Rain Dogs (2023 Remaster) Tom Waits

• 1Singapore02:46
• 2Clap Hands03:47
• 3Cemetery Polka01:51
• 4Jockey Full Of Bourbon02:45
• 5Tango Till They're Sore02:45
• 6Big Black Mariah02:41
• 7Diamonds And Gold02:31
• 8Hang Down Your Head02:32
• 9Time04:00
• 10Rain Dogs02:56
• 11Midtown (Instrumental)01:00
• 129th & Hennepin01:58
• 13Gun Street Girl04:37
• 14Union Square02:24
• 15Blind Love04:18
• 16Walking Spanish03:05
• 17Downtown Train03:53
• 18Bride Of Rain Dog (Instrumental)01:07
• 19Anywhere I Lay My Head02:48
• Total Runtime53:44

Info for Rain Dogs (2023 Remaster)

"Rain Dogs" is the ninth studio album by American singer-songwriter Tom Waits, released in September 1985 on Island Records. A loose concept album about "the urban dispossessed" of New York City, Rain Dogs is generally considered the middle album of a trilogy that includes Swordfishtrombones and Franks Wild Years.

Tom Waits has always viewed his favorite denizens of the night with a charming romanticism. But with Rain Dogs Waits’s derelict characters have taken on gritty, three-dimensional life. On "Cemetery Polka" a sad accordion and rude trombone flesh out his vivid portrait of a wildly eccentric family. And the tinkling, aimless piano in "Tango Till They’re Sore" is well suited to the rambling imagination of the song’s narrator. But Waits is most coherent when he sticks to shattered dreams and tin-can sounds of alleyways. On several songs he uses makeshift percussion instruments to create a kind of hobo’s orchestra. His gift for idioms has always been impressive, but now, with a more humane and imaginative touch, Waits has found the soul of his downtrodden heroes.

"With its jarring rhythms and unusual instrumentation -- marimba, accordion, various percussion -- as well as its frequently surreal lyrics, Rain Dogs is very much a follow-up to Swordfishtrombones, which is to say that it sounds for the most part like The Threepenny Opera being sung by Howlin' Wolf. The chief musical difference is the introduction of guitarist Marc Ribot, who adds his noisy leads to the general cacophony. But Rain Dogs is sprawling where its predecessor had been focused: Tom Waits' lyrics here sometimes are imaginative to the point of obscurity, seemingly chosen to fit the rhythms rather than for sense. In the course of 19 tracks and 54 minutes, Waits sometimes goes back to the more conventional music of his earlier records, which seems like a retreat, though such tracks as the catchy "Hang Down Your Head," "Time," and especially "Downtown Train" (frequently covered and finally turned into a Top Ten hit by Rod Stewart five years later) provide some relief as well as variety. Rain Dogs can't surprise as Swordfishtrombones had, and in his attempt to continue in the direction suggested by that album, Waits occasionally borders on the chaotic (which may only be to say that, like most of his records, this one is uneven). But much of the music matches the earlier album, and there is so much of it that that is enough to qualify Rain Dogs as one of Waits' better albums." (William Ruhlmann, AMG)

Tom Waits, vocals (1–10, 12–17, 19), guitar (2, 4, 6, 8–10, 15–17), organ (3, 19), piano (5, 12), harmonium (8, 18), banjo (13)
Additional musicians:
Michael Blair, percussion (1–4, 7, 8, 12, 13, 17), marimba (2, 7, 10, 12), drums (8, 14, 18), congas (4), bowed saw (12), parade drum (19)
Stephen Hodges, drums (1, 2, 4, 6, 10, 11, 15, 16), parade drum (3)
Larry Taylor, double bass (1, 3, 4, 6, 8–10, 15), bass (7, 11, 14, 16)
Marc Ribot, guitar (1–4, 7, 8, 10)
"Hollywood" Paul Litteral, trumpet (1, 11, 19)
Bobby Previte, percussion (2), marimba (2)
William Schimmel, accordion (3, 9, 10)
Bob Funk, trombone (1, 3, 5, 10, 11, 19)
Ralph Carney, baritone saxophone (4, 14), saxophone (11, 18), clarinet (12)
Greg Cohen, double bass (5, 12, 13)
Chris Spedding, guitar (1)
Tony Garnier, double bass (2)
Keith Richards, guitar (6, 14, 15), backing vocals (15)
Robert Musso, banjo (7)
Arno Hecht, tenor saxophone (11, 19)
Crispin Cioe, saxophone (11, 19)
Robert Quine, guitar (15, 17)
Ross Levinson, violin (15)
John Lurie, alto saxophone (16)
G.E. Smith, guitar (17)
Mickey Curry, drums (17)
Tony Levin, bass (17)
Robbie Kilgore, organ (17)

Recorded at RCA Studios; Assistant, Dennis Ferrante
Engineered by Robert Musso
Mixed at Quadrasonic Studio; Assistant, Tom Gonzales and RPM Studio; Assistant, Jeff Lippay
Production Coordination by Valerie Goodman
Mastered at Masterdisk; Howie Weinberg, Engineer
Downtown Trains mixed by Jeff Lippay

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.