Rural L. Burnside

On this recording, Burnside presents the blues in its original and purest form. His music is not very different from the Southern blues of the 1900s. Five songs from this recording, ‘Jumper hanging on the line’, ‘Long-Haired Doney’, ‘Poor Black Mattie’, ‘Catfish Blues’ and ‘Rolling and Tumbling’, are versions of traditional blues pieces that are known to everyone in the State of Mississippi. These songs date from before the blues structures with standardised texts and harmonies; they are close to the ‘hollers’ and the vocal line is supported by the repetition of the musical phrase on the guitar. The other songs are adaptations, by Burnside himself, of hits of the 1950s. Other blues artists from Mississippi and Texas perform these songs: Robert Nighthawk, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Elmore James and John Lee Hooker…

On Real Gone, Tom Waits walks a fraying tightrope. By utterly eliminating one of the cornerstone elements of his sound - keyboards - he has also removed his safety net. With songwriting and production partner Kathleen Brennan, he strips away almost everything conventional from these songs, taking them down to the essences of skeletal rhythms, blasted and guttural blues, razor-cut rural folk music, and the rusty-edge poetry and craft of songwriting itself. His cast includes guitarists Marc Ribot and Harry Cody, bassist/guitarist Larry Taylor, bassist Les Claypool, and percussionists Brain and Casey Waits (Tom's son), the latter of whom also doubles on turntables. This does present problems, such as on the confrontational opener, "Top of the Hill." Waits uses his growling, grunting vocal atop Ribot's monotonously funky single-line riff and Casey's turntables to become a human beatbox offering ridiculously nonsensical lyrics…