Welcome to the deep dive. I am I'm so glad you
could join us today because we have a really
unique mission for this exploration. Usually
when you and I sit down to look at our sources,
we're examining a pretty traditional piece of
media, you know, a long form article, maybe a
scientific paper or a published book. Right.
Something with a clear author and a standard
publication history. Exactly. But today we're
doing something entirely different. We are looking
at a musical artifact. Specifically, we're examining
the Wikipedia page for a Tom Waits live album.
It's called Romeo Bleeding, live from Austin.
And it really is a fascinating document to analyze.
We aren't just looking at the music today. We're
looking at the paper trail of this album, the
track list, the typos, the weird release dates,
essentially, the anatomy of a live musical performance.
Yeah. Our mission for this deep dive is to dissect
all these raw facts to figure out exactly what
makes a live album so captivating, especially
when it carries a very unique, somewhat controversial
label attached to it. OK, let's unpack this.
What we have here, according to the source material,
is a 52 minute and three second blues rock recording.
And the Wikipedia page frames it as this incredibly
specific time capsule. It's a snapshot of a single
night of music. But the timeline of how it got
from that night on a stage in Texas to our ears
is full of anomalies. Let's start with the basic
facts, because the math alone is enough to make
you do a double take. It really is. Right. So
this album was released. in the year 2009. It
was put out by two labels listed here, Immortal
and IMC Music LTD, but the actual performance.
That was recorded on December 5th, 1978 in Austin,
Texas. That is a 31 year gap between the night
the music was played and the year it was officially
packaged and sold by these labels. I mean, that
isn't just a delay. That is an entire generation
of musical history passing by while this recording
just sat somewhere in a vault. Exactly. And when
you look at where this sits in the official discography
context, it is incredibly awkward. In terms of
release dates, this 2009 album sits right next
to another 2009 live album called Glitter and
Doom Live. Right. But chronologically. If you
look at the catalog before Romeo Bleeding, The
last listed live album is Big Time from way back
in 1988. Wow. So you have a product released
in 2009 sitting right beside another 2009 release,
but it's capturing a sonic atmosphere from 1978.
It's basically time travel through cataloging.
It is. But I think what's fascinating here is
a single very brief sentence sitting right in
the introductory paragraph of the source text.
And it simply says, quote, this album is not
approved by the artist. Wait, really? It just
says that plain as day? Plain as day. How does
an album get a full commercial release with actual
labels if the artist didn't approve it? It sounds
like buying a bootleg DVD out of the trunk of
someone's car, but somehow it has an official
barcode on it. That is a great comparison, because
it essentially turns this album into a rogue
historical document. Think about what that means
for you as a listener. You're looking at a commercial
release complete with a tracked out set list
and an official Wikipedia entry that exists completely
outside of the artist's sanctioned catalog. Wow.
It wasn't curated by the person who created the
music. He didn't give it his blessing. It was
captured in 1978, held on to for three decades,
and then suddenly released into the wild by a
mortal and IMC music LTD. It completely changes
the context of how we view these 52 minutes of
music. We aren't looking at a carefully curated.
museum exhibit you know we're looking at unedited
evidence of a night in austin that makes it feel
a lot more raw which actually brings us to the
structure of the concert itself Looking at the
track list, this is clearly not your standard
collection of three -minute radio hits played
exactly as they sound on a studio record. Not
at all. The album is largely composed of sprawling
medleys. And just to clarify for everyone listening,
when we say medley here, we aren't talking about
a modern DJ mashup where someone digitally mixes
two completely different tracks together on a
laptop. We're talking about a live band physically
transitioning from one song into another, blurring
the lines between them in real time. Right. It's
a continuous, unbroken performance of multiple...
multiple pieces of music. Here's where it gets
really interesting. I had to read track one twice
when I looked at our notes. The show opens by
pairing the classic American Standard Summertime,
which, as our source notes, was written by George
Gershwin, Ira Gershwin, and Bose Hayward, with
a Tom Waits original called Burma Shave. And
the runtime is just over 11 minutes. Yeah. 11
minutes and 16 seconds just for the opening track.
It is a massive commitment to ask of an audience
right out of the gate. Doesn't a band risk completely
losing the crowd by doing that? I've been to
shows where if the first song isn't a fast, punchy
hit, half the audience goes to the bar. Opening
a set with an 11 -minute medley feels incredibly
risky. It is a huge risk. Yeah. But it shows
an immense amount of artistic confidence. The
best analogy is opening a film with a 10 -minute
slow panning tracking shot before a single character
speaks. Oh, I like that. It sets a very deliberate
slow burn pace. It tells the audience in that
room, settle in. We aren't rushing this. You
are on my time now. Okay, I can see that. You're
forcing the audience to adjust to your frequency
rather than pandering to theirs. Exactly. They
don't let up. We move right into track two, which
pushes seven and a half minutes, specifically
seven minutes and 28 seconds. Here we see another
complex medley. We have two original tracks,
Sacking Back in Town, and I Wish I Was in New
Orleans, woven together with a traditional song
called Ink in a Rain. So he's taking a traditional
folk or blues song and just dropping it right
into the middle of his own modern material. Precisely.
