The genius of Tom Waits never fails to amaze me. Whether he's writing tender, heartfelt love songs, cold rebuffs of unwanted lovers or off-the-wall weird stuff he always gives it everything he has, and it's seldom if ever that you can predict what he's going to say in his lyrics. The music is always pretty much stunning, with him using the oddest and most obscure musical instruments, often arrangements that feel like they should just never work, but do, and how that gravelly, hoarse and often slightly slurred voice can bring out the beauty in one of his many touching ballads is a constant source of wonder to me.
Today I want to look at another three of his works, and as per usual I could take thirty and talk about them, but there aren't that many hours in the day and I also have other stuff to do, so I've agreed to limit myself to three per section. The first one I want to tackle today is from an album that, to be fair, I could do the entire section on. His first really “different” album, after two albums of basic blues and folk/jazz music, 1976's “Small change” was in fact a BIG change: a change in the way Waits wrote, a change in overall themes and a very major change in his lyrics. Albums up to then had concentrated mostly on love songs/ballads or little vignettes, but by and large relatively positive with, to be completely fair and frank, not a whole lot to say. “Small change”, er, changed all that.
Concentrating mostly on the effects of alcoholism, and drawing in themes of disenfranchisement, loneliness, poverty and homelessness, the album is the first to really gather a cast of characters around Waits' songs, and far from having adventures they merely stumble and stagger through life, making do: none of them are heroes, and none of them in fact are anything remarkable. If there's one thing that sticks out and remains with you about the characters you encounter when playing “Small change” for the first time, it's their ordinariness. There but for the grace of god, as they say...
Pasties and a g-string (at the Two O'Clock Club), from “Small change”, 1976 (Asylum)
Carried entirely, and I mean entirely on percussion, this song is really special. When you hear it the first time you keep expecting a guitar, sax, bass or something to join in, but nothing does, and the song takes sparseness and bare-bones to new levels. Against it, Waits sings in perfect time with the drumming --- listen to when he says
“With the trenchcoats, magazines, bottle full of rum” and right at that instant the rimshot (come on: I'm not a drummer! Cymbal, then!) hits in perfect synchonisation: it's a joy to hear.
The song concerns the goings-on at the abovementioned Two-O'Clock Club, a strip joint where bored or dirty old men come to get their rocks off watching the dancers. It's gritty and realistic, sad and pathetic, never really titillating and while Waits never condemns what the guys do there, he similarly does not condone it. Like in most of his songs, Waits does not judge: he's probably done this himself --- well, he's pictured on the album sleeve in the dressing room of a dancer --- so he probably can't take the moral high ground. But then, he doesn't want it. This is not an indictment of strip clubs and their clientele, or a rail against the women who work there, nor is it a plea to see these people --- either class --- as human beings, not just objects. Waits does not care how you view the scene, he just wants to describe it, and uses his, at this point, burgeoning sense of humour in his lyrics, with lines like
”She's so good/ Make a dead man come!” and
”I'm getting harder than Chinese algebra!” In what would be become typical Waits style, the word “algebra” gets run into “brassieres”, making it “algebrassieres”, with a drunken slur that just makes it twice as funny.
Here's the lyric in its entireity anyway. Warning: not for kids!
”Smelling like a brewery, looking like a tramp,
I ain't got a quarter, got a postage stamp.
Been five o'clock shadow boxing all around the town,
Talking with the old man, sleeping on the ground.
Bazanti bootin al zootin al hoot and Al Cohn
Sharing this apartment with a telephone pole
Fishnet stockings, spike-heel shoes,
Strip tease, prick tease, car keys blues;
And the porno floor show, live nude girls,
Dreamy and creamy and brunette curls
Chesty Morgan and Watermelon Rose:
Raise my rent and take off all your clothes.
With trench coats, magazines, a bottle full of rum:
She's so good, make a dead man come!
Pasties and a G-string, beer and a shot
Portland through a shot glass and a Buffalo squeeze.
Wrinkles and Cherry and Twinkie and Pinkie and Fifi live from Gay Paree!
Fanfares, rim shots, back stage, who cares, all this hot burlesque for me.
(scat)
Cleavage! Cleavage! Thighs and hips
From the nape of her neck to her lipstick lips.
Chopped and channeled and lowered and lewd
And the cheater slicks and baby moons.
She's a-hot and ready, creamy and sugared
And the band is awful and so are the tunes.
(scat)
Crawling on her belly, and shaking like jelly,
And I'm getting harder than Chinese algebra – ssieres
And cheers from the (hmm) compendium here.
"Hey sweetheart" they're yelling for more:
Squashing out the cigarette butts on the floor.
I like Shelly, you like Jane:
What was the girl with the snakeskin's name?
And it's an early-bird matinee, come back any day,
Get you a little something that you can't get at home.
Get you a little something that you can't get at home.
It's pasties and a G-string, beer and a shot
Portland through a shot glass and a Buffalo squeeze.
