What’s that? Exile on Main Street’s in your top 20 favorite albums of all time? Yeah, me too. How about Trout Mask Repli­ca? A lit­tle weird, that one, right? The Base­ment Tapes? Cool… So, uh, how about Bohemi­an-Mora­vian Bands? No? Nev­er heard of it? Seri­ous­ly?

Me nei­ther.

But there it is, the music of “Czech-Bavar­i­an bands that land­ed in Texas… music both sour and bit­ter, and picante, and float­ing above itself like steam over the ket­tle… like a wheel about to go off the road all the time… the most lilt­ing lit­tle waltz… accor­dion, sopra­no sax, clar­inet, bass, ban­jo and per­cus­sion.”

Sounds like the kind of thing Tom Waits would lis­ten to.

And that’s because it is, num­ber 12 on his list of top 20, to be exact, described with just a tiny taste of his idio­syn­crat­ic music writ­ing cour­tesy of The Guardian, who pub­lished his list in 2005 as part of a series “in which the great­est record­ing artists reveal their favourite records.”

Sure, Exile is on Waits’ list, as is the Cap­tain Beef­heart and Bob Dylan. And also Frank Sina­tra, nat­u­ral­ly, and Thelo­nious Monk, Lounge Lizards, Lit­tle Richard, James Brown…

Waits com­pares the expe­ri­ence of see­ing the God­fa­ther of Soul live to a “mass at St. Patrick’s Cathe­dral on Christ­mas… You’d been changed, your life is changed now… every­body want­ed to step down, step for­ward, take com­mu­nion, take sacra­ment… get close to the stage and be anoint­ed with his sweat, his cold sweat.”

He names a com­e­dy album by the late, great Bill Hicks, who was “like a rev­erend wav­ing a gun around.” Leonard Cohen “is a poet, an Extra Large one.” Marc Ribot is “a pros­thet­ic Cuban.” The Pogues “play like sol­diers on leave… whim­si­cal and blas­phe­mous, sea­sick and sac­ri­le­gious….” Sound like some­one you know? It sounds a bit like Tom Waits.

Put his top 20 in a blender and out comes Real Gone. Sort of.

In giv­ing us his list, he gives a dou­ble gift—an inspired col­lec­tion of music root­sy, avant-garde, jazz/blues/Americana, and Oth­er; and a series of mini-essays on the mer­its of each album, each one a mas­ter­ful exer­cise in con­ci­sion and ellip­ti­cal wit. See the full list below, and stop by The Guardian to read Waits’ com­men­tary on each album.

1 In the Wee Small Hours by Frank Sina­tra
2 Solo Monk by Thelo­nious Monk
3 Trout Mask Repli­ca by Cap­tain Beef­heart
4 Exile On Main Street by the Rolling Stones
5 The Sink­ing of the Titan­ic by Gavin Bry­ers
6 The Base­ment Tapes by Bob Dylan
7 Lounge Lizards by Lounge Lizards
8 Rum Sodomy and the Lash by the Pogues
9 I’m Your Man by Leonard Cohen
10 The Spe­cial­ty Ses­sions by Lit­tle Richard
11 Star­time by James Brown
12 Bohemi­an-Mora­vian Bands by Texas-Czech
13 The Yel­low Shark by Frank Zap­pa
14 Pas­sion for Opera Aria
15 Rant in E Minor by Bill Hicks
16 Prison Songs: Mur­der­ous Home Alan Lomax Col­lec­tion
17 Cubanos Pos­ti­zos by Marc Ribot
18 Houndog by Houndog
19 Pur­ple Onion by Les Clay­pool
20 The Deliv­ery Man by Elvis Costel­lo

We’ve added a Spo­ti­fy playlist with many of his favorite albums below. And if you dig Waits’ musi­cal taste, check out this list of his favorite art films.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tom Waits, Play­ing the Down-and-Out Barfly, Appears in Clas­sic 1978 TV Per­for­mance

The Tom Waits Map: A Map­ping of Every Place Waits Has Sung About, From L.A. to Africa’s Jun­gles

Tom Waits Names 14 of His Favorite Art Films: Felli­ni, David Lynch & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

On an ordi­nary after­noon, a group of friends sit around lis­ten­ing to records. Some­one puts on a Willie Nel­son album, and there is a knock at the door. It’s an old­er man, mak­ing a deliv­ery. He paus­es behind his clip­board, hear­ing the music from inside the house. “Is that Red Head­ed Stranger,” he asks? Yes. He asks if he can come in and lis­ten. And for the next thir­ty min­utes, no one says a word as the album tells its mourn­ful tale of betray­al and bloody revenge, a sto­ry, writes All­mu­sic “about a preach­er on the run after mur­der­ing his depart­ed wife and her new lover.” It’s an album that remains—with its “brief song-poems and utter­ly min­i­mal backing”—perhaps “the strangest block­buster coun­try pro­duced.”

