great vibes.. check out the album and the track frank's wild years as well... top stuff

a trilogy with franks wild years and rain dogs. its probably my least favourite of the trilogy, which shows how fucking good it is.

also; captain beefheart, doctor john's gris gris record, but then you've probably heard those already

and my favourite of the 3 for a different opinion!

has swordfishtrombones influence all over it.

Waits obviously liked beat stuff, which I'm sure you've got at least a fairly comprehensive knowledge of already.

I'd reccomend you get The black rider. It is the soundtrack to a play he collaborated on with William Burroughs, based on a german fairytale. It's really, REALLY amazing. It's like a big journey across russia where you encounter freaks and magic and circusses. It's got a great combination of all the usual amazing lyricism and ballads and some of his scariest songs.

If you're into the more humourous stuff you should get Nighthawks at the diner, a live album. His band on it is ace and there's a lot of spoken word stuff which shows off what a personality he is.

My favourite of the early jazz croonery ones is asylum years, a compilation of all the early jazz croonery ones. It has amazing "traditional" songs and some of his most romantic like kentucky avenue.

Bone machine is probably my favourite as far as his noisy percussive ones go. It's guitar orientated and brilliant.

finally the 3cd Orphans set which was out last year (year before that?) is amazing and what got me into him at first. Each disc is themed around either ballads, rockier numbers or weird covers and spoken word tracks. He does a daniel johnston cover which is really cool.

Also that movie Big Time is hilarious and brilliant.

phew