course I’m only three songs in with you and already have to give my two cents. It’s exciting to get to discuss my favorite artists! and I do adore seeing these more experimental and expressive acts getting filtered through your background and knowledge of theory.
Wasn't expecting a full Tom Waits album reaction, but I'm here for it, especially since I'm the guy that made all those Tom Waits special selections back in the day! That said, I'm not sure I would've chosen this as the first full-album introduction to Waits. For a guy that spanned the full gamut from traditional, accessible singer-songwriter folk/blues/rock to the oddest avant-garde experimental sonic-art, this album is perhaps his furthest towards the latter, even though it does have plenty of his traditional side as well in the latter half. It's a favorite of many Waits fans because of that, and while I love it as well I think a better introduction would've been one of the albums like Bone Machine or Mule Variations that were a better mixture of his traditional and avant-garde sides. It's also worth noting that this was Waits near the very beginning of his experimental period. His previous album, Swordfishtrombones, was his first album in that style, but this album definitely pushed that experimental side even further and is a bit more kaleidoscopic in its presentation. It's very much Waits at his most varied and unpredictable. Wouldn't call Waits "outsider art." If anything, I think he was so "inside" he came out the other end. He was a guy who was so immersed in traditional singer-songwriter music and its genres that he just wanted to do something completely different and initiated his search for novel sounds, styles, genres, and storytelling. In a way he reminds me of that Schnittke track you heard (that I also special requested) where he'll take traditional/old ideas and then inflict various forms of violence on those ideas until it sounds broken, melted, warped, damaged, ruined, and completely different from everything else you've heard. Schnittke, I think, likes us to watch the process unfold, while Waits just presents us with the final product, but you can usually still hear/see the traditional element underneath it. It's one reason I referred to Waits as the funhouse mirror version of Bob Dylan; timeless folk music warped into ungainly, unnatural proportions. As for the music telling the story of the lyrics, I do think this is something Tom got better at as he got more experienced with this experimental style. I think in these early experimental albums Waits was, indeed, focused more on the music and tone setting rather than pairing those things meaningfully with the lyrics. I do think they paint very interesting sonic portraits, but I don't think he's quite found the depth of their combination the way he had on his earlier or later work.
You're not the only one who would suggest a later album from Tom for my next exploration so that's probably a good direction to go in. It's good to hear that he begins thinking about the entire package of his art in future works too. I like Waits when he's firing on all cylinders, like with Hell Broke Luce. Everything in that track perfectly works together.
@@CriticalReactions That's why I chose Hell Broke Luce as one of my special selections as I always loved how everything worked synergistically in that song. These earlier avant-garde albums I mostly enjoy on a purely sonic level, just appreciating the innovative experimentation. it's often the case that when an artist starts exploring something new they put all their focus/energy into that one aspect and ignore others to some extent. When they get more comfortable in that idiom then they get better at incorporating all the other elements of their art. I think the reason this album and Swordfishtrombones remain favorites are because back then a lot of people had never heard anything like this so it made a big impression; but as someone who came to Waits much later I don't have that same bias.
I think I may have made a similar comment in a past reaction you had (...possibily fir Hell Broke Luce, maybe?), but Tom doesn't have songs as much as he has character vignettes. Each song is a story. The vocal choices he makes for each song is the voice of the charater or the narrator and is reflective of the context of story. It took me a minute to get into him but once I had that detail to use as a sort of Rosetta stone, it was much easier for me to understand his work. Again, great breakdown my dude. Cheers!
Waits is interesting and a gifted narrator. The experimental with the classics Downtown Trains and Hand down your head demonstrate his range. Its like a movie, a play, and a soundtrack all rolled into one. Imho it can be enjoyed in parts or in total.
