The 200th issue of British music magazine MOJO has been on the stands for a few weeks now, and it is a classic. It is the July issue and the MOJO Website is already featuring the August issue, so better move fast. To celebrate the mag's 200th issue, Tom Waits was invited to guest edit the issue which he does with style and grace. His interview with Hank Williams III, his music picks and faves, and other wry and interesting comments and musings, along with dispatching Joe Henry to interview legend Harry Belafonte, make really interesting and fun reading.
And, if that isn't enough, Tom has programmed the audio CD,which is a regular and delightful feature of MOJO magazine. Tom's picks on this exclusive CD include some amazing roots classics -- Son House ("John the Revelator"), Big Mama Thornton, Ray Charles, Cliff Edwards, The Prisonaires, Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, Tennessee Ernie Ford ("Sixteen Tons"), William Seward Burroughs, Jr. (performing a classic rendition, auf Deutsch, of "Falling in Love Again"), Paul Robeson, among others, and last but not least, even personally ringing up the artist to arrange for inclusion of Bob Dylan's "I Was Young When I Left Home." The CD alone, in all of its roots and rock glory, personally selected by Tom Waits, is worth the cover price. Get it before it's gone, gone, gone.
Thomas Alan "Tom" Waits
Tom Waits web here
Mojo here
--Brooklyn Beat