Various Artists

S.W.A.T.: Deep Inside a Cop’s Mind
Amphetamine Reptile

You know something bad is going to go down when you have a convergence of criminal lowlifes such as these inside of a recording studio: Jim Goad (author, Answer Me!, Redneck Manifesto) , Adam Parfrey (author, Apocalypse Culture I & II, Extreme Islam), Nick Bougas (of Celebrities at Their Worst series and Death Scenes fame) Boyd Rice (The King of Noise Music) and the late, great Anton LaVey. What have they done? They recorded an ode to the thin blue line between chaos and even more chaos. They documented the Manichean struggle between good and evil in America’s crumbling cities.

That’s right, folks. This gang, who are no strangers to encounters with the boys and blue, have put out an album dedicated to the fine men and women of the police, almost entirely through the use of of hilariously re-purposed cover songs - usually from the perspective of a jaded or overly alert policeman. It’s funny to hear the staged skit featuring Rice as a young rookie and LaVey as an aging, departing cop, given their real-life relationship within the Church of Satan.

As unappealing as an album by a bunch of authors and cultural shit-disturbers may sound, let me assure you that they are aided and abetted by some of Portland’s finest - in the form of nearly four-fifths of Poison Idea (Jerry A., Pig Champion, Thee Slayer Hippy, Mondo - Sheesh - I hope they had reinforced floors!) and Sam Henry (Wipers, Napalm Beach) on drums.

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Tom Waits

Nighthawks at the Diner
Elektra/Asylum

Nice live in the studio by album by seventies-era singer/songwriter Tom Waits. This is long before Waits became the hoarse, surreal croaker he is now; equal parts Howlin’ Wolf (vocally), Charles Bukowski and Jack Kerouac (lyrically) and Harry Partch (instrumentally). Tom had recorded three critically acclaimed, yet obscure albums for Asylum. His style was that of a beer-soaked piano man or a jazzbo, bebop speaking grifter or even a sensitive guitar playing singer.
Here - backed by a top-notch minimal jazz unit - he spins yarns about long-lost loves, the virtues of single life, eggs and sausage, phantom truck drivers and the goings-on of a fictitious county that would prefigure Garrison Keillor’s schtick by a year or two.
Waits really knows how to engage an audience and his between song banter takes up nearly half of the album. His portrayal of his stage persona and the characters he introduces us to are closer to a tragic, yet beautiful Diane Arbus photograph than Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks , the album’s namesake. After this album Waits became artier and more surreal, fianlly leaving Asylum for Island records where he continued to explore more fertile grounds artistically and lyrically with his wife, playwrite Kathleen Brennan.
This is probably my favorite Tom Waits album from his early career.

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