The 500 - #399 - Rain Dogs - Tom Waits

 I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by Los Angeles-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. 

Album # 399

Album Title: Rain Dogs
Artist: Tom Waits 
Genre: Experimental Eclectic Everything
Recorded: RCA Studios
Released: September, 1985
My age at release: 20
How familiar was I with it before this week: One song
Song I am putting on my Spotify Mix: Clap Hands

Rain Dogs Cover - Tom Waits (1985)

There was a small rush of dopamine that accompanied the keystrokes that placed "Album #399" into the header of this post. When this marathon journey began in January, 2019, there was certainly some trepidation on my part that this was a "fool's errand" that would fizzle-out. However, with 100 records in the rear view mirror, completion of this nine-year task seems far more likely.

Tom Waits (1985)

What a phenomenal record was waiting at #399. Tom Waits' Rain Dogs is the middle album in a trilogy of experimental music that began with Swordfishtrombone (1983) and would conclude with Franks Wild Years (1987). All three records are notable for Tom's embrace of a broad spectrum of musical styles and wide range of instrumentation, as well as the use of eclectic background sounds gathered through natural sources rather than studio trickery. Indeed, Waits prides himself on being a Luddite who eschews technological sleight of hand in the studio, wonderfully captured by this somewhat salty, but perfectly Waits-ian, quote:

"If I want a sound, I usually feel better if I've chased it and killed it, skinned it and cooked it. Most things you can get with a button nowadays. So, if I was trying for a certain drum sound, my engineer would say, 'Oh, for Christ's sake, why are we wasting our time? Let's just hit this little cup with a stick here and make it bigger in the mix.' I'd say, 'No, I would rather go in the bathroom and hit the door with a piece of two-by-four very hard.'"

Much of the record was composed in a squalid, basement apartment at the corner of Washington and Horatio Street in the West Village of Manhattan. 

Washington & Horatio Streets, NYC

It was, as one might expect of New York City in the mid-eighties, a rough area, frequented by a diverse group of wandering artists, addicts, sex workers, pimps, hoodlums and the homeless. It was from this landscape that Waits drew his inspiration for both the music and his extraordinary lyrics. These urban vagabonds also provided inspiration for the album's title. As Waits put it:

"I kept thinking about people who live outdoors. You know how after the rain you see all these dogs that seem lost, wandering around. The rain washes away all their scent, all their direction. So all the people on the album are knit together, by some corporeal way of sharing pain and discomfort."

However, I couldn't help but think how this applies to all of us. We are all wandering the face of the earth, knit together by invisible forces. Fortunately, for many of us, we have the solace and comfort of a home and the ties that bind us are often love and belonging. Perhaps Waits is just reminding us to eschew the hectic whirlwind of our world and embrace the eclectic background. Maybe that will grant us a little more sympathy for the rain dogs in our world.