That 1975 album of tear-jerk­ers and mur­der bal­lads, which estab­lished Nel­son as a “super­star record­ing artist,” is so “old-fash­ioned” it sounds “like a tale told around a cow­boy camp­fire.” And it is for that rea­son mil­lions of fans can’t tear them­selves away from its com­pelling nar­ra­tive and aching­ly sad, home­spun laments—including myself, a few friends, and a stranger on a sched­ule who came to the door. And if Red Head­ed Stranger is an unlike­ly block­buster, Nel­son is an unlike­ly super­star, full of con­tra­dic­tions. He’s a gen­tle out­law; an old-fash­ioned coun­try trou­ba­dour who has remained on the pro­gres­sive activist edge; and an unas­sum­ing, tra­di­tion­al artist who hap­pens to be loved across the spec­trum of gen­er­a­tions, polit­i­cal per­sua­sions, and musi­cal styles.

But before Nel­son became an inter­na­tion­al super­star he appeared on the coun­try music cir­cuit clean-shaven, short-haired, and in the nat­ty suit and tie you see him wear in the clip above from a tele­vised 1962 Grand Ole Opry per­for­mance. Close your eyes and you’ll hear that it’s undoubt­ed­ly Nelson’s famil­iar warble—though not so weath­ered with age as we’ve grown used to. But when you look, it’s hard to see the griz­zled tax-evad­ing, pot-smok­ing out­law hip­pie hero we know and love in this fresh-faced gent. Nel­son had only just moved to Nashville two years pri­or, and he strug­gled to make an impres­sion at first. But when coun­try singer Faron Young heard him sing his “Hel­lo Walls” at a bar next to the Opry, his for­tunes changed. Young sent the song into the top 40, and Nel­son became, as the host above calls him, “the Mick­ey Man­tle of coun­try music,” writ­ing hit after hit.

By ’62, he had record­ed his first LP, And Then I Wrote, singing many songs he’d giv­en to oth­er artists. He opens above with “Hel­lo Walls,” and he clos­es with his oth­er mas­sive hit from the peri­od, “Crazy,” Pat­sy Cline’s sig­na­ture tune. In-between, Nel­son sings anoth­er song from his debut album, Bil­ly Walker’s “Fun­ny How Time Slips Away,” and works in “Night Life,” a blues song he wrote for Ray Price. Only eight years after this TV appear­ance, Nel­son decid­ed to retire from music and pack it in, feel­ing like his career had run its course. It wasn’t until a cou­ple years later—after he’d become part of Austin’s eclec­tic music scene and re-invent­ed him­self musi­cal­ly with 1973’s Shot­gun Willie—that the out­law bal­ladeer we know and love was born.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Willie Nel­son Audi­tions for The Hob­bit Film Sequel, Turns 80 Today

John­ny Cash: Singer, Out­law, and, Briefly, Tele­vi­sion Host

The 1969 Bob Dylan-John­ny Cash Ses­sions: 12 Rare Record­ings

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Heavy Met­al has always had its baroque non-met­al ele­ments. It seems that no mat­ter how hard and fast a met­al band rocks, they’re even­tu­al­ly going to slip into some form of medieval Scan­di­na­vian folk music, Teu­ton­ic opera, Tolkienesque fan­ta­sy con­cept album song cycle, or at least—on the bub­blegum end of the spectrum—soft rock bal­lad…. (You’re prob­a­bly already pic­tur­ing tiny Stone­henge on the Spinal Tap stage.) Such ref­er­ences have been in the genre’s DNA since the days of met­al fore­fa­thers Led Zep­pelin and Deep Pur­ple.

Metal­li­ca, and the oth­er three of the big four founders of thrash metal—Anthrax, Megadeath, and Slayer—emerged as an anti­dote to metal’s occa­sion­al pre­ten­tious­ness and grandios­i­ty. Much clos­er to punk and hard­core (they once cov­ered campy hor­ror punks The Mis­fits) than to the bom­bas­tic span­dex and hair­spray indus­try met­al became, ear­ly Metal­li­ca prid­ed them­selves on vio­lent­ly aggres­sive music and imagery, and a com­plete absence of sub­tle­ty. (See the orig­i­nal title and cov­er for their debut album Kill ‘em All.)

But they soft­ened in time, as we know, and even­tu­al­ly intro­duced some some non-met­al into their songwriting—most notably in the grim acoustic bal­ladry of megahit “One.” Now, thanks to new (-ish) bassist Robert Tru­jil­lo, the met­al leg­ends can add a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent acoustic style to their repertoire—“flamingo,” as lead singer James Het­field describes Trujillo’s fla­men­co gui­tar chops in the video above. And, as if to prove his bona fides in the fla­men­co world, Tru­jil­lo got to jam with the reign­ing king and queen of Nue­vo Fla­men­co gui­tarists, Mex­i­can duo Rodri­go y Gabriela—two play­ers whose speed and vir­tu­os­i­ty match those of the best met­al shred­ders, but whose roots come from a much old­er tra­di­tion. (See them rip through “Tama­cun” below.)

