Pop­u­lar music has a rich tra­di­tion of lit­er­ary song­writ­ers, including—to name but a few—Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Pat­ti Smith, Kate Bush, and even Alan Par­sons, who released not one, but two con­cept albums based on the work of Edgar Allan Poe. And then there’s the inim­itable Tom Waits, who does­n’t just work in a lit­er­ary vein, but is a suc­ces­sion of pulpy char­ac­ters, each one with the abil­i­ty to light up a stage. Waits proved as much in 1988 when he toured his album Big Time, as alter-ego Frank O’Brien, a char­ac­ter he described as “a com­bi­na­tion of Will Rogers and Mark Twain, play­ing accordion—but with­out the wis­dom they pos­sessed.” The Big Time tour, writes Dan­ger­ous Minds, was “like enter­ing a sideshow tent in Tom Wait’s brain.”

In a review of the con­cert film of the same name, also released that year, the New York Times described Waits as a “gang of over­lap­ping per­sonas, a bunch of derelict philoso­pher-kings who rasp out roman­tic metaphors between wise­cracks,” inhab­it­ing “a seedy urban world of pawn­shops and tat­toos, of cig­a­rette butts and poly­ester and triple‑X movies.” It’s hard to know, lis­ten­ing to Waits in the inter­view above from the year of Big Time the album, tour, and film, how many of his per­son­ae emerge from the wood­shed and how many spring from griz­zled voic­es in that sideshow brain, which must sound like a cacoph­o­ny of old-time waltzes and scur­rilous rag­times; boozy big-band num­bers carous­ing in louche cabarets; pianos drunk­en­ly falling down stairs. Waits can tell sto­ries beau­ti­ful and ter­ri­ble, in talk­ing blues, bro­ken bal­lads, and sprechge­sang, rival­ing the best com­po­si­tions of the Delta, the beats, and sailors and hoboes.

Or he can tell stories—as he does above—about moles, build­ing under Stone­henge “the most elab­o­rate sys­tem of mole cat­a­combs,” being reward­ed for “hav­ing the courage to tun­nel under great rivers,” stag­ing exe­cu­tions. Then he shifts the scene to New York, and a Mer­cedes pulls up in a pud­dle of blood. “I think you just write,” says Waits, “and you don’t try to make sense of it. You just put it down the way you got it.” Waits gets it in vivid, sur­re­al­ist images, one bizarre and sor­did detail after anoth­er. To hear him speak is to hear him com­pose. You can read the tran­script of the short inter­view, record­ed in Lon­don by Chris Roberts, but the effect of Waits-the-per­former is entire­ly lost. Bet­ter to hear his cracked inflec­tion, his dri­est of com­ic tim­ing, and watch the excel­lent ani­ma­tion of PBS’s Blank on Blank team, who have pre­vi­ous­ly brought us amus­ing car­toon accom­pa­ni­ments for inter­views with B.B. King, Ray Charles, the Beast­ie Boys, and even Fidel Cas­tro. Tom Waits, I think, has giv­en them their best mate­r­i­al yet.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

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

Tom Waits Reads Two Charles Bukows­ki Poems, “The Laugh­ing Heart” and “Nir­vana”

Watch Tom Waits’ Clas­sic Appear­ance on Aus­tralian TV, 1979

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

Cre­ative Com­mons image by Jean-Luc Ourlin

When we think of 60s avant-gardism, we like­ly think of lit­er­ary fig­ures like William S. Bur­roughs or John Barth, film­mak­ers like Stan Brakhage or Ken­neth Anger, and art stars (and per­haps inven­tor of the “art star”) like Andy Warhol. In music, we may drop names like La Monte Young, Ter­ry Riley, Philip Glass, Sun Ra, or even Ornette Cole­man, who began devel­op­ing his impro­visato­ry the­o­ry of “har­molod­ics” in the late six­ties, chang­ing the way many musicians—in every pos­si­ble style—approached their own exper­i­men­tal­ism.

