A few months ago, I got this concert as a free download from All Songs Considered (you can get if for yourself right here), and after listening to it exactly once I forget about it for a while. My initial reaction to the concert was a mixture of elation and disappointment: elated that I had more music from Tom Waits (a two-and-a-half hour concert, people!), but disappointed that the quality of his voice had deteriorated so much in the last five years. I have a 2004 concert where he utilizes every range and tonal variety of his (admittedly raspy) voice, and as I listened to the Atlanta concert it seemed like every song was performed in his deepest, most gravelly profundo, and I felt that not all of the songs were given their full due with the bronchial treatment they received. It was still a great show, but it left me a little melancholy.HOWEVER! Last week, I learned that they were releasing a live album of his Glitter and Doom Tour, and it made me want to go back and listen to the concert again to see if I would want to purchase the album or not. Jump ahead to this week, where I am currently (and by "currently" I mean "as I am typing this") listening to the concert for the seventh time. It has now become my favorite Tom Waits album (I know it's a podcast, but I'm calling it an album. So there.) I think my initial reaction is what most people experience when a favorite artist--be it musician, writer, director, whatever-- comes out with something new, which is to compare it to the things they made before. This gets tricky a live concert, since you will have a connection to the album version of the songs you are going to hear. (This is even trickier with Tom Waits, since he never plays a song the same way twice, and if he does three nights of shows in a city, each night will have a radically different set list from the other two.)
As I listened to the concert for the second time, I realized that there was much more vocal variety that I had thought the first time around, and the songs that got the Chest Cold In Hell voice were actually enriched by the depth and darkness, rather than cheated. (For example, the album version of "Dirt In The Ground" is done is a high, raspy whine, while this live version is deep and resonating. At first I lamented the change, but now I find it incredibly moving.) The more I listen to this concert, the more I love it. 
And then there are the songs themselves: 26 songs, taken from 11 of his 19 albums. It's not often that you get a concert this long, but for Tom Waits it seems to be the rule, rather than the exception. There is not a single performance here that fails to move you in one direction or another, and this version of "Get Behind The Mule" is officially my favorite recording of that tune. When the CD comes out next month, it will have 17 tracks taken from various cities, and there are only four or five overlaps from this concert (which means, in essence, that I will have two utterly different concerts from the same tour. Kick ass.) I wholeheartedly recommend that you download this concert RIGHT NOW, although I will say that if you are just getting into Tom Waits you might want to wait a while to listen to this one, as I think it is best appreciated after you are familiar with the bulk of his material. (That's just my opinion, it should in no way stop you from getting the concert and listening to it 24 hours a day for the next month and a half.)Well, in the time it took me to write this, the concert has ended and I've been sitting in silence for the last five minutes. Anyone care to guess what I'm going to put on?
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