I’ve been listening to a whole load of TW albums today at work for the first time in a while, and I find that I am as stunned now as I was decades ago when I first heard this stuff. In fact I’ve been stunned every time since then.
I’ve tried to convert my colleagues, but they are just baffled. They ask me what’s so good about it, and I grope uselessly for a place to start. How do I explain?
Waits is the personification of that Monks quote someone on C&F (I forget who) uses in their sig, about how talking about music is like dancing about architecture.
Ok, random, awestruck (awestricken?) ramble over. Sorry about that.
I remember hearing something by him a long time ago and really feeling, oh I don’t know, affected, I guess. Is there a CD you would recommend for someone who hasn’t listened to him before?
I have an album called “Stay Awake!”, in which various musicians cover classic Disney songs. It sounds like it’d be schmaltzy, but it’s not.
Anyway, Tom Waits does a rendition of “Hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to work we go” that he sings as if it were performed by real miners, complete with distant industrial noise and grating metal, etc. Spooky. You can picture a bunch of dwarves who all look like a grizzled and bent Tom Waits chanting a slow-motion “Hi-ho” as they lug heavy sacks through dark tunnels . . .
(Los Lobos’ version of “I Wanna Be Like You” is fun, too. An eclectic mix of performers on other tunes: Sun Ra, Buster Poindexter, Bill Frissel, Syd Straw, Ken Nordine, Suzanne Vega, and so on.)
This is a collection of his earlier work and it is stunning.
He uses a lot of American slang and imagery in his work which, for a simple Irish boy like me,is where this little device came in very handy.
That Burma Shave had me and the boys back in Dublin baffled for years
Thanks, dubh. I 'll order that one. I actually really like having the words to songs when the words are important. I often seem to have trouble making out exactly what someone is singing. Actually, most of those references and slang I have not heard before. I’d say the Burma Shave signs are one of the few I would have gotten. This looks like it’s gonna turn into a whole project in itself . Thanks again!
there’s a blur drizzle down the plateglass
as a neon swizzle stick stirrin up the sultry night air
and a yellow biscuit of a buttery cue ball moon
rollin’ maverick across an obsidian sky
I don’t wish to derail the thread, but I have a somewhat similar feeling about Leonard Cohen. It is very weird that his Hallelujah song is popping up on tv and in various covers.
Waits is “gifted” if you will, with a vocal delivery that shakes people in deep places. I have never studied his lyrics to know whether its profundity throughout tho. For some reason, big city intellectuals go nuts for Waits… but it has often felt like they were somehow slumming or buying street cred to so worship. Haven’t listened enough to really know what is up with him.
Whatever happened to Leon Redbone. Another man with a unique delivery. Sorta like RCrumb without the cartoons..
From the same song: Using parking meters as walking sticks. . .
Tom Waits is kind of like Richard Thompson – hard to categorize, singing about the underclass – only taken many steps further. I heard an interview with a group called Popcorn Behavior a few years ago, and one of the kids in that group summed up Waits thusly: He makes beautiful music from ugly parts.
That’s exactly why his beauty is so hard to describe – the music is often dissonant, and, well, you can tell he smoked five packs of Old Golds a day for many years. His lyrics are often disturbing, depressing, and occasional meaningless, but beautiful. He can convey a tune without your being able to identify a tune. But there are few whose songs can affect me the way his do.
He can tell a story without any verbs. Take this song:
Soldier’s Things Lyrics:
Davenports and kettle drums
And swallow tail coats
Table cloths and patent leather shoes
Bathing suits and bowling balls
And clarinets and rings
And all this radio really
Needs is a fuse
A tinker, a tailor
A soldier’s things
His rifle, his boots full of rocks
And this one is for bravery
And this one is for me
And everything’s a dollar
In this box
Cuff links and hub caps
Trophies and paperbacks
It’s good transportation
But the brakes aren’t so hot
Neck tie and boxing gloves
This jackknife is rusted
You can pound that dent out
On the hood
A tinker, a tailor
A soldier’s things
His rifle, his boots full of rocks
Oh and this one is for bravery
And this one is for me
And everything’s a dollar
In this box
Absolutely nothing happens, but the combination of the words, the tune, and his singing just convey a whole story to me.
Cynth, I’d recommend The Heart of Saturday Night as a good starting point. It’s one of his more accessible, and the title song is one of those that just pierces my heart every time I hear it.
#1 on my top three most brilliant songwriters of all time list – and he once dated #2.
As an intro, I often recommend “Closing Time” – his first album. That’s more traditional/less scary for many, and after “Martha” brings a tear to your eye, “Grapefruit Moon” will break your heart.
Then it’s on to fun stuff like “What’s he building in there?”
But everything he does is genius. Freaking genuis.
All the best from the land where
‘no one speaks English and everything’s broken’,
TW is great…
anyone heared Solas’ version of Georgia Lee?(I think that’s the name of the TW song they do, but I might be wrong…just checked the CD out from the library instead of buying it)
I don’t currently have any CD’s but I do have a few songs that Dub kindly shared. He’s amazing.