Interesting reaction - I agree this an odd album for critical analysis, especially the kind that you revel in. It definitely has to be felt rather than thought about and it really is all about mood. Waits began as a "folk" artist but is heavily influenced by Jazz & Blues and I dont think it sounds quite as weird if you're fully versed in those genres. Case in point, you winced at the guitar on Clap Hands but most jazz fans celebrate that kind of extreme contrast haha
At this point in Waits' career, he was definitely taking influence from folks like Zappa, Captain Beefheart, etc., and using those influences and mixing them with his background in folk and scat poetry. I don't recall if he ever went to school for music, but he definitely made some pretty contemporary stuff and utilized those song structures well before this shift. I adore this album, but if you're looking for Waits at his most dynamic in songwriting, this one's not really it.
If you want to hear the actual “outsider artist” who directly inspired Tom Waits’ experimental style, listen to Captain Beefheart’s seminal album Trout Mask Replica.
My favorite Waits song is Fumbling With The Blues. It's early Waits and I make no apologies for loving it. Most of his experimental stuff is interesting but not always melodic. For me, he's just too fabulous a composer to leave behind all the sweet sounds of his early days. The songs are pretty and I like pretty😊😊
A huge Tom Waits fan, but this is really not one of my favorite albums. Time, however, is probably my favorite single Tom Waits song. For early Tom, I like Heart of Saturday Night, my favorite of the 'trilogy' is Franks Wild Years (probably a minority opinion), and then Bone Machine for later TW. In terms of how it affected you vs. the person you mentioned - I bet that Rain Dogs was his first Tom Waits experience. That'd account for it, I think.
I can't tell you what my favorite musical genre is, but I guarantee you whatever I'm listening to has a Marimba in it. When talking about finding untrained music removed from the influence of outside culture, you really should check out The Residents' Not Available. It's not exactly outsider art (as it's very intentional), but in order to remove any sort of outside influence and disregard any sort of expectation, the band recorded the album and put it in a vault deciding not to release it until they forgot it existed.
Tom Waits is one of the few musicians who started out smooth and went to glowing, rusty hooks shoved down your ear canal. And he dies stuff like Georgia Lee.
And it's tough to get Tom's approach to music with just one album as Rain Dogs is best experienced as a journey of steps... a forward progression where you carry a bit of his last song/album into his next one, and see where that eventually takes you. He's a discography artist where few fans just have one album of his as you either embrace it all, or pawn the CD the first chance you get. But I hope you stick with him. Oh, and great job here. I'm a new fan.
I could cherry pick some examples but you're probably right, insofar as I showcase on this channel. Most of the ways I dissect music are based on convention so anything exploring outside of that is like rolling a die on whether I'll have something meaningful to say or I'll be perplexed. In my casual listening though I love exploring new sounds. With that said though, there's a lot of conventional sound on this album. It's really only the first 7 tracks that experiment with sound. And I ended up giving them more praise than the conventional back half of the album.
One of the greatest and most distinctive musical geniuses of the 20th century, Tom Waits was apparently a "barbarian" but in reality an erudite post-modern artist. As far as the juxtaposition of primitive and intellectual art goes, he was a worthy disciple of Captain Beefheart. Never as in their cases was McLuhan wrong: the medium is definitely not the message. His albums are galleries (or full-fledged operas) of misfits, eccentrics and losers. Below the surface, they are also parables of fall and redemption set in the age of urban decay. In a sense, his opus is a compendium of urban cacophony.
Another comment now that I’ve finished the video: if you do check out more Waits albums I hope you see some of the other amazing ways he can put an extremely strange album together. Bone Machine is like a non stop dirge recorded in a lil tin shack. The Black Rider leans even further into theatrics and atmosphere and is my personal favorite of his. Real Gone is like Waits almost took a modern approach to music but it got lost at sea and brined over. There are like six other albums of his experimental stuff that could be recommended too. as far as cohesion goes, I think the initial trilogy of experimental albums which Rain Dogs is a part of all suffer a bit from bloating, and as the years go on he tightens up the track lists a little bit. Not trying to be coy but if you were to dive deeper into his discography I would probably start having to throw money at you and that would be financially irresponsible of me at this moment in my life… so have mercy, please.
It's good to hear that he tightens his pacing up and I like the idea of more experimental albums of his. That's not to say I'd enjoy listening to them in the causal sense but I absolutely love finding the boundaries of music get pushed against and I do think Tom has the chops to do that.
