Frank’s Wild Years (2023 Remaster) Tom Waits

• 1 Hang On St. Christopher 02:41
• 2 Straight To The Top (Rhumba) 02:27
• 3 Blow Wind Blow 03:32
• 4 Temptation 03:44
• 5 Innocent When You Dream (Barroom) 04:14
• 6 I'll Be Gone 03:10
• 7 Yesterday Is Here 02:29
• 8 Please Wake Me Up 03:28
• 9 Franks Theme 01:45
• 10 More Than Rain 03:52
• 11 Way Down In The Hole 03:26
• 12 Straight To The Top (Vegas) 03:24
• 13 I'll Take New York 04:00
• 14 Telephone Call From Istanbul 03:08
• 15 Cold Cold Ground 04:04
• 16 Train Song 03:19
• 17 Innocent When You Dream (78) 03:07
• Total Runtime 55:50

Info for Frank’s Wild Years (2023 Remaster)

"Frank's Wild Years" is the tenth studio album by Tom Waits, released 1987 on Island Records. Subtitled "Un Operachi Romantico in Two Acts", the album contains songs written by Waits and collaborators (mainly his wife, Kathleen Brennan) for a play of the same name. The shared title of the album and the play is an iteration of "Frank's Wild Years", a song from Waits' 1983 album Swordfishtrombones.

"Frank's Wild Years" by Kathleen Brennan and Tom Waits had its theatrical debut with the Steppenwolf theater company in Chicago, Illinois on June 22, 1986. Ostensibly a 'concept' piece about the strange adventures of a ne'er-do-well named Frank, "Frank's Wild Years" is an album full of masterfully written songs and brilliant arrangements, whether one follows the conceptual thread or not. this final album in the loose trilogy that began with "Swordfishtrombones" expands upon the advances of its predecessors both in terms of hazy, dreamlike imagery and eclectic, exotic instrumentation. waits is nothing if not theatrical, and he plays a wide range of characters here. on the uproarious 'straight to the top' he's a gonzo lounge singer. on 'innocent when you dream' he's an old-world balladeer after too many whiskeys. he dons the preacher's cloak for 'down in the hole,' warning of the devil's powers, and he braves the top of his range for an unearthly shriek on 'temptation.' buoyed by the angular, eccentric accompaniment of Mark Ribot, Michael Blair and others, he rides an oddly wrought, multi-coloured train to musical glory.

"Tom Waits wrote a song called "Frank's Wild Years" for his 1983 Swordfishtrombones album, then used the title (minus its apostrophe) for a musical play he wrote with his wife, Kathleen Brennan, and toured with in 1986. The Franks Wild Years album, drawn from the show, is subtitled, "un operachi romantico in two acts," though the songs themselves do not carry the plot. Rather, this is just the third installment in Waits' eccentric series of Island Records albums in which he seems most inspired by German art song and carnival music, presenting songs in spare, stripped-down arrangements consisting of instruments like marimba, baritone horn, and pump organ and singing in a strained voice that has been artificially compressed and distorted. The songs themselves often are conventional romantic vignettes, or would be minus the oddities of instrumentation, arrangement, and performance. For example, "Innocent When You Dream," a song of disappointment in love and friendship, has a winning melody, but it is played in a seesaw arrangement of pump organ, bass, violin, and piano, and Waits sings it like an enraged drunk. (He points out the arbitrary nature of the arrangements by repeating "Straight to the Top," done as a demented rhumba in act one, as a Vegas-style Frank Sinatra swing tune in act two.) The result on record may not be theatrical, exactly, but it certainly is affected. It also has the quality of an inside joke that listeners are not being let in on." (William Ruhlmann, AMG)

Tom Waits, vocals, pump organ, Optigan, guitar, vocal stylings, rooster, piano, Farfisa, Mellotron, drums, conga, tambourine
Jay Anderson, bass (8)
Michael Blair, drums, conga, percussion, maracas, marimba, orchestra bells, glockenspiel (1–4, 6, 10–14)
Kathleen Brennan, vocal arrangements (4)
Angela Brown, background vocals (11)
Ralph Carney, saxophone, baritone horn, violin, tenor saxophone (1–2, 4–6, 8, 10–13, 17)
Greg Cohen, bass, alto horn, horn arrangements, Leslie bass pedals (1–6, 10–14, 16–17)
David Hidalgo, accordion (15–16)
Leslie Holland, background vocals (11)
Lynne Jordan, background vocals (11)
Marc Ribot, guitar, banjo (1, 4, 11, 14)
William Schimmel, piano, pump organ, accordion, Leslie bass pedals, cocktail piano (1, 2, 5–6, 10, 12–13, 17)
Larry Taylor, bass, upright bass (2, 7, 8, 15)
Moris Tepper, guitar (4, 6, 10, 14)
Francis Thumm, prepared piano, pump organ (3, 10)
Izzy Stradlin, rhythm guitar

