Tom Waits sums up the fierce fascination fans have for all things Waitsian: “If you spill something, they want it.” That’s probably because even Waits’s detritus is cooler than other artists’ best efforts. And it’s part of the raison d’être for his three-CD assemblage, Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards, a career-spanning effort released by Anti- in November. A read between the lines of Bastards helps illuminate what makes Waits tick. In “Children’s Story,” he recites, in his world-weary rasp, “Once upon a time there was a poor child with no father and no mother / and everything was dead / And no one was left in the whole world / Everything was dead / The moon was a piece of rotten wood / The earth was an overturned piss-pot / And he was all alone…” Waits ends the narration with a throaty chuckle. Deadpan, dark, but possessed of a wicked humor, Waits’s arcane appeal incites in journalists a frenzy to invent new adjectives to capture and describe the nearly 40-year, multifaceted career and life of Thomas Alan Waits.
Even when Waits claims he’s telling the truth, he may not be. He’s a master yarn-spinner, a teller of tales tall and small. And though much is made of his persona, it seems the persona and the man have become one. But facts are facts: Waits was born on December 7, 1949 in Pomona, California, grew up near San Diego, and in 1971, signed to Asylum Records. Nineteen records followed from 1973 to 2004 on various labels, garnering, along the way, Grammy Awards, Academy Award nominations, film roles, a wife/collaborator in Kathleen Brennan, three children, and the adoration of a large and very rabid cult of cultural dissidents who elevated Waits to living icon status. As a folk hero, Waits’s name is part of the pantheon of boho coolness populated by such contemporaries, and collaborators, as William S. Burroughs, Robert Wilson, Charles Bukowski and Jim Jarmusch.
If Tom Waits is impossible to categorize, he is certainly easy to like. When he’s relating a story or singing — as opposed to merely answering a question — his voice gets even more resonant, more dramatic, wrapping a deceptively quixotic cocoon around the listener. He uses music biz terms like “added value” with a deadpan irony and understated emphasis, waxes ecstatic on strange and unusual facts about insects, and, as records from Swordfishtrombones to Frank’s Wild Years attest, creates one-of-a-kind aural soundscapes that open a gargoyle-guarded gateway into an alternate universe. For these reasons and many more, Tom Waits is rightfully revered — and sometimes feared.
(Via Stop Smiling Online)
discoholicmusic
jbbartram-illu
theartofmadeline
kianamaiart
blakekathryn
