BETTE MIDLER ~ SONGS FOR THE NEW DEPRESSION

Original released on LP Atlantic SD 18155 (US, January 1976)

TOM WAITS: "Foreign Affairs"

Original released on LP Asylum K 53068

(UK, September 1977)

Tom Waits' fifth album for Asylum foreshadowed changes that would alter his career over the next six years. It signals a musical restlessness that fueled his next two records ("Blue Valentine" and "Heartattack and Vine2), and resulted in his writing a film score and leaving the label for Island, where he was given greater artistic control. He leans less on comic relief here and more on fully formed story songs. The album contains more ballads than most of his records do, but they were the most effective vehicles for the kind of storytelling he was trying to get to. The song "I never Talk to Strangers" inspired director Francis Ford Coppola to shape the characters for his film "One from the Heart" (he also convinced Waits to score it, leading to Waits' iconic collaboration with Crystal Gayle). Produced and engineered by Bones Howe, "Foreign Affairs" was recorded live in studio by a quintet that included West Coast jazzmen Jack Sheldon on trumpet, saxophonist Frank Vicari, bassist Jim Hughart, and drummer Shelly Manne. Further accompaniment was provided by an orchestra arranged and conducted by Bob Alcivar. Introduced by the instrumental "Cinny's Waltz," which sounds like a cinematic cue, it's followed by the bluesy, alone-on-a-Saturday-night longing expressed in "Muriel." The aforementioned "I Never Talk to Strangers" is a duet with Bette Midler. It offers a lyric dialogue between two beleaguered veterans who find themselves (again) the last patrons in a bar at closing time. 

Their clever, direct exchange is sweetened by smoky tenor sax flourishes, swelling strings, and brushed snares behind Waits' piano. He doesn't discard his Beat Generation influences, though. Check the fingerpopping swinging medley of his "Jack & Neal," with Al Jolson's "California, Here I Come" as a travel guide to a gone-daddy-gone road trip. The ghost traces of "Tom Traubert's Blues (Four Sheets to the Wind in Copenhagen)" are heard in a borrowed melody from a saloon waltz with a cupful of bittersweet nostalgia in the lovely "A Sight for Sore Eyes." The lengthy "Potters Field" checks the harmonic charts of Richard Rodgers' theme for "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue" and Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" (with Gene Cipriano's clarinet) before digging deep into sparse, noirish, blues-jazz. Its lyric is as dark and dramatic as "Small Change (Got Rained on with His Own 38)," creating a narrative worthy of a Sam Fuller film. "Burma-Shave" is a solo piano and vocal paean to the memories of drives Waits took with his father through life's seedy side. While the funky blues-cum-rhumba in "Barber Shop" adds swagger and pop to Waits' post-beat lyricism, the closing title track returns to the ballad to offer a bittersweet meditation on the perspective of "home": What it represents in the heart as opposed to what it actually is - all from a guy living at the Tropicana Motor Hotel. "Foreign Affairs" is one of the most unjustifiably overlooked titles in Waits' catalog. It holds its appeal - and sounds less dated - than many of his more popular entries. (Thom Jurek in AllMusic)

MISS M LIVE AT LAST

Original released on Double LP Atlantic ATL 60129

(US, June 1977)

The double-LP live album phenomenon was utilized in 1973 on "Around the World With Three Dog Night" to collect loads of hits and release them in another format. Three years later, Bob Seger's "Live Bullet", J. Geils Band's "Blow Your Face Out", and Frampton "Comes Alive" solidified the double disc as a way to bring important rock artists to the forefront. Come 1977, the Rolling Stones' "Love You Live" failed to live up to their single disc "Get Your Ya Ya's Out" or any of the brilliant bootleg performances of theirs proliferating. In the middle of all this arrives the very strong in-concert artist, Bette Midler, with her fourth album for Atlantic. This undated (probably 1976) performance from the Cleveland Music Hall, Cleveland, OH, does a decent job of capturing the magic of Midler. Having a show stretched across four sides was essential for this performer; the brilliance of her rendition of the Supremes' 1970 hit "Up the Ladder to the Roof" takes it out of the Motown context and brings it to Midler's Andrews Sisters world of girl group devotion. Segueing into a driving "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" answers the question asked in the opening medley of her signature tune, "Friends," with Ringo Starr's "Oh My My," Midler being astonished that anyone would ask the question if she can boogie. Another live LP, "Divine Madness", was released only three years after this when she was riding her fame from the film "The Rose", and that single disc concentrated on the comedienne's song performances ("Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" gets reprised there), while 1985's single disc "Mud Will Be Flung Tonight" gave the fans her funny bits; thankfully with four sides of music and fun, "Live at Last" is allowed to run the gamut.

With an adult contemporary (dare it be said, Vegas-style) act like Bette Midler, the sad thing is that bootlegs and live tapes don't proliferate. It's a shame, as she has lots to offer on every show, and when you think about it, only one double-live disc in a career this rich and this lengthy is unfair to both the artist and her fans. There are some brilliant moments here; along with "Up the Ladder to the Roof," her version of Johnny Mercer's "I'm Drinking Again" is better than the studio take on her self-titled second disc. "Delta Dawn" is wonderful, as are the up-tempo "Do You Wanna Dance" and John Prine's "Hello in There." Midler performs Neil Young's "Birds," tells raunchy jokes so cliché that they depend upon her brilliant delivery, and has her personality captured in audio form splendidly. There's a very interesting "intermission" which features a Tom Dowd studio production of "You're Moving out Today," a tune written by Bruce Roberts, Midler, and Carole Bayer Sager, who simultaneously released a studio version the same year. It was a neat trick sliding it onto this release. "Live at Last" has lots to offer and has yet to be appreciated as the pure document that it is. Atlantic should be given a thumbs up for giving their performer the chance to artistically breathe here. A similarly misunderstood Top 40 artist from this era was the Guess Who, and it took 30 years for that group's pivotal 1972 "Live at the Paramount" album to get the full treatment. Luckily for fans of Midler, she - and they - were spared the indignity that may have cost the Guess Who serious FM radio time. Classic stuff exists in the grooves of "Live at Last". [The label did release a single-disc promo-only version to radio which contained highlights.] (Joe Viglione in AllMusic)

WALLPAPER: "Bette & The Girls"

WALLPAPER: "Bette In The Sands"