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Franks Wild Years
 
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Franks Wild Years

~ Tom Waits
4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
Price: £4.98 & eligible for Free UK delivery on orders over £5 with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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Franks Wild Years + Swordfishtrombones + Rain Dogs
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  • Swordfishtrombones ~ Tom Waits

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Product details

  • Audio CD (24 May 1989)
  • Number of Discs: 1
  • Label: Mercury Records Ltd (London)
  • ASIN: B000001FSR
  • Other Editions: Audio Cassette
  • Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 4,157 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

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Track Listings

1. Hang On St. Christopher
2. Straight To The Top
3. Blow Wind Blow
4. Temptation
5. Innocent When You Dream (Barroom)
6. I'll Be Gone
7. Yesterday Is Here
8. Please Wake Me Up
9. Franks Theme
10. More Than Rain
11. Way Down In The Hole
12. Straight To The Top (Vegas)
13. I'll Take New York
14. Telephone Call From Istanbul
15. Cold Cold Ground
16. Train Song
17. Innocent When You Dream (78)

Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review
All the voices in Tom Waits' head come out on this album: the growler (of course), the crooner, the preacher, the screecher, and the Vegas cheese ball. The instrumentation is equally eclectic. (Yep, that's Waits himself playing the "rooster" on the album's best song, "I'll Be Gone".) More memorable moments: "Innocent When You Dream" (both times), the vocal howling at the end of "Blow Wind Blow", and the lovely coughing fit after "I'll Take New York." Frank's Wild Years is the musical remains of a theatrical collaboration between Waits and Kathleen Brennan, originally staged in 1986. It contains nuggets of important practical advice, sure--"never drive a car when you're dead" (from "Telephone Call from Istanbul")--but mostly these songs are fantasy freaks. Frank's is big-time dreamer. It's a dreamy album. Sweet dreams. --Dan Leone

CD Description
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 interms 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 theangular, eccentric accompaniment of Mark Ribot, Michael Blair and others, he rides an oddly wrought, multicoloured train to musical glory.

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Customer Reviews

4 Reviews
5 star:
 (3)
4 star:
 (1)
3 star:    (0)
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Average Customer Review
4.8 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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63 of 64 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Probably the best..., 20 Aug 2003
I bought "Frank's Wild Years" in 1985 when I was 16, because I'd heard Bruce Springsteens cover of 'Jersey Girl' and learned that it was written by Tom Waits. I had no idea what to expect. I distinctly remember bringing it home and putting it on the recordplayer when a friend of mine from school was around. When the needle hit the record and the first sounds came out, he burst out laughing and said 'too bad, huh?'. That's the way it is, all great things in life take time to get into: Whiskey, coffee, opera, I hated all of them the first time I tried them. Off course I kept playing "Frank's Wild Years", not quite understanding why, but it won me over. It won my friend over too and soon we realised that this was big, way bigger than one album. Then next album I bought was "Closing Time". When I put it on, I thought "what's this?" a completely different artist... after 3 plays the same thing happened. And the same thing happened with every new Tom Waits album, something different, difficult, something that you needed to listen to and decide whether it worked or not. It inevitably did. The sound, in time has become more distinct, more experimental and the lyrics has gone from traditional lovesongs with a twist, to compelling poetry where just a few words can spark images and emotions. Since that summer evening in a Copenhagen suburb, Tom Waits has played the soundtrack to the key moments in my life. When I think of the times of the greatest happines, sorrow or moments of feeling 'alive' (in only the way teenagers can), Tom is right there in the background. His early piano ballads, his avantgarde trilogy Raindogs/Swordfish Trombones/Frank's Wild Years or his later wild, weird and wonderful stuff, all is great, all is worth devoting months, years, a lifetime to. The list of truly great songs is endless, many of them has been covered by other artist and gone to the hitlists, in a more commercial version than the original. Of course one of his greatest songs, Tom Trauberts Blues, was written after an evening in Copenhagen with danish folksinger Mathilde (shirt stained with blood and whiskey...what did happen?) Possibly, out of such an outstanding and unparralelled body of work "Frank's Wild Years" is the best album. If you have never listened to Tom Waits, you may buy "Frank's Wild Years" and hate it. But if you give it a chance, and listen to it a couple of times, it will probably be the beginning of a wonderful, sentimental, romantic, beautiful, challenging, but never dissapointing journey... So, if you have ever held on to a lamppost for support, dreamt about the one that got away, longed for a love that was far away or felt like burning down your house and hitting the highway for a new start. Start the journey with "Frank's Wild Years".
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars As with all Tom Waits albums, a little perseverance pays dividends, 16 Oct 2006
By Nigel Collier (Newcastle upon Tyne) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)      
I have reviewed Rain Dogs and Swordfishtrombones before on Amazon and find myself modelling this review very much on those; FWY is a very similar, if even more extreme extension of those two previous albums. It's arguably slightly less accessible to my ear than those two, but has not yet quite stumbled drunkenly off into even the more esoteric, jarring landscape of Bone Machine or The Black Rider.

As with all later Waits albums, I have learnt not to judge until I have listened to nothing else in my car CD player for at least a full week. It takes that long to really start to pick up on and get into the rhythms and theme of his albums, to get beyond what seems at first jumbled, distorted noises, interferance and background sounds and actually start to recognise the evocative and complex but strangely soothing and even charming music and poetry that awaits the listener. You basically need time to catch up to the genius of Tom.

Also as with previous albums, Frank's Wild Years comes across as a very specific soundtrack to an imaginery movie. Each track sets a scene so vividly, with odd dialogues, strange characters and incidental sounds that you could close your eyes and imagine you were listening to a movie rather than an album. In this case the general image I get of the movie is that it is set in Berlin, in a long abandoned art neuveau style theatre - all cobwebs and mouldering curtains. Then, one night every year at the stroke of midnight, a ghostly Weimar Kabarett is is performed on the rotting stage by a reanimated Marlene Dietrich to a ghostly audience of dinner jacketed ghouls from 20s Germany. I realise that that's a pretty fanciful and specific image to get from an album - but that's what Tom Waits does to you.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars mawkish, absurd, beautiful, 10 Nov 2007
By Golowy "Kernyck" (Penzance, Cornwall) - See all my reviews
The thing I like about Tom Waits is his songs are little movies. So it is impossible to hear Innocent When You Dream (a particularly good song on this album) without seeing barroom grotesques, squeezing tears from their faces as they howl out the tune. And of course the irony of a beautiful, delicate lyric being throttled by these Tom Waits reprobates is just perfect.

One other thing I like about Mr T is that he 'acts' his songs. Therefore no matter how heartfelt, angry or etc the song, there is always a bit of tongue in the cheek, a bit of burlesque, a little twinkle in the eye. Therefore none of the rock star posturing of his peers, because there's just a touch of silliness and absurdity to it all, no matter how genuinely heartfelt.

By the way, this is one of his finest records. When you first here it, it sounds so diverse it's like flicking channels when you're drunk in a hotel room someplace far away. Vegas, devil, german barroom, operetta, spaghetti western, the Muppets (fozzy bear missed his train).

Then you realise, after about the fourth listen, that life is indeed a vegas devil german barroom cast as an operatic spaghetti western and that fozzy really has missed his train.

Don't worry about buying an easy Mr T album first. Just get on that plane fool and fly.

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4.0 out of 5 stars A juddery waltz through an unfamiliar underground
Waits voice is used to magnificent effect on this album as he shifts from the bar to what sounds like a fairground at night. Read more
Published on 6 Feb 2001 by Mr. C. Smithson

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