Tom Waits and the Kronos Quartet: Diamond in Your Mind (2007)

 |   |  <1 min read

Tom Waits and the Kronos Quartet: Diamond in Your Mind (2007)

With a new Tom Waits album Bad As Me due in late October (his first studio album in seven years), it is timely to prime the pump with a little known item From the Vaults.

In 2007 at a concert in New York's Avery Fisher Hal in the Lincoln Centre, Waits and the Kronos Quartet joined a line-up which included Anoushka Shankar, the Gyoto Tantric Choir, Native American flute player R. Carlos Nakai and others to raise funds for the Tibetan Health Initiative.

You can imagine how seriously many took this Tibetan cause, especially given the Dalai Lama was present.

But Waits, in fairly typical fashion, opens with a couple of deflating one-liners and then delivers a song which has its own sense of holiness as you will hear.

This is from the album Healing the Divide. 

For more on-offs or songs with an interesting back-story see From the Vaults.

Share It

Your Comments

Mike Rudge - Oct 3, 2011

Forgive the pun but this is a real Gem. I first became aware of the song on Solomon Burke's great Don't Give Up On Me album and then got Waits' version a few years later as a download. I think I prefer Solomon's version.

However I am looking forward to the new Waits. He is never less than interesting and always challenging (in a good way) listening.

post a comment

More from this section   From the Vaults articles index

Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder: What's That You're Doing? (1982)

Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder: What's That You're Doing? (1982)

The reissue of Paul McCartney albums continued recently with expanded editions of his largely unloved albums from the early Eighties, Tug of War ('82) and Pipes of Peace ('83). At the time they... > Read more

Queens of the Stone Age: Never Say Never (2011)

Queens of the Stone Age: Never Say Never (2011)

Elsewhere always liked the Californian band Romeo Void – who sounded very New York/New Wave in the early Eighties – and especially on their sole hit Never Say Never. It... > Read more

Elsewhere at Elsewhere

THE BARGAIN BUY: Ike and Tina Turner; The Hits Collection

THE BARGAIN BUY: Ike and Tina Turner; The Hits Collection

After her autobiography I, Tina in 1996 in which Tina Turner documented the abuse she suffered at the hands of her husband Ike for decades, few could look at him and think of his music. But --... > Read more

SEDITION AND ALCHEMY: A BIOGRAPHY OF JOHN CALE BY TIM MITCHELL (2005): Opportunity knocked

SEDITION AND ALCHEMY: A BIOGRAPHY OF JOHN CALE BY TIM MITCHELL (2005): Opportunity knocked

John Cale, now 66, was an unlikely candidate for a career in heretical, innovative rock'n'roll. Born in a village in South Wales, he showed prodigy-like musical talent. At 13 he was the viola... > Read more