If there is a certificate we’ve missed out on then it’s probably for a 50 metre swim badge at the local swimming baths. The song appeared in five different guises by five different artists, one for each season, with the Waits version itself oddly appearing second on season two. For the better part of a year after its release, Franks Wild Tears was the nightly go-to-pump-uo album for me and my roommate. The theme from "If I Have to Go" was used under the title "Rat's Theme" in the documentary Streetwise as early as 1984.

Source: "Waits Measured: A Multifacted Singer Looks For New Directions" Chicago Tribune - Arts section (USA), by Lynn Van Matre. The album divides the story neatly into two acts and although titled “un operachi romantic”, there is no opera in Franks.This rags-to-rags tale completes the trilogy that began with 1983's Swordfishtrombones (featuring the song 'Frank's Wild Years,' in which the protagonist torches his suburban SoCal house and heads north on the Hollywood Freeway).

He always wanted a bit of a rub in everything, and when we got that right he seemed to be relatively satisfied. We reached a point in the rehearsal process where Terry realized what he wanted to do with the show was different what Tom wanted to do with the show.Kathleen Waits-Brennan was primarily responsible for the libretto and Waits himself was in charge of the music. What it does have, however, is quality songs in abundance, from the barnstorming opener, Hang On St. In a period of his career that is sometimes described as ‘Brechtian’, Frank’s Wild Years comes out as being the most theatrical and cinematic of his albums. Gussying ourselves up to war-song strains of 'Temptation', 'Straight to the Top' etc was an essential part of our ritual of getting ourselves 'in the mood' before emerging from the squalor of our Lower East Side tenement, ready to take on the world.

On June 10, 1986 Steppenwolf performed a press preview for the play and on June 17, 1986 the play had its world premiere. There was some talk of retooling the production - building new stage sets - but by this point both time and money were in short supply. I'll Be Gone", one of my favorite Tom Waits' songs, summons to life a mad drunk husband, hopeless in his current family-bound situation, yearning for a life larger than labor/wages/moonshine. Tom Waits (1999): " You have to be a little foolish to do something because a play takes a lot of energy- emotionally, financially.Then came 1985's Rain Dogs, which mixed Brecht- Weill drama with Captain Beefheart bizarreness for an effect that conjured up a Saturday-night fish fry in the freak show of a decrepit circus. A Waits album described as individual and singular when compared to nothing but the rest of the oeuvre?

E io ogni tanto una bevuta in compagnia di Waits me la faccio molto volentieri, adesso ancor di più da quando con noi si è aggiunta mia figlia Elena. Frank was renamed Frank O'Brien (Big Time video) and transformed a despondent and penniless accordian player with very Waitsian qualities. Swordfishtrombones” is the first album (the albums title comes from a song on that), the second is the classic “Rain Dogs”. See, by running a small theatre, if I want a blue light and an oversized cocktail glass and a red clock and a midget in a wet-suit, I can have it without having to send out, tuba, trombone, banjo, accordian, electric stick and an emcee with a pencil-thin mustache and a Mexican accent. FRANKS WILD YEARS Un Operachi Romantico In Two Acts Frank's Wild Years is Tom Waits' own version of the Prodigal Son, a tale of a zero with a dream of making it big, living the lush life along the way.While Rain Dogs and Swordfishtrombones are exquisite examples of a vivacity so ferocious that one feels that the albums that contain them can barely keep them from bursting forth and laying siege to all in their wake, Franks Wild Years is a more focused outing. Eich (Steppenwolf's managing director, 1986): " It wasn't as dramatic as some people would like to make it out to be. Subtitled "Un Operachi Romantico in Two Acts", the album contains songs written by Waits and collaborators (mainly his wife,?