Popcorn, front row, higher than a kite, and all be back tomorrow night,
And all be back tomorrow night.”
Now I want to go a lot further on, to 1992, when Waits came back “out of the wilderness”, so to speak, with his first studio album in five years. The classic “Frank's wild years” was the album that preceded this, so he had a lot to live up to. In typical Waits fashion though, he didn't care, and went about making a totally different album, once again changing his sound, confounding his critics, and astounding and delighting his fans.
Black wings, from “Bone Machine”, 1992 (Asylum)
The song itself is almost a mid-paced ballad, with country and folk themes, but concerns a mysterious stranger, who could be really anyone from the Devil to Death to God, and is similarly shrouded in folklore and innuendo as Nick Cave's unnamed stranger in “Red right hand”. His exploits, real or imagined, true or embellished, are listed by Waits as he sings, his voice almost a mutter for most of the song. He speaks of the stranger killing a man with a guitar string, and riding through dreams on a coach, and at the end he declares that everyone who has ever seen him denies it, or possibly forgets it happened.
”Take an eye for an eye,
Take a tooth for a tooth
Just like they say in the Bible.
Never leave a trace or forget a face
Of any man at the table.
When the moon is a cold chiseled dagger
Sharp enough to draw blood from a stone
He rides through your dreams on a coach and horses
And the fence posts in the moonlight look like bones.
Well they've stopped trying to hold him
With mortar, stone and chain:
He broke out of every prison.
Boots mount the staircase ---
The door is flung back open:
He's not there for he has risen.
He's not there for he has risen.
Well he once killed a man with a guitar string.
He's been seen at the table with kings.
Well he once saved a baby from drowning;
There are those who say beneath his coat there are wings.
Some say they fear him.
Some say they fear him,
Others admire him
Because he steals his promise.
One look in his eye
Everyone denies
Ever having met him.
Ever having met him.
He can turn himself into a stranger.
Well they broke a lot of canes on his hide.
He was born away in a cornfield:
A fever beats in his head just like a drum inside.
Some say they fear him
Others admire him
Because he steals his promise.
One look in his eye
Everyone denies
Ever having met him.
Ever having met him.”
And finally we come to the weirdest of the weird (and with Waits, that's saying something!), a track taken from the album “Mule variations”, and like “Pasties and a g-string” it's essentially a stripped-down track with little music, which centres on Waits' compulsion to find out what his neighbour is up to, there in his house, day after day, night after night. It of course references the middle-class/suburban obsession with anything that might seem odd or out of place, especially anything that might drive property values down. Anyone who is seen to be different, in any way, immediately becomes the target of suspicion and paranoia, and all sorts of ideas are put forward as to what might be going on in that mysterious house.
The idea is given a real veneer of menace, the music weird and spooky, and Waits' ominous theories about what the guy is doing adding weight to what may in all possibility be something quite innocent, but is made dark and disturbing due to its unknown nature. Waits' voice gets increasingly annoyed and intense as he keeps asking the same question, over and over again, frustrated that he can't find out or figure out what's taking place in that house every night. He keeps adding up the “evidence” --- he has
”subscriptions to those magazines” though we're not told what sort of magazines, lending this comment its own dark mystery, and
”There's poison underneath the sink... enough formaledhyde to choke a horse” and the ultimate crime, the one that clinches he must be up to something,
”He has no children of his own”.
The lyric ends on the almost angry and frustrated words that have caused more trouble than most others:
”We have a right to know”.Suburban paranoia at its most intense and naked, and the song ends with a suitably ominous whistle. Genius, with a capital G. Again. Who else could write this stuff?
What's he building? From “Mule Variations”, 1999 (ANTI-)
”What's he building in there?
What the hell is he building in there?
He has subscriptions to those magazines...
He never waves when he goes by!
He's hiding something from the rest of us...
He's all to himself... I think I know why.
He took down the tire swing from the peppertree:
He has no children of his own, you see.
He has no dog and he has no friends and his lawn is dying...
And what about all those packages he sends?
What's he building in there?
With that hook light on the stairs.
What's he building in there?
I'll tell you one thing:
He's not building a playhouse for the children!
What's he building in there?
Now what's that sound from underneath the door?
He's pounding nails into a hardwood floor...
And I swear to god I heard someone moaning low...
And I keep seeing the blue light of a T.V. show...
He has a router and a table saw...
And you won't believe what Mr. Sticha saw!
There's poison underneath the sink of course,
But there's also enough formaldehyde to choke a horse...
What's he building in there?
What the hell is he building in there?
I heard he has an ex-wife in some place
Called Mayors Income, Tennessee
And he used to have a consulting business in Indonesia...
But what is he building in there?
What the hell is building in there?
He has no friends but he gets a lot of mail...
I'll bet he spent a little time in jail...
I heard he was up on the roof last night
Signalling with a flashlight.
And what's that tune he's always whistling?
What's he building in there?
What's he building in there?
We have a right to know... “