New Night on earth dvd?

It would seem Amazon.com is preparing for a new release of the Night on Earth dvd.

In the meanwhile, the ,,old version'' of this Jim Jarmusch movie and the soundtrack are still available.

Inspirational source for My blueberry nights

According to a piece in Telegraph Blog , director Wong Kar Wai confided that the Tom Waits song Rain dogs was the main inspiration for the story of hismovie My blueberry nights. I don't know if there is any TW on the actual soundtrack.

Those who understand Portuguese, can find out more about the Waits-influences at Slashfilm.com.

A duet with SSJ

The cover album Southside Johnny is preparing has been mentioned here before a couple of times and now another interesting detail has surfaced in an interview with The Star Ledger: apparently, we have a duet with Tom Waits himself to look forward to.

Q. So La Bamba is the producer?
He's the arranger, and I'm the singer, as they say. And we have a duet with
Tom Waits, too. He and I sing together, which is not what one would call
mellifluous, but it's effective.

Q. What song is that?
,,Walk Away'', a song that he never recorded.

Two new songs

Just a reminder La tigre e la neve was released earlier this month on dvd.

The soundtrack has been available for some time, but I only recently found the tracklist, which holds a pleasant surpise according to Soundtrack Collector: apart from two versions of You can never hold back spring, it lists yet two other Waits/Brennan tracks that are new for me: Sargoni spring Sarongi spring and Wedding song Wedding spring.

UPDATE: I have been told Sarongi spring and Wedding spring are variations of You can never hold back spring.

Healing the divide recording confirmed

As mentioned earlier, ANTI- will be releasing a recording of Tom Waits' performance at the Healing the divide benefit concert (September 21, 2003). An 'offical' confirmation is now up on the record company's website. Amazon.com still has the cd labelled as ,,currently not available'', but the release is scheduled for July 10.

Proceeds from the sales of the CD will benefit Healing the divide, a non-profit organization Richard Gere formed in 2001 in order to aid humanitarian crisis, and its Tibetan Health Initiative, which provides health insurance to Buddhist monks and nuns.

Track listening for Healing the Divide:

1. His Holiness the Dalai Lama (His Holiness the Dalai Lama)
2. Invocation (The Gyoto Tantric Choir)
3. Nivedan (Anoushka Shankar)
4. Peace Chants (Nawang Khechong and R. Carlos Nakai)
5. The Gambia (Phillip Glass and Foday Musa Suso)
6. Way Down in the Hole (Tom Waits and Kronos Quartet w/ Greg Cohen)
7. God's Away on Business (Tom Waits and Kronos Quartet w/ Greg Cohen)
8. Lost in the Harbor (Tom Waits and Kronos Quartet w/ Greg Cohen)
9. Diamond in Your Mind (Tom Waits and Kronos Quartet w/ Greg Cohen)

A Waits quote from the press release: ,,It's a spiritual insurance policy. Hell, at my age, the next group I put together, everyone may be playing a harp. All kidding aside, I owed His Holiness a favor. He did all my papers in school.''

All the world is green in movie trailer

Le scaphandre et le papillon (The diving bell and the butterfly), the new film by Julian Schnabel, premieres today at the Cannes film festival. All the world is green is featured prominently throughout the last half of the trailer for the film.




(thanks to jmj)

Broken clock cabaret on the road

The cabaret-revue of Waits songs Inside A Broken Clock: A Tom Waits Peepshow not only is in its third year of performances at its hometown of Austin, but it is also taking the show on the road for a week-long tour in the Bay Area. The Broken Clock Cabaret as it now is being called, kicks off in Austin, Texas on June 14 and 15 and then travels to Winters, San Francisco, Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa in California. All details on Brokenclockcabaret.com.

The caravan of dreams

A blog that was recently brought to my attention: The caravan of dreams, which features quite a few Waits-related posts.

Music prize nominee

The Shortlist lists Tom Waits as one of the ten finalists for the Shortlist Music Prize, ,,a peer-selected award that recognizes the most creative and adventurous albums of the year''. The ten finalists are:

Band of Horses
Beirut
Bonnie Prince Billy
Cat Power
Girl Talk
Hot Chip
Joanna Newsom
Regina Spektor
Spank Rock
Tom Waits

The winner of this year's Shortlist will be announced in May.

Rolling Stone, in the meanwhile, has Tom Waits at the top of its ,,most underappreciated artists''.

Covers

Bangin' on the table with an old tin cup, a two-disc set of Waits covers by Waitswatcher Pascal Fricke is available for download here.

And other news from coverville;

Eggs & sausage by Ellen Kaye.
Jesus gonna be here by Mark Mulcahy
Drunk on the Moon by Tomas Race and the Swingfellas

La tigre e la neve dvd

The Roberto Benigni movie La tigre e la neve (The tiger and the snow) is to be released on dvd on May 8, according to Dvd Talk.


Tom waits plays a small part in this movie, which also contains the ,,canzione originale'' You can never hold back spring.

Belly of a drunken piano

Stewart D’Arrietta will be performing Belly of a drunken piano, his cabaret celebrating the music of Tom Waits, at the Riverside Theatre in Sydney Australia on May 26.

Signed photographs for sale

Tom Waits has donated two autographed photographs to Farm To Feast, an auction which benefits the Summerfield Waldorf School and Farm. Bidding's open to everyone. The pictures were featured in the Winter 2005 issue of Francis Ford Coppola's literary magazine, Zoetrope All-Story.

Conan performance

I took a break, but I'm back now. I'll start off with an update on the performance on
Late Night with Conan O'Brien which aired on May 4.

Tom Waits performed Lucinda and Ain't Goin' Down to the Well No More.

NBC does not seem to have a clip on line and Youtube has removed a video of the performance ,,due to a to a copyright claim by NBC Universal''. But from time to time snippets do seem to surface, so you might want to try the search function.