Wednesday, June 09, 2010

Serengeti Month: Post Two: Experimental Musicians - Tom Waits, Serengeti & Rock

Serengeti is like the Tom Waits of the 21st Century. They both make incomparable and experimental music; and rarely will you hear either of their musical creations outside of independent radio stations. Tom Waits has seen recent success, playing the Devil in the Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, but he has produced a canon of 30 years of amazing music. One of many VHS tapes left behind in the rush to convert to DVD is Waits's spectacle performance: Big Time. Good luck finding Big Time on DVD at Blockbuster, but most of the material is from the album Frank's Wild Years, and you can find the entire concert on youtube:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_E--kl3CdU]
 
Serengeti's career reminds me of a scene, from Jim Jarmusch's film Coffee and Cigarettes, where Tom Waits and Iggy Pop meet for a coffee at Tom Waits's local coffee shop. Iggy says, "I didn't notice any of your songs on the jukebox" (4:40). Even though Tom Waits is popular in the restaurant, he's not popular enough to have one of his records on the jukebox:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6Mw6b1T50U&feature=related]

Combined, Serengeti and Waits have made the most interesting music in the last forty years, but enough about Tom Waits: he deserves his own month. Trying to define one of Geti's album is tough because you can't contextualize an album's theme with just one song. Comparing one album to another is even more difficult, because each has it's own concept, but to unfold this month chronologically here is a song from Serengeti's first album, Dirty Flamingo, Ms. Nipple Queen:  

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ImlpdfoXU8&feature=related]


Serengeti's second album, Gasoline Rainbows, featured a full rock band, and has held a permanent slot in my portable music device since sometime in 2005. It's real rock and roll, but like Waits' music, it's too real for T.V. or radio play. Here are two songs from Gasoline Rainbows:

Margot:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXXHPVcIZb0]

Rich:

 

To be continued...


P.S. There are three more songs from Gasoline Rainbow available from Synthesis Magazine's Serengeti Appriciation Week: http://synthesis.net/2007/05/21/serengeti-appreciation-week-day-one/

 

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