SOUNDTRACK: TOM WAITS-Small Change (1976).
Half-naked woman on the cover and all (Wikipedia say that this might be Elvira, before she was “Elvira”), this is what people thing of when they think Tom Waits: That gravelly voice is in full form here, with poetic rants and bluesy, drunken musings.
The opening track, “Tom Traubert’s Blues (Four sheets to the wind in Copenhagen)” (I love that many of these titles have parenthetical additions) features the repeated chorus from “waltzing Matilda” which is kind of cheating, but which certainly makes this song potent and memorable. “Step Right Up” is a skit and scat sales pitch for a miracle product. It’s a wonderful piece of snark aimed at hucksters (this actually makes sense given that nearly 40 years later he still hates advertising (according to this interview on NPR)).
“Jitterbug Boy” is a mournful piano ballad. It makes me think of William Kennedy’s Ironweed (of course, Waits was in the film of Ironweed, so maybe that’s got something to do with it). “I Wish I was in New Orleans (In the Ninth Ward)” has a very Louis Armstrong feel to it (I never noticed how close this early style is to Armstrong until I started playing “What a Wonderful World” for my kids (no Tom for them yet). And of course, the Ninth Ward was really devastated by Hurricane Katrina, so maybe they should have used this as their anthem.
“The Piano’s Been Drinking” is forever etched in my mind from Mystery Science Theater 3000–Tom Servo does a wonderful Tom Waits impersonation. Incidentally, Waits himself had been drinking, quite heavily at the time. The track “Pasties and G String” is a scat-fueled description of the lady on the cover, more or less. It’s accompanied by simply drums and a cymbal and is not too dissimilar from “Step Right Up.” “Bad Liver and a Broken Heart” begins and ends with the melody of “As Time Goes By” and ends with a confession to drinking too much.
A song like “The One That Got Away” is Waits rambling around with his poetry in his gravelly, slurry followed by a sultry saxophone. It sets a mood faster than anything I know. Of course, if you don’t want that mood, you won’t want this album.
Of his first four albums, this one is my favorite (just ahead of Closing Time). I’m not a huge fan of his early work, and I don’t listen to it all that often, but it’s a perfect treat when the mood strikes. Waits also was beginning to get into something of a rut. Despite his varied styles per album, all of the albums were beginning to blend a little. There are still some great songs coming, but it would take until Swordfishtrombones before he went really far afield from this comfort zone.
[READ: September 21 2011] “Dog Run Moon”
This is one of those stories that seems so pointless that you can’t stop reading. The good thing is that it was so well-written and engaging that its pointlessness is part of its charm.
As the story opens, Sid is running stark naked through a desert landscape–his feet are bleeding, he is covered in the red dust from the ground and there is a white Spaniel running alongside him.
Essentially, the entire story is that Sid has stolen this dog from Montana Bob and his friend Charlie Chaplin. They caught him and he ran away with the dog through the desert. As I say, it’s kind of pointless because he’s running naked and barefoot and they are chasing him on ATVs–he’s obviously not going to escape. But what makes the story worth reading is the way the plot is irrelevant (except that it tells you a lot about Sid), because it’s really the impetus for his actions that comprises the story. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 