Tom Waits

Like those on Frank's Wild Years, these songs were written specifically for a stage production by the same name -- but unlike that record, The Black Rider was a bust. Maybe there were too many creative cooks in the kitchen (the story was a German folktale that had already been made into an opera by Carl Maria von Weber, which inspired the English version by William S. Burroughs and director Robert Wilson), but the play, and Waits' score, met tepid reactions. As a standalone LP, it's manically scattered; if there's one record in his collection to skip, this is it.

Just when it seemed that Los Angeles' premier bar casualty could not get any weirder, on
his 15th album, Tom Waits teams up with beat writer William Burroughs (who turns up on
one song) to score a 19th-century opera. The 20 tracks, written for director Robert
Wilson's re-vision of The Black Rider, back the twisted Faustian tale with dark and
wickedly funny melodies. (Onstage, the songs are performed by actors, though i... More >

Prime collaborators, could use a libretto ("Russian Dance," "Crossroads," "That's the Way," "I'll Shoot the Moon")