The Dresden Dolls are indeed no more.

Hmm, I swear I read that they were just on a break.

OK, so I know there are some Tom Waits fans on the board. To say the least. Anyway, I went to a dinner party at a colleague's home last week and found that he was a gigantic Tom Waits fan. The only Waits album I have is Alice (which I'd only nabbed because of some reference to musical theater and German cabaret music vibe, which I dig, and I do like the album very much), so I might have said something in the vein of "oh, Tom Waits; I've heard interesting things about him and been meaning to check more of his stuff out", then an hour later, I was out of his door with 7 CDs (PLUS two more compilation CDs) in my bag so that I could, you know, "try him out." Like, I've never heard so much evangelical fervour outside of conversations with Mac purists, dudes.

Anyway. I ripped the two compilation CDs as samplers ("Asylum Years" and "The Island Years".) I don't think I want to rip all of the other seven, but of the rest, which would you consider his essential albums? Let's see. I have:

Small Change
Heartattack and Vine
Real Gone
Closing Time
Bone Machine
Swordfishtrombones (I'm assuming yes to this one, since it's the title of David's book and all)
Franks Wild Years

Don't say ALL OF THEM, 'cause... no.

anyone interested in some fast food Simpsons toys? both this current batch and a previous one. I think I have 3 or 4.

Vonnie, I'd go with Small Change, a good example of early Waits, then Swordfishtrombones for the Brechtian stuff and Bone Machine because it's my favorite.

Edit - not necessarily in that order, though.

As Cor notes, Small Change is his early masterpiece.

Swordfish, definitely, though most Waits fans like Rain Dogs best of all.

Frank's Wild Years suffers slightly from the fact that it was originally a stage show. It doesn't bat a thousand like Rain Dogs. However, some of my very favorite Waits songs are on it.

Bone Machine can be a bit assaultive on first listen. It's raw. However, over time you realize that the song quality is consistently excellent and it's not quite as clangorous as it seemed on first impression. Waits tends to do that - being prone to put the challenging song up first, and the seductive one further in.

I have a whole set of Waits songs covered by other people up on Buffistarawk if you want to sample them.

Thanks for the input, you two! I'll try out those albums. It's odd that he didn't have Rain Dogs in his collection (maybe he couldn't find the CD) but somehow, I seemed to have accumulated a handful of songs from that album from elsewhere.

I'll check out BR for covers. Thanks, David.

Ted Leo IS the American Billy Bragg. Also completely adorkable.

anyone interested in some fast food Simpsons toys? both this current batch and a previous one. I think I have 3 or 4.

I love how this has become the de-facto Simpsons toy thread!

Yes, I'd be interested. Could you email me with details?

Hmm, I swear I read that they were just on a break.

There was a post on the forum from Brian saying they wouldn't be working together anymore, followed by a really long forum post by Amanda about how their breaking up was like getting a divorce, painful but necessary. So yeah. Definitely no more.

Anyway. I ripped the two compilation CDs as samplers ("Asylum Years" and "The Island Years".) I don't think I want to rip all of the other seven, but of the rest, which would you consider his essential albums?

I wouldn't call it essential, per se, but my .02 is that my favorite is Closing Time. And it's probably just my favorite because it was my first Waits CD. So there's that.

For essential-ness, though, I'd go with Hec's and Corwood's recs.