Tom Waits Orphans debuted recently, and I, being the obsessive Tom Waits fan that I am (a promo poster for ldquo;Downtown Train rdquo; hangs over my bed, and I went through a phase where I was dressing like said idol, which, on a girl, is not especially sexy) was frothing to own it. But, like a character on The Heart of Saturday Night, there rsquo;s nothing in my pockets except for small change. Forty-nine bucks is a little out of my price range, Tom.
So, hands shoved deep in the empty pockets of my trousers, I moped my way down to Oneonta rsquo;s Hipster Paradise, Maxwell rsquo;s, hoping to at least catch a listen of Waits rsquo; musical miscreants. Sure enough, the Guy Behind the Counter (who bore an uncanny resemblance to Rick Ocasek, if Rick decided to stop showering for a week or so) had Orphans blaring from the scratchy speakers.
I asked him which one of the three discs (Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards) we were listening to.
We were listening to Brawlers. Good stuff. Generally I tend to stay towards the earlier end of the Tom Waits spectrum (The Heart of Saturday Night gets my pick as the second greatest album ever, lagging only behind The Who rsquo;s immortal Tommy) and end my listening around the Swordfishtrombones era.
I like Alice (which, although released in 2000, is very obviously from earlier recordings) and own Blood Money. Mule Variations is a good borrow-listen-return, but Real Gone was just too hipster-friendly mdash;that is, clanging banging nonsense that every wank-job reading this is shaking his flippy-haired head and saying, ldquo;She doesn rsquo;t know anything about Tom Waits. rdquo; I understand what he rsquo;s trying to do in later albums and it rsquo;s freakin rsquo; awesome how he rsquo;s stretching the bounds of what we consider music, but it rsquo;s just not appealing to me mdash;I feel like Real Gone lacks any sort of truth to it, like it rsquo;s just a manic man rsquo;s ramblings, and simply being crazy as hell doesn rsquo;t make a genius of a man.
ldquo;Dead and Lovely rdquo; is a unique track in the same vein as Alice, but ldquo;Day After Tomorrow rdquo; while a sweet sentiment, sounds like something John Mayer might write on a good day.
I explain this to Hipster Rick, and he disagrees. He would, after all, he works in a head shop and has flippy girl hair.
Waits rsquo; albums are like paintings, and each song blends together to form another aspect of that painting.
We rsquo;re discussing Small Change, a crucial album in the spectrum of my Waits timeline (January 2006, broke as usual, living with a pervert in Brooklyn) but I disagree with his interpretation. The songs that flow together work towards the larger picture, that is, the portrait of a disenchanted and lonely individual seeking solice in whiskey, strippers and strangers, but just as the painting is starting to form, ( ldquo;Tom Traubert rsquo;s Blues rdquo; is one of the purest Waits songs in existence) ldquo;Step Right Up rdquo; jars the listener out of the painting.
It rsquo;s a wonderful song, but it rsquo;s random both melodically and lyrically mdash; cool as hell, but random. The album settles back into ldquo;Jitterbug Boy, rdquo; ldquo;I Wish I was in New Orleans rdquo; and ldquo;The Piano Has Been Drinking rdquo; before another razz-ma-tazz spike-heel paced number, ldquo;Pasties and a G-String, rdquo; this one fitting a little better than ldquo;Step Right Up rdquo; in terms of lyric material, but still jarring the listening from the scope. The pieces that do work as a painting blend together too much, forming a murky soundtrack in gray and brown, without much to discern between them.
I point out The Heart of Saturday Night as a better illustration of the painting theory. Hipster Rick disagrees. He does not like The Heart of Saturday Night.
Musically, however, it fits his argument. Each song on that album blends into the next, not in a monotonous, unending way (as on Coldplay rsquo;s Parachutes) but rather each as a gentle brushstroke, illuminating the world Waits wants us to see-all night diners, truck drivers, weary girlfriends and sympathetic bartenders.
ldquo;I used to listen to your music and think ldquo;Boy, I rsquo;d love to lie nearly dead in the street with that guy rdquo; mdash; Jon Stewart on Tom Waits, 11/28/06
Waits lost much of his charm in expanding the definition of music.
The smirking, down-and-out master of metaphors (among my favorites, ldquo;It rsquo;s colder than a ticket-taker rsquo;s smile at the Ivar theater on a Saturday night rdquo; from Nighthawks at the Diner) We loved him when he was a little drunk, sheepish, his voice raspy but not the stuff of nightmares. Now his music is much darker, twisted growling ramblings, like a carnival barker from hell. And it works mdash;sometimes.
ldquo;Underground rdquo; (Swordfishtrombones) is an outstandingly cool, shivery-weird song that also gets bonus points because it was used in the Ewan McGregor movie Robots, which I saw with my boyfriend, therefore creating a scene of unparalleled happiness. Too much of that, however, and aspirin is needed. It rsquo;s music, yes, but so are little kids smashing wooden blocks together and neither are pleasant to listen to.
Sometime in the eighties we lost the Waits we loved, and loved the Waits who came back, but it rsquo;s the equivalent of seeing your old high school sweetheart ten years later and he rsquo;s still just as charming, but life has changed him so it rsquo;s as though he rsquo;s another person completely different than the boy who pushed you on the swings in Norman, Oklahoma. Like most of my ex-sweethearts who rsquo;ve long since gotten boring, I blame their wives. Kathleen Brennan, I love you because Tom Waits loves you, but you managed to simultaneously save him from becoming a lounge-parody of himself, but you turned him into something only you could love.
It rsquo;s romantic and, like most great romances, it rsquo;s depressing to the rest of us.
Hipster Rick and I finish brawling and I rsquo;ve got to get to work, so I bid both Rick and Waits a goodbye. Outside the mongrel wind gnaws my face and I think about every time I rsquo;d put on a Waits tune, how each song wasn rsquo;t simply an illumination of a moment, but the moment itself.
Whether he rsquo;s crooning or clanging, it is those moments which make his music unparalleled.
That's funny; I was just talking about this subject today with a guy at work when we discovered that we both liked TW, but when I mentioned that I thought that the good stuff started with Swordfishtrombones, and he said that was exactly the opposite of most people's opinion.
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