WXPN's 885 Greatest Songs From Movies And TV, #8: Tom Waits and Crystal Gayle - Picking Up After You (From The Movie One From The Heart) (1982)
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Today's post is about a song that is probably the most obscure piece of music on
my entire top ten list. Anyone who puts it on their ballot deserves a huge round of applause because it's a
marvelous, moody, blues-fueled, jazz vocal song.
More than four years ago I wrote about a virtually unknown soundtrack album
from a long-forgotten, 1982 movie that I have never seen. The music to One From The Heart was composed entirely by Tom Waits with country star Crystal Gayle as a featured guest vocalist on six tracks. The sessions were produced by Bones Howe.
The celebrated Francis Ford Coppola directed the picturestarring Frederic Forrest, Teri Garr, Raúl Juliá, Nastassja Kinski, Lainie Kazan and Harry Dean Stanton.
Bloggerhythms' post about the complete soundtrack included a brief
discussion on the flick's title track that Waits sang as a duet with Gayle. So, for #8 on my list of greatest songs from movies and TV I'm simply going
to lift my own words about "Picking Up after You" from the original post.
The song makes "the listener believe they're in a seedy, underground, smoke filled
bar with a trying-to-smile Humphrey Bogart downing a whiskey with a
woman he both loves and loathes at the same time."
"Gayle proved she is a surprisingly effective jazz singer. "Picking
Up After You" is one of the best duets to ever come from such an
unlikely pairing. No, let me correct that. The song ranks up there
as one of the all-time great duets by any anyone, anywhere, anytime,
any genre. It includes a wonderful, soulful trumpet solo from Jack
Sheldon who also stars on several other tracks."
In my humble opinion this is the best music Waits ever made. I don't think anyone could
have written lyrics like these except for him.
"Here comes the bride
And there goes the groom
Looks like a hurricane
Went thru this room
Smells like a poolhall
Where's my other shoe
And I'm sick and tired of pickin' up after you
Looks like you spent the night in a trench
And tell me,
How long have you been combing your hair with a wrench
Have you ever heard of a long-forgotten vinyl format, the 16 2/3 RPM record? They were half the speed of the 33 1/3 RPM albums that were the traditional standard for recorded music. Most record players in the 1950s and 1960s came with a speed setting to play these vinyl anomalies that were considered novelties even during the years they were available. Because most, but not all, 16s had big holes and were 7" in diameter many of them were mistaken for 45 RPMs and at that size the speed allowed for up to 20 minutes of playing time per side. However, there was no true standard size and they were also manufactured to be 9, 10, or 12 inches in diameter, and these larger records played even longer. Just like the other speeds and formats 16s could be played one record at a time or stacked on a changer for continuous play. Radio stations often used the discs for pre-recorded radio shows containing interviews, dramas, and documentaries. More frequently t...
Today we're going to find out why 45 RPM records have much larger holes than 78s and 33s. Believe it or not I often wondered about this burning question when I was collecting hundreds of these little seven inch gems back the 1960s. According to several websites, including Answerbag , the reason for the large hole used by 45s was simple. It was difficult for the old 78s, with their smaller holes, to find their way onto jukebox spindles. The large hole effectively eliminated that problem. Strangely, seven inch 45s were often pressed with the smaller holes used for LPs in many countries outside the United States, especially in the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. Overseas the inserts (commonly know as spiders) were manufactured into the large holes at the factories but they could be punched out if desired. The Beatles' British single of "Love Me Do," pictured here, is a typical example. Why were the spiders built into English 45s? I was unable to fi...
I recently paid a visit to a blog that I read regularly published by my British cyber-buddy, Martin Warminger. At his site, Music Obsessive , he just listed what are, in his opinion, the worst Beatles songs of all time . It's an idea I wanted to steal, and I could come up with a short but bad list, but for the sake of originality I decided to do something different instead. So, here's a list of ten songs by my all-time favorite band that deserve a better place in the annals of Beatles history. Most of them are only known by their hardcore fans. Here they are in chronological order. You can listen to a few of the rarer ones below. 1. I'll Be On My Way The only known recorded version of this very early, 1963, Lennon-McCartney ditty appears on Live at The BBC . The Beatles never put it on vinyl. Yes, it's simplistic and the lyrics even have the audacity to rhyme the word "moon" with "June." However, the song has one of those undeniably catch...
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