We may not often be inclined, however—as stu­dents of the avant-garde—to include the name Frank Zap­pa in the com­pa­ny of such “seri­ous” artists. There are many rea­sons for this, many of them attrib­ut­able to delib­er­ate choic­es Zap­pa him­self made to occu­py a space in-between that of a seri­ous exper­i­men­tal com­pos­er and a pop­u­lar rock and roll provo­ca­teur whose music and lyrics par­o­died the coun­ter­cul­ture and whose impos­si­ble-to-clas­si­fy albums skirt­ed nov­el­ty sta­tus.

And yet, writes All­mu­sic, Zap­pa’s “com­ic and seri­ous sides were com­ple­men­tary, not con­tra­dic­to­ry… most of all, he was a com­pos­er far more ambi­tious than any oth­er rock musi­cian of his time and most clas­si­cal musi­cians, as well.” You don’t have to take my word for it—or the word of such a stan­dard­ized ref­er­ence guide as All­mu­sic. You can hear for your­self, for free, a playlist of Zap­pa-as-com­pos­er, thanks to Spo­ti­fy Clas­si­cal Playlists.

Yes, you do have to down­load, if you don’t already have, the free Spo­ti­fy soft­ware. But the rewards are great. You’ll hear inter­pre­ta­tions of Zap­pa in New Orleans-style jazz and funk in tracks like “Zom­by Wolf,” per­formed by Asphalt Orches­tra; musi­cal man­i­festos against con­formism in “Hun­gry Freaks Dad­dy,” per­formed by the Frank Zap­pa Merid­i­an Arts Ensem­ble; satir­i­cal, dystopi­an col­lages like “Food Gath­er­ing in Post-Indus­tri­al Amer­i­ca, 1992,” per­formed by The Yel­low Shark.

The cat­a­log is vast and impos­si­ble to sum­ma­rize, the music per­formed by jazz and clas­si­cal ensem­bles of all kinds. Fans of canon­i­cal Zap­pa will be equal­ly well-served by anoth­er Spo­ti­fy Clas­si­cal Playlist which aims to make all of the eccen­tric guitarist/composer/bandleader/shameless self-pro­moter’s record­ed out­put with his band The Moth­ers of Inven­tion (or just The Moth­ers) avail­able to stream in a chrono­log­i­cal discog­ra­phy.

Depend­ing on your location—and the date you’re read­ing this post—you will be able to hear most or all of 917 tracks over 56 albums, from the debut 1966 album Freak Out! to the posthu­mous 1998 com­pi­la­tion Mys­tery Disc. Read more about Zap­pa-as-com­pos­er and the com­plete Zap­pa discog­ra­phy project at Spo­ti­fy Clas­si­cal. For those with objec­tions to stream­ing music ser­vices, Ulysses—compiler of the Spo­ti­fy Clas­si­cal Playlists—observes that “the man him­self came up with an idea for music sub­scrip­tion in 1983.” Like Zap­pa’s music, and like the man him­self, his pro­pos­al was com­plete­ly ahead of its time—and per­haps ahead of ours as well.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Young Frank Zap­pa Turns the Bicy­cle into a Musi­cal Instru­ment on The Steve Allen Show (1963)

The Night Frank Zap­pa Jammed With Pink Floyd … and Cap­tain Beef­heart Too (Bel­gium, 1969)

Frank Zap­pa Debates Cen­sor­ship on CNN’s Cross­fire (1986)

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

If you’re from a fad­ing rock n roll gen­er­a­tion, here’s maybe a way to make peace with today’s pop music scene. Just take Tay­lor Swift hits and hear them sung in the style of The Vel­vet Under­ground.

That’s what folk singer-song­writer J. Till­man — oth­er­wise known as Father John Misty — did for us, per­haps inad­ver­tent­ly, when he record­ed VU-style ver­sions of “Blank Space” and “Wel­come to New York.” Today, not coin­ci­den­tal­ly, marks the release of Ryan Adams’s own bal­ly­hooed album that cov­ers Tay­lor Swift’s 1989, which you can also hear down below.

Ryan Adams’ Cov­ers

via Con­se­quence of Sound

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