max abelson's super groovy music video spectacular

#981: bob dylan - a hard rain’s a gonna fall (1975, rolling thunder revue)

a very special super groovy spectacular mix: 20 serious storm songs for sandy

(1) james carr’s these ain’t raindrops (2) charlie patton’s devil sent the rain (3) billie holiday’s come rain or come shine (4) ann peebles’ i can’t stand the rain (5) irma thomas’ it’s raining (6) dr. john’s blow wind blow (7) neko case’s fox confessor brings the flood (8) jerry garcia & david grisman’s dreadful wind and rain (9) the temptations’ i wish it would rain (10) the meters’ stormy (11) randy newman’s i think it’s going to rain today (12) tom waits on rain: rain dogs & more than rain & rains on me (13) karen dalton’s little bit of rain (14) r.e.m.’s so. central rain (15) bonnie ‘prince’ billy raining in darling (16) neil young’s see the sky about to rain (17) brian eno’s fullness of wind (18)the velvet underground’s hey mister rain (19) the sensational nightingales’ the storm is passing over (20) bob dylan’s a hard rain’s a gonna fall 

#934: tom waits - telephone call from istanbul (1987, big time)

narrowly the world’s finest song on the subject of telephonics, by the skin of a tooth on a hair hanging from a blue trenchcoat. 

#886: tom waits - silent night & christmas card from a hooker in minneapolis (1978)

the trick to happy holidays is remembering that one december tom waits met a nun from johnsburg illinois whose convent let her out to celebrate new year’s eve. he found a wedding chapel for them in the yellow pages next to “massage,” and a registrar named watermelon called them mr. tom and ms. kathleen watts. they spent their honeymoon in william blake’s old irish house, where the radio was broken. the man at the front desk they called for assistance had gone out, looking for radio parts, and came back four days later. it was that or they met at a hollywood party while roy brown played. but friends, either way, may a little bit of some kind of heavenly peace be yours, too, this holiday season. see you in 2012.

#808: tom waits - rain dogs (big time, 1987)

children who are forced into clarinet lessons by cruel parents, and also by a westchester elementary-school band instructor, but also by her husband the westchester middle-school band teacher, even when they really don’t want to play the fucking clarient—and if it sounds like things are getting personal here it’s because they are—these children should just cool their jets. don’t they know that one day they’ll be in their 20s and want to establish sidney bechet appreciation societies? surely they’ll listen to that sweet woodwind opening up trashy but adorable francophile woody allen movies, and sigh heavy sighs?

and will they not watch live tom waits clips from the 1980s and realize that their old instrument is cremating the accordion, embarrassing the electric guitar, pounding the percussionist on the floor, mangling the man in the fez, tantalizing tom waits himself?

of course they will. fools.

#783: nina simone - i loves you, porgy (1962)

for some weird reason, though maybe i could put my finger on if i tried hard, people don’t own nearly enough nina simone albums. here are ten that you’ll profoundly love if you have a heart that beats blood up to your brains and down to your feet:

1. nina simone in concert: songs about mississippi, smoking in bed, limpness, gold, jim crow and porgy.

2. broadway blues ballads: zeke turner gave me this, and it’s got laziest gal in town and something wonderful, which i heard are both about him.

3. wild is the wind: woozier than tom waits, and prettier, and meatier, and sadder.

4. little girl blue: her first album, also called jazz as played in an exclusive side street club, which i like because of the “as.”

5. nina simone sings the blues: it’s said that all of new york city collectively wept on the 1967 night this album was released—i made that up, but i might not have.

6. nina simone at town hall: “how do you tell somebody how it feels to be in love? you cannot do it to save your life. you can describe things, but you can’t tell them, but you know it when it happens. that’s what i mean by free. i had a couple of times on the stage when i really felt free, and that’s something else. that’s something else!”

7. nina simone and piano: her and a piano, just like ella fitzgerald’s let no man write my epitaph. both are really simple and terrifying.

8. ‘nuff said: i like it mostly for these earrings.

9. a portrait of nina: a 2-lp bootleg that i bought for $3 a while ago, with lung-collapsing versions of four women and sinnerman. (i’d love to rip it into mp3s—if someone out there can help me with that, give me a ring, ok?).

10. live at montreaux 1976: actually i’m not sure if this was ever released as a proper album. why is that?

#730: tom waits - tom traubert’s blues (1999, bridge school benefit)

even under completely normal conditions tom waits’ music makes me weep, so imagine all all the teeth gnashing and floor beating and private apologies for all the wrongs i’ve done when he plays songs to help the bridge school for disabled children, or, like today, when he writes a book of poetry to raise money for his local homeless services. and it’s really beautiful: “maybe we are all members/ of an orchestra that is merely/ tuning up/ and our curious trails/ are random scales/ for a music that has/ yet to begin.”

#729: tom waits - innocent when you dream (1999, bridge school benefit)

“this is a song my dad taught me when i was a kid—that’s a lie, this is a song i learned from some kids in the alley behind the theater—that’s a lie, too, i learned this from gregory peck—that, too, is a lie, they’re all lies, the whole song’s a lie.”

#717: tom waits - jesus gonna be here (2000, live in warsaw)

what kris kringle is listening to at this very moment. 

#712: tom waits - heartattack and vine & jersey girl (1980)

come for the endearingly awkward john candy introduction, stay for the gin-drenched, wobbly-footed, sunken-eyed, stained-shirt performance of heartattack and vine, and then sit and enjoy as the accumbens nucleus section of your brain and then your heart’s little ventricles are incinerated by the love song tom waits wrote for the woman he’d married three months earlier at the always forever wedding chapel. true to their chapel’s name, he and kathleen brennan, born in johnsburg, illinois but then a resident of the garden state, are still together.

#652: tom waits - lord i’ve been changed (2006, dir. phil bebbington)

oh is this sudden and unmistakable onslaught of autumn a beautiful thing. the mercury collapsed, the skies darkened, and fall is here: it makes a man thinks of cobwebs, firewood, flannel-colored leaves on the merritt parkway, and the word musk. what this sudden september season shift means is it’s time to put away early/mid-career tom waits and trade up for mid/late.

#470: r.e.m. - wendell gee (live, 1985)

young michael stipe fit three decades of extremely good hair styles into r.e.m.’s two best years: first the ’70s curls for the band’s 1984 t.v. debut, which a year later had grown into the ’60s jumble sported here (with ray bans, naturally), followed a few months later by the very short and very bleached 90’s look. bill berry’s hair changed too, but not for the better—though he looks quite good whistling here. more importantly, wendell gee, which doesn’t sound very interesting on record, quiets down to a pretty little attic ballad here, like tom waits’ georgia lee but slightly less devastating.

#390: tom waits - innocent when you dream (1988)

give tom waits a bathtub to stand in and a fezzed accordion player to sing along with and he’ll explain memory, sadness, love, sleep, infinity, friendship, softness and death. he casually gesticulates and women swoon; he rhymes “in the belfry” with “the arms that held me” and men weep.