At 1:11 AM -0800 1/15/04, skip heller wrote:
Actually, Ribot's maiden voyage didn;t function well at the time of its release. Nobody liked it all that much. I worked in a record store when it came out, and the people who were excited that it came out were soon enough the people who were not thrilled to have sat thru it. Ribot's reputation was really made off those three Waits albums, and SPIKE. Little wonder such a huge reputation was made. The live version of "16 Shells" fr BIG TIME still delivers.
I was still at the college radio station when Rootless Cosmopolitans came out, and I played the crap out of it! It seemed like the record that totally summed up the NY Downtown scene of the time, I loved it then and still do. Don Byron's playing on it was a revelation, I think it was the first place I heard him, it was definitely the first place I really took notice of him. His clarinet on Mood Indigo completely destroys me.