@@CriticalReactions I just looked at the runtimes to verify and it turns out some of my favorites from his later work are actually longer… lol. Maybe they just feel more succinct to me, certainly I think they’re more cohesive stylistically than Rain Dogs. Alice looks like the shortest of the offerings coming in at 45 minutes.
I have listened to all of Waits' albums many times but this one is not my favorite, there are very many musically distinct eras over the forty something years. I'm not going to count but I'm sure you get the point.
"I think I'll have to alter my mindset for this just a bit...'. I laughed. I think Tom Waits is an artist you either get right away or probably won't ever, but we'll see what happens by the end of your video. The first time I heard Tom Waits it was the album Swordfishtrombones and it was playing very softly on my boyfriend's record player in the family living room where everyone was talking. I remember like it was yesterday. I picked out that sound from all the noise and was fascinated. I made my boyfriend turn it up and I listened to the whole album multiple times that day, ignoring everyone. Lol. I think it's the combination of language and rhythm for me. No one else does that like he does.
I've enjoyed most, maybe all, of the Waits songs I've heard in the past so I don't know that your "get it right away or never" is quite true. I came in expecting to enjoy this just as much and was just as surprised as most of you that I had as much criticism for it that I did. Waits is definitely a poet though and I think you're spot on with picking up his language and rhythm being his identifying strengths.
@@CriticalReactions Perhaps I should rephrase the above to say: "I think this phase of Tom Waits' career is something you either get right away or probably won't ever," which is closer to what I really meant. To me, its the poetry and rhythm together than make it so much better than the stuff you've reacted to before. This music puts me in a lovely place and I return to it over and over. It's really not for everyone, though. Love your stuff. Cheers and thanks for the response.
Tom Waits has never been of his time, ahead of his time, or, for that matter, locked into any particular time. An outsider artist before the term was in common use, Waits has been enamored, at various points in his career, with the cool of 1940s and 1950s jazz; the 1950s and 1960s word-jazz and poetry of such Beat and Beat-influenced writers as Jack Kerouac, Lord Buckley, and Charles Bukowski; the primal rock & roll crunch of the Rolling Stones; the German cabaret stylings of Kurt Weill; the postwar, alternate world of invented instruments and rugged individualism of avant-garde composer Harry Partch; the proto-metal blues of 1950s and 1960s Howlin' Wolf and their extension into the world of Captain Beefheart's late-1960s avant-rock; the archaic formalism of 19th-century parlor ballads; Dylan's early- and mid-sixties transformation of the possibilities of language in the worlds of both folk and rock; the elegance of pre-war Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and Hoagy Carmichael; the sophistication of postwar Frank Sinatra; and, more recently, the bone-crushing grooves of 1980s and 1990s funk and hip-hop. Indeed, the art of Tom Waits has altogether transcended time and, to some degree, place.
Maybe you're too vanilla or by-the-book for this. I mean "outsider art"? "Bizarre" from using non-chord tones? "Musical jibberish"? I mean, you say you're a composer right? There are far more adventourous widely aclaimed academic musicians, would you think John Cage is "outsider art"? Xenakis?. What exactly do you listen to that makes Raindogs sound so exotic and "bizarre" to you? New Age? Hootie and the Blowfish? Yanni? (the synth guy, not Christou). Compared to Captain Beefheart or some Kraut Rock albums Raindogs is like elevator music. Maybe even Ornette Coleman or Primus, heck even Velvet Underground, would throw you off! Or artists like Autechre or Aphex Twin...
Tom isn't a musician's musician I guess. Maybe in the early years. He's more of a trash collector's musician. He's "a diamond that wants to stay coal".
I don't know if this album reaction was done by request but if it was, the person who requested it really didn't do Tom justice. I really love Waits and have lost track of how many times I replayed his discography, but even I find Rain Dogs a very hard album to get through. It's a very interesting experience, but it can be very tiresome at some points. Real Gone, Alice, The Black Rider, Mule Variations and Bone Machine are much better introduction to his work. That being said, you did a fine job with your analysis.