Okay. And this is a foundational practice in
the genre. The album is classified as blues rock.
If you aren't familiar with how that genre operates,
part of the DNA of blues rock is its direct lineage
to traditional American music. Right. It's a
genre built on inheritance. By weaving a traditional
song like Ink It or Rain directly into I Wish
I Was in New Orleans, the artist is anchoring
his original work in that deep historical tradition.
He's demonstrating to the Austin crowd that his
modern stories are cut from the exact same cloth
as the traditional songs that built the genre
in the first place. He's showing his homework.
Bridging the past and the present in a single
continuous breath on stage. Exactly. It's a way
of claiming that musical heritage in real time.
So after establishing that incredibly heavy traditional
tone with two massive medleys, where do they
go next? They pivot to track three, which is
called A Sweet Little Bullet from a Pretty Blue
Gun. Now, this is the first time on the album
we see a track that isn't a medley. It's just
a standalone song. Right. But the runtime is
still pushing eight minutes, seven minutes and
42 seconds, to be exact. Which is incredibly
long for a single song. Standard radio edits
usually hover right around the three minute mark.
Yeah. So just looking at that runtime implies
so much about what must be happening on that
stage. A nearly eight minute standalone song
implies extended live instrumentation. It means
there are probably long improvised solos or maybe
extended spoken word storytelling happening before
or during the song. For sure. It tells you that
the live version of this track is a completely
different living, breathing beast compared to
whatever the studio version might be. It creates
a deeply immersive atmosphere. If you do the
math, you are only three tracks into the album,
and you are already 26 minutes into the performance.
That is a heavy, substantial block of music built
from only three listed track numbers. It is a
marathon. Which brings us to the middle of the
set list. Track four is On the Nickel, running
just over six minutes. Six minutes and 10 seconds.
This seems to act as a crucial bridge in the
performance. It's another substantial heavy track
that carries the weight of the first half of
the show right into the core of the set. Because
immediately after that, we hit track five, the
title track, or well, almost the title track.
Slight discrepancy there, yes. Track five is
Romeo is Bleeding, coming in at four minutes
and 59 seconds. But if you look at the album
title itself, the label dropped the word is.
The album is just called Romeo Bleeding, live
from Austin. It's a small detail, but it speaks
volumes. It really does. It goes right back to
that bootleg DVD analogy. The labels packaging
the album couldn't even get the title of the
anchor track perfectly matched to the album cover.
It just underscores the rogue, unauthorized nature
of the release. It's a telltale sign of a product
assembled by someone on the outside looking in.
It lacks that final coat of polish you'd expect
from an artist -approved release. But moving
past the typos, I think if we connect this to
the bigger picture of what a live performance
can achieve, we have to look at track six. This
is a masterclass in juxtaposition. Oh, without
a doubt. Track six is nearly six minutes of wild
thematic contrast, five minutes and 51 seconds
to be exact. It is a medley that slams together
two incredibly different concepts. It merges
the traditional Christmas carol Silent Night,
which our source notes was composed by Franz
Gruber and Joseph Moore, with a deeply gritty
original track titled Christmas Card from a Hooker
in Minneapolis. Just saying those two titles
in the same sentence feels strange. Why on earth
would an artist pair one of the most serene,
sacred, universally recognized pieces of 19th
century choral music with a narrative song about
a sex worker in the Midwest? Because it forces
the listener to reconcile those two worlds. You
take the pure, unglemmished imagery of Silent
Night and you use it as the introduction to a
song rooted in modern urban struggle. Smashing
those two things together in a single six -minute
performance creates a highly memorable tension.
Yeah. It elevates the gritty original song by
associating it with the sacred, and it grounds
the sacred carol by dragging it into the reality
of a cold Minneapolis street. It's a theatrical,
dramatic choice that you really only find in
live, unrestrained environments where an artist
is willing to take a massive swing. That makes
total sense. It's the kind of creative risk you
take when you're feeding off the energy of a
room, and you want to completely catch the audience
off guard. And that theatricality carries right
over into the final track we have on this document.
It does. Track seven is The Closer, and it's
another massive medley running eight minutes
and 37 seconds. Here, he takes a Broadway standard,
Hey Big Spender, written by Cy Coleman and Dorothy
Fields, and sandwiches it right in the middle
of his original song, Small Change, and its reprise.
From sacred carols to Broadway show tunes, all
filter through a gritty blues rock lens. Yes.