Digitally remastered

In the 1970s, Tom Waits combined a lyrical focus on desperate, low-life characters with a persona that seemed to embody the same lifestyle, which he sang about in a raspy, gravelly voice. From the '80s on, his work became increasingly theatrical as he moved into acting and composing. Growing up in Southern California, Waits attracted the attention of manager Herb Cohen, who also handled Frank Zappa, and was signed by him at the beginning of the 1970s, resulting in the material later released as The Early Years and The Early Years, Vol. 2. His formal recording debut came with Closing Time (1973) on Asylum Records, an album that contained "Ol' 55," which was covered by labelmates the Eagles for their On the Border album. Waits attracted critical acclaim and a cult audience for his subsequent albums, The Heart of Saturday Night (1974), the two-LP live set Nighthawks at the Diner (1975), Small Change (1976), Foreign Affairs (1977), Blue Valentine (1978), and Heart Attack and Vine (1980). His music and persona proved highly cinematic, and, starting in 1978, he launched parallel careers as an actor and as a composer of movie music. He wrote songs for and appeared in Paradise Alley (1978), wrote the title song for On the Nickel (1980), and was hired by director Francis Coppola to write the music for One from the Heart (1982), which earned him an Academy Award nomination. While working on that project, Waits met and married playwright Kathleen Brennan, with whom he later collaborated.

Moving to Island Records, Waits made Swordfishtrombones (1983), which found him experimenting with horns and percussion and using unusual recording techniques. The same year, he appeared in Coppola's Rumble Fish and The Outsiders, and, in 1984, he appeared in the director's The Cotton Club. In 1985, he released Rain Dogs. In 1986, he appeared in Down by Law and made his theatrical debut with Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre in Frank's Wild Years, a musical play he had written with Brennan. An album based on the play was released in 1987, the same year Waits appeared in the films Candy Mountain and Ironweed. In 1988, he released a film and soundtrack album depicting one of his concerts, Big Time. In 1989, he appeared in the films Bearskin: An Urban Fairytale, Cold Feet, and Wait Until Spring. His work for the theater continued in 1990 when Waits partnered with opera director Robert Wilson and beat novelist William Burroughs and staged The Black Rider in Hamburg, Germany. In 1991, he appeared in the films Queens' Logic, The Fisher King, and At Play in the Fields of the Lord. In 1992, he scored the film Night on Earth; released the album Bone Machine, which won a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album; appeared in the film Bram Stoker's Dracula; and returned to Hamburg for the staging of his second collaboration with Robert Wilson, Alice. The Black Rider was documented on CD in 1993, the same year Waits appeared in the film Short Cuts.

A long absence from recording resulted in the 1998 release of Beautiful Maladies, a retrospective of his work for Island. In 1999, Waits finally returned with a new album, Mule Variations. The record was a critical success, winning a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk album, and was also his first for the independent Epitaph Records' Anti subsidiary. A small tour followed, but Waits jumped right back into the studio and began working on not one but two new albums. By the time he emerged in the spring of 2002, both Alice and Blood Money were released on Anti Records. Blood Money consisted of the songs from the third Wilson/Waits collaboration that was staged in Denmark in 2000 and won Best Drama of the Year. After limited touring in support of these two endeavors, Waits returned to the recording studio and issued Real Gone in 2004. The album marked a large departure for him in that it contained no keyboards at all, focusing only on stringed and rhythm instruments. Glitter and Doom Live appeared in 2009. Waits didn't release another studio album of new material until 2011, when he issued Bad as Me on Anti in the Fall. He uncharacteristically issued a track listing two months in advance of the release, and the pre-release title track as a digital single. He also took the unusual step of releasing a video in which he allowed bits of all the album's songs to play while he scolded bloggers and peer-to-peer sites for invading his privacy. (All Music.com)

This album contains no booklet.