Tom Waits and the blood of Jesus

Reading Barney Hoskyns' excellent forthcoming biography of Tom Waits, Lowside of the Road, sent me back to listen once more to Waits' haunting collaboration with the British avant-garde composer Gavin Bryars, on Bryars' piece Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet. For those unfamiliar with the piece, it has its origins in 1971 when Bryars was working on a film about people living rough around the Elephant and Castle, South London, and recorded a fragment o...

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