{"product_id":"song-noir-tom-waits-and-the-spirit-of-los-angeles-9781789146639","title":"Song Noir: Tom Waits and the Spirit of Los Angeles","description":"\u003cb\u003eA gritty, smoke-filled, and boozy account of musician Tom Waits's formative decade in Los Angeles.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eSong Noir\u003c\/i\u003e examines the formative first decade of Tom Waits's career, when he lived, wrote, and recorded nine albums in Los Angeles: from his soft, folk-inflected debut, \u003ci\u003eClosing Time\u003c\/i\u003e in 1973, to the abrasive, surreal S\u003ci\u003ewordfishtrombones\u003c\/i\u003e in 1983. Starting his songwriting career in the seventies, Waits absorbed Los Angeles's wealth of cultural influences. Combining the spoken idioms of writers like Kerouac and Bukowski with jazz-blues rhythms, he explored the city's literary and film noir traditions to create hallucinatory dreamscapes. Waits mined a rich seam of the city's low-life locations and characters, letting the place feed his dark imagination. Mixing the domestic with the mythic, Waits turned quotidian, autobiographical details into something more disturbing and emblematic, a vision of Los Angeles as the warped, narcotic heart of his nocturnal explorations.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAlex Harvey\u003c\/b\u003e is a producer and director of programs including \u003ci\u003ePanorama \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eThe Late Show \u003c\/i\u003efor the BBC. His films include \u003ci\u003eThe Lives of Animals\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eEnter the Jungle\u003c\/i\u003e. Based in Los Angeles, he regularly writes on literature, film, and music for the \u003ci\u003eLondon Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Reaktion Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50644709474578,"sku":"9781789146639","price":16.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_99f15c28-68de-4840-9afe-4dbd4884d2b3.jpg?v=1733122602","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/song-noir-tom-waits-and-the-spirit-of-los-angeles-9781789146639","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}