Tom Waits Week: Some Say He Once Killed A Man With A Guitar String
31 May, 2008 in fnord, music, Tom Waits Week
I don’t love Tom Waits, per se. I love an era of Tom Waits’ career. I love from Rain Dogs through Bone Machine. This particular swath of Tom’s career really speaks to the addict in me. The Irish. This song is from Bone Machine.
One look in his eye, and everyone denies ever having met him.
This song is pure Storyteller mythology. Tom is a pure genius. I will say that. I don’t like his barfly music of the 70′s, nor his clip/clip megaphone noise of latter day material, but that’s my problem, not his. Tom Waits is the hood ornament of the pink Caddy that Elvis drove out of Hell on Halloween night. You don’t have to like his voice. Listen to the flow of words, the rhythm, the cadence. Listen to the goddamn words themselves. He tells a story without once revealing who the subject is. Those wings of which he speaks… are they feathery or leathery?
I got so sick of Tom Waits–while I was still married, my husband played him ad nauseam for about a year and a half. I do, however, like some of Tom Waits’s stuff–don’t know if I could point to a particular era. He has some really funny stuff, like “Step Right Up”, and “The Piano Has Been Drinking.” He was a favorite in Jim Jarmusch films– as an actor, and his music was used in the soundtracks here and there (I’m thinking specifically of “Down By Law”, which is an amazing film). I prefer to associate him with that than with my ex-husband.
He is a pretty amazing storyteller, though I agree with you that some of his schmaltzy lounge-singer piano stuff can be a bit much. He was a bit edgier in the era that you describe.