In the video at the top of the post, Tru­jil­lo and his low-slung bass join the acoustic duo on stage dur­ing their encore at a Red Rocks con­cert in 2014 for a fla­men­co-style med­ley of Metal­li­ca clas­sics, includ­ing “Ori­on,” “For Whom The Bell Tolls,” “The Frayed Ends of San­i­ty,” and “Bat­tery.” It some­how seems like a per­fect fit for the ver­sa­tile Tru­jil­lo, who grew up as inspired by jazz fusion bassist Jaco Pas­to­rius and funk and Motown play­ers (he opens his guest spot above with the “Jun­gle Boo­gie” bass riff) as he was by Black Sab­bath. He brought many of these influ­ences to pre­vi­ous bands like Sui­ci­dal Ten­den­cies and Infec­tious Grooves. And now—in addi­tion to “flamingo”—he’s brought to Metal­li­ca some­thing else pre­vi­ous­ly unheard-of in met­al: slap bass solos.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

With Medieval Instru­ments, Band Per­forms Clas­sic Songs by The Bea­t­les, Red Hot Chili Pep­pers, Metal­li­ca & Deep Pur­ple

A Blue­grass Ver­sion of Metallica’s Heavy Met­al Hit, “Enter Sand­man”

Finnish Musi­cians Play Blue­grass Ver­sions of AC/DC, Iron Maid­en & Ron­nie James Dio

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

You may have noticed we’ve been in the midst of a mini-six­ties revival for the past decade or so—what with the retro soul of Alaba­ma Shakes or the late Amy Wine­house, the garage rock of Ty Segall, and the Cal­i­for­nia psych of Aus­trali­a’s Tame Impala. That’s to name but just a few stu­dents of six­ties’ sounds; many hun­dreds more pop­u­late events like the Psych Fests of Austin and Liv­er­pool. And before these bands, late eighties/early nineties brought us a British re-inva­sion of six­ties garage rock and pop like the Jesus and Mary Chain, the Chameleons, the Stone Ros­es, Oasis, and many oth­er jan­g­ly, fuzzy, dreamy bands.

All of that is to say it’s near­ly impos­si­ble to hear any­thing six­ties rock with fresh ears. Not only has the inces­sant nos­tal­gia dimmed our sens­es, but we’ve seen the ideas of the six­ties evolve into myr­i­ad sub­cul­tures var­i­ous­ly indebt­ed to the decade, but no longer even in need of direct ref­er­ence. What would it mean, how­ev­er, to hear the far-out sounds of a band like Pink Floyd for the first time, a band who may at times sound dat­ed now, but much of whose more obscure cat­a­log remains shock­ing. And it’s easy to for­get that when Pink Floyd—or “The Pink Floyd” as they tend­ed to be called—got their start with orig­i­nal singer and song­writer Syd Bar­rett, they made a much dif­fer­ent sound than those we’re famil­iar with from The Wall or Dark Side of the Moon.

If you haven’t heard the sound of the band cir­ca 1967, when they record­ed their first album Piper at the Gates of Dawn, then you may nod along with Dick Clark’s ambiva­lent intro­duc­tion of them to U.S. audi­ences in the ’67 Amer­i­can Band­stand appear­ance above—their first vis­it to the States and first time of TV. They do indeed make “very inter­est­ing sounds”: specif­i­cal­ly, “Apples and Oranges,” the third sin­gle and the final song Bar­rett wrote for the band before he suf­fered a psy­chot­ic break onstage and was replaced by David Gilmour. There isn’t much in the way of per­for­mance. (But stick around for the inter­views around 3:25.) As pret­ty much every­one did at the time, Bar­rett, Roger Waters, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright mime to a pre­re­cord­ed track. And Bar­rett looks par­tic­u­lar­ly out of it. He was close by this point to the crip­pling men­tal health cri­sis that would even­tu­al­ly end his career.

But Syd Bar­rett did not dis­ap­pear from music right away. The unre­leased “Scream Thy Last Scream,” slat­ed to be the next sin­gle released after Piper at the Gates of Dawn, gave much indi­ca­tion of the musi­cal direc­tion he took in two 1970 solo albums, The Mad­cap Laughs and Bar­rett. Like lat­er Bar­rett, ear­ly Pink Floyd is not music for every­one. Instead of the famil­iar stomp­ing funk of “The Wall” or the soar­ing blues of “Com­fort­ably Numb,” the songs mean­der, twist, turn, and wob­ble, often indi­cat­ing the state of Barrett’s trou­bled soul, but just as often show­cas­ing his bril­liant com­po­si­tion­al mind. Bar­rett is gone, as is key­boardist Richard Wright, and Pink Floyd is no more. But their lega­cy is secure. And we still have mad genius­es like Austin psych leg­end Roky Erick­son to kick around, as well as all the many thou­sands of musi­cians he and Bar­rett inspired.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pink Floyd Plays With Their Brand New Singer & Gui­tarist David Gilmour on French TV (1968)

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

Hear Lost Record­ing of Pink Floyd Play­ing with Jazz Vio­lin­ist Stéphane Grap­pel­li on “Wish You Were Here”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness