Music:

I'm going to post some YouTube videos, since I like posting YouTube videos.

Been listening to a lot of Tom Waits as of late, which I think is because Sara took me to a concert that one of her co-workers played in... where the vocalist was pretty much just trying to imitate Mr. Waits.

Been spinning his most recent studio album Orphans the most, which I'm beginning to realize is pretty amazingly great. It's sort of bizarre in that it's half-outtakes and half-new stuff--plus all the songs are divided up into three separate categories based on the type of song it is (those three categories being "Brawlers, Bawlers, and Bastards"). Which are basically the three types of songs he's been writing his entire life--only this time they're organized!

Which I like--a lot.

There's a lot to be said about diversity--I mean, The Beatles wouldn't be as great as they are if they only released stuff like Tomorrow Never Knows and never recorded anything like I Wanna Hold Your Hand--but I guess I like the cohesion that releasing a bunch of songs that sound the same brings. And now thinking about my favorite albums, the albums I love vary wildly in genre, but the songs on each album usually don't.

Anyway, here are my favorites from each selection, and I'm going to post a lot because I can:

Brawlers: (mostly blues-tinged this one is. Not that any of these are particularly blues inspired, but still...)







Bawlers: (I'm not as fond of his ballads as some other folks are, but I was going to only include maybe two songs per disc on this little post... I ended up including 5, but I could have gone with 10 from this section easily. So... this is my favorite disc, basically.)







(Next one is one of my favorite things he ever released, and it astounds me that it went essentially unreleased for 20+ years.)





Bastards: (I thought this collection was my favorite, since I've always usually preferred his weirder stuff... but it's actually the weakest of the three, now that I listen to it. But there's a Disney song cover, so that's pretty cool.)