He wraps up this Austin show by turning a famous
Broadway number into part of his own universe.
It shows a complete disregard. for genre boundaries.
Broadway, traditional folk, Christmas carols,
it's all just raw material for the live show.
Absolutely. But looking at all these wild transitions,
it raises a huge logistical question. Who is
actually executing all of this? We're talking
about complex, 11 -minute mashups and seamless
transitions between drastically different genres
of music. You can't just pull that off alone.
Let's look at the personnel list from that December
night in 1978. At the absolute center, acting
as the architect for all this, is Tom Waits.
Handling vocals and piano. Yeah. But to achieve
that specific blues rock sound and to pull off
those massive medleys without the train coming
off the tracks, you need a very specific kind
of backing band. Right. And looking at the list,
it's a remarkably tight group. There are only
four other musicians credited on the page. Let's
break down how they build that sound. First,
you have Herbert Hardesty. The Wikipedia page
lists his contributions as saxophone, trumpet,
and flugelhorn. Okay, quick pause for anyone
who might not know, what exactly does a flugelhorn
bring to the table here? Good question. A flugelhorn
looks very similar to a trumpet, but it has a
much wider conical bore. What that means for
the listener is that it produces a much warmer,
darker, almost melancholic tone compared to the
bright, piercing sound of a trumpet. It is perfect
for the moody, jazz -inflected blues textures
of a Tom Waits set. And what's remarkable is
that... Hardesty is essentially acting as a one
-man horn section. To physically switch between
three different wind and brass instruments over
the course of these long, demanding medleys requires
an incredible amount of versatility and stamina.
A one -man horn section. That's incredible. And
then beneath that, you have the rhythm section
holding the whole massive structure together.
We have Arthur Richardson on a guitar, John Tomasey
on drums, and Greg Cohen on bass guitar. Those
three are the engine room. I'm just trying to
imagine being the bassist or the drummer in that
scenario. You have to perfectly sync up with
the other four individuals on stage to execute
an 11 -minute opening medley that shifts from
a Gershwin standard into a heavy original track.
There's no stopping. There's no resetting to
catch your breath. You have to maintain the groove
while seamlessly transitioning from traditional
folk songs to Broadway hits to sacred Christmas
carols. It requires a level of musical telepathy
among those five guys. It isn't just about knowing
the chords. It's about reading the room, making
eye contact, and understanding exactly when to
push the tempo and when to pull it back. They
are navigating complex, multi -part suites of
music live on stage. It's a high -wire act without
a net, driven by just five people in a room in
Austin. So what does this all mean? Let's take
a step back and look at the whole picture we've
painted from this one encyclopedia page. We have
explored a 52 -minute snapshot of a 1978 concert.
It's driven by a five -piece band, and it is
entirely built on these sprawling, ambitious
medleys of Broadway hits, traditional carols,
folk songs, and original blues rock. portrait
of an artist at work on a stage. Exactly. And
for you listening, this is why an artifact like
this matters. It's a masterclass in synthesis.
It shows how an artist can take wildly different
influences from George Gershwin's Summertime
Jazz to Franz Gruber's 19th Century Carols to
Cy Coleman's Broadway Glitz and melt them all
down into a single, cohesive, uncompromising
live performance. It reminds us that great music
doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's a conversation
with everything that came before it. It truly
is. But as we wrap up our analysis of this document,
we cannot ignore the shadow hanging over it.
We have to return to that crucial single sentence
from the source. This album is not approved by
the artist. This raises an important question,
one that I want to leave you to think about.
I have to admit, talking about how brilliant
this performance is makes me feel a little bit
conflicted knowing it was pushed out by these
labels 31 years later without the artist's approval.
It is a fascinating dilemma. If an album is commercially
released, Packaged, pressed, and sold by labels
like Immortal and IMC Music LTD in 2009. But
it explicitly lacks the approval of the artist
who bled on that stage back in 1978. How should
we, as listeners, value it? Part of me feels
like it's a stolen moment in time. Like it's
a piece of art that was taken without permission,
and maybe it's something we should view with
a bit of skepticism as consumers. That is entirely
valid. But to play devil's advocate... Is it
also a vital, undeniable piece of musical history?
It captures a brilliant night in Austin. Does
that historical record deserve to be heard, studied,
and appreciated by fans, regardless of whether
the creator gave it his blessing over three decades
later? It's the ultimate clash between protecting
an artist's catalog and preserving historical
brilliance for the public. Exactly. It is a complex
space to navigate as a consumer of art, and it's
something every listener has to ponder for themselves
when they encounter a rogue, unapproved masterpiece
like this one. That is a fascinating thought
to leave on. A brilliant performance trapped
in a complicated legacy. Thank you for joining
us as we unpack the paper trail of Romeo Bleeding.
Keep questioning what you listen to and we'll
catch you on the next deep dive.