The sound of my heart getting ready to be broken

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/08/26/the-sound-of-my-heart-getting.html

4 Likes

The track list seems awfully short on my favourite waits albums. I would have loved to see some Franks Wild Years and Bone Machine on there. But I’m sure these are someone else’s favourites, and may worth rediscovering (or discovering for a few of them, I think).

3 Likes

It’s only fair that women should cover Waits, considering how many of his early hits were written by Joni Mitchell.

To be clear, this was good for both of them. Waits covering The Circle Game, Urge for Going, and others was Mitchells’ breakthrough.

5 Likes

Not a lot of my favorite tracks are in there but thats me. I’d like to hear tedeschi trucks band cover ‘I wish I was in New Orleans.’

I love pretty much anything Krall has ever done…I am the same way with her cover of Mitchell’s Case of You.

5 Likes

Screw that, I want an album of Weird Al Yankovic doing Tom Waits.

3 Likes

Like I said, a few tracks I don’t know, but it looks like a sweet/sad album. I’m a little disappointed there isn’t Goin’ Out West on there. But I sure would have liked to hear Cold Cold Ground and/or That Feel.

One thing is it is very hard to improve on the original with most Waits songs because odds are very good Tom Waits is a better singer than you (for arbitrary you). Even the Krall Temptation you mention. I do like it, but I can’t imagine someone topping the way Waits sings the titular word in the original.

3 Likes

I have a very hard time imagining Krall’s baritone.

And St. Vincent’s Tango 'Till They’re Sore isn’t incorporated either…

1 Like

I’ve wondered for years what Joni was singing when she said, “On the back of a carton coaster,” or was it “on the back of a cartoon coaster,” as Diana sings it here. I have a marked distrust of those lyric websites that abound these days, but have never sought out an answer on Joni’s website, if there is one.

Some people call cardboard that they used to make those flat pressed-paper bar coasters out of “carton.” Then again, maybe it’s a Canadian thing, calling it “carton.”

Or maybe it is “cartoon coaster,” as presented here, in which case I have no idea what it means and my small but persistent mystery continues.

It is indeed “cartoon coaster” and it is reference to these (or similar to whatever she saw in bars/lounges in her day)…

Ah. Thanks for this. I have wondered for literally for decades what she was singing.

1 Like

This reminded me of a line none of my friends could ever figure out in Sweet Jane. Years ago I remembered our trouble and looked it up.

Riding in a Stutz Bearcat, Jim

There was a reason teenage me couldn’t figure that one out.

Same for me with a Grateful Dead lyric in “Eyes of the World.” A friend and I listened to it for years in utter confusion until I happened to hear a live version when Jerry clearly said, “Wondrin’ where the nuthatch winters, wings a mile long…” I didn’t find out what a nuthatch was until I started birding many years later.

Deano drove one

Too bad Holy Cole isn’t on that album, either. She did a whole CD of Tom Waits’ covers. Krall’s cover is wonderful.

Tom Waits covering early Joni Mitchell songs? Surely you mean Tom Rush.

I’m trying to imagine Waits singing Circle Game… Nope.

2 Likes

D’oh! I’ll plead senility.

2 Likes

this may not be well received but i gotta blurt this out.

iadoretomwaitswithmysoulandmarrowHISMUSICSAVEDMEandnobodyshouldsingtomwaitssongsexceptTOMWAITS.

there. sorry. thats really how i feel, though.

Another woman doing a Waits cover.

1 Like