All Songs Considered

I'm sitting here alone in the office listening to Tom Waits' "Glitter and Doom" tour from this past summer, courtesy of the recording over at NPR's All Songs Considered blog.

This past week I've been listening to the All Songs Considered podcast, hosted by Bob Boilen of All Things Considered. The podcast is great, with weekly episodes covering a wide variety of stuff - a lot of eclectic stuff I would have never heard otherwise. Several of the episodes I've heard recently include the Best Music of 2008, "The 1980s: Were They Really That Bad?", "1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die," from Tom Moon's book of the same name, "Listener Picks for 2008," and "The Year's Overlooked Gems." On the show Boilen, producer Robin Hilton and assorted guests talk about the specific songs they play but they also talk about music itself - metamusical musings that come off occasionally touchy-feely, rarely snobby, and often times quite interesting.

There's also a separate podcast devoted to entire concerts - the All Songs Considered Concert podcast - all for free! Great, great stuff. And a special thanks to Mark Erelli for telling me about it!

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The second song from "Glitter and Doom" is "Down in the Hole," and it is glorious.

Waits is one of those artists whose name I feel like I hear quite a bit but I have had almost no exposure to his music aside from the aforementioned tune's use as the title track to The Wire. But I'm really liking what I've been hearing so far. His voice is like nothing I've ever heard, and his songs are great stories as well as having a really good sound. "Black Market Baby" just came on, which was the song Erelli covered at last week's show.