on December 19, 1992 at the
Thalia Theatre in Hamburg, the play Alice premiered. All songs were written by Tom Waits. Now 10 years later he has recorded them and released them on the Anti- record label.
1 Alice
2 Everything You Can Think
3 Flowers Grave
4 No One Knows I'm Gone
5 Kommienezuspadt
6 Poor Edward
7 Table Top Joe
8 Lost In The Harbour
9 We're All Mad Here
10 Watch Her Disappear
11 Reeperbahn
12 I'm Still Here
13 Fish & Bird
14 Barcarolle
15 Fawn
"No one puts flowers on a flower's grave."
"Adult songs for children, or children's songs for adults," is how Tom Waits describes Alice. "A maelstrom or fever-dream; a tone poem with torch songs and waltzes... an odyssey in dream logic and nonsense."
"But I must be insane
To go skating on your name
And by tracing it twice
I fell through the ice
Of Alice
There's only Alice"
(from Alice)
Alice is one of the most wonderful of all Waits' creations. While it sounds similar in tone and content to the Black Rider or even Rain Dogs with its familiar ragged voice, ballads and strange and exotic musings, the disk is a new creation - striped down and bare naked.
Alice, was originally done as an avant-garde opera directed by Robert Wilson for Hamburg's Thalia Theater in the winter of 1992. Based loosely on Lewis Carroll's obsession with young Alice Liddell, the girl who inspired his Alice in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass.
Working with his wife and songwriting partner Kathleen Brennan, Waits wrote fifteen songs in the summer of 1992. The Thalia performed "Alice" for eighteen months, with an eclectic orchestra of Waits' design, but Waits didn´t record the music himself for nearly another decade.
"Songs are joining the dream of the listener, and completing a circuit that is really entirely your own," said Waits.
The musicians include:
Dawn Harms, playing the Stroh, a violin affixed with a brass horn.
Matt Brubeck on cello;
Larry Taylor on upright bass;
Bebe Risenfors also on Stroh violin, plus viola, bass clarinet, marimba and clarinet;
Carla Kihlstedt on violin,
Colin Stetson on alto, tenor and baritone saxophone and clarinet;
Ara Anderson on trumpet and baritone horn;
Nic Phelps on French horn and trumpet;
Tom Waits on piano, pump organ, Mellotron and Chamberlain vibes.
"Table Top Joe" features a guest appearance by Stewart Copeland on drums with a piano solo by Bent Clausen.
one other note: this album was recorded back to back and released at the same time as Blood Money