TOM WILLS PRODUCTIONS: No. 142: The 'WTF' Music

Tom Waits by Tom Wills, January 2012

'Black Wings' by Tom Waits. Is it a song about God or the Devil?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0i3cEdaM6y4

No one at my house likes Tom Waits 'cept me.

Once, maybe, his music was tolerated by those close to me when he placed piano, strings and horns in a bluesy haze behind his gravelly voice. That'd be from 1973 ('Closing Time') to 1982 ('One From The Heart'). Even then, during my college days, my friends thought I was nuts for choosing Waits over Wang Chung.

CLICK on all photos to ENLARGE

Time passed. Things got strange between 1983 ('Swordfishtrombones') and 1993 ('The Black Rider'). Production and sound went from grand and sweeping to minimal and even primitive.
Tom then took six years off to refine his loss of refinement. The results were 'The Mule Variations,' 'Blood Money,' 'Real Gone,' 'Bad as Me' (this year), and more.
His music is the soundtrack to both dreams and nightmares. No one else can make me laugh, cry,cringe and wince at the same moment.
Check 'em out: http://badasme.com/albums/

"He's not the kind of wheel you fall asleep at."

The voice now sounds like a chorus of blenders inside a cement mixer, and those instruments have been replaced by clangs, clanks, found instruments, guitar scratches, unidentifiable noises and layers of crud. You have to listen hard for the piano.
It's the 'WTF' Music at my house.
"WTF are you playing?" "WTF is that?" "WTF?"
And yet somehow they are beautiful.
Songs are here: http://badasme.com/songs/

"I don't need no make up
I got real scars
I got hair on my chest
I look good without a shirt."

ALICE

It's dreamy weather we're on
You wave your crooked wand
Along an icy pond
With a frozen moon
A murder of silhouette crows I saw...
And the tears on my face
And the skates on the pond they spell Alice

I'll disappear in your name
But you must wait for me
Somewhere beneath the sea
There's the wreck of a ship
Your hair is like meadow grass
On the tide And the raindrops on my window
And the ice in my drink
Baby, all that I can think of
Is Alice

Arithmetic Arithmetock
I turn the hands back on the clock
How does the ocean rock the boat
How did the razor find my throat
The only strings that hold me here
Are tangled up around the pier

And so a secret kiss
Brings madness with the bliss
And I will think of this
When I'm dead in my grave
Set me adrift and I'm lost over there
But I must be insane
To go skating on your name
And by tracing it twice
I fell through the ice
Of Alice
There's only Alice

How can you not think these words are beautiful?

FISH AND BIRD

And they heard his tale

Of a world that was so far away
And a song that we'd never heard
A song of a little bird
That fell in love with a whale

He said: You cannot live in the ocean
And she said to him: You never can live in the sky
But the ocean is filled with tears
And the sea turns into a mirror
And there's a whale in the moon when it's clear
And a bird on the tide

Please don't cry
Let me dry
Your eyes

So tell me that you will wait for me
Hold me in your arms
I promise we never will part
I'll never sail back to the time
But I'll always pretend you're mine
Though I know that we both must part
You can live in my heart

Wow. I mean, really.

Plus, he's funny:

"All the donuts have names that sound like prostitutes."
"The sky turned black and bruised and we had months of heavy rain."
"Come down off the cross, we could use the wood."
"I know a girl, she been married so many times, she got rice marks all over her face."
"She was sharp as a razor and soft as a prayer."
"I stay in a place called 'Rooms'... There's a whole chain of them."
"I've lost my equilibrium, my car keys and my pride."
"She just goes clank and boom and steam."
"God's away on business."

Loads more here: http://badasme.com/wit/

Tom Waits by Anton Corbijn. Strong contrasts.

Bringing you back to the drawing first requires a nod to a book.
My pencil work is drawn from one of the amazing photos from a lengthy collaboration between Waits and photographer Anton Corbijn. Here's a link to the book, "Waits/Corbijn -- Photographs 1977-2010." http://www.antilabelblog.com/?p=3797

I was tempted to stop right here, with just the blacks and whites.

The drawing, like Corbijn's black and white photo, also is a study in contrasts: Facial hair, creases, stubble, denim and stripes --all added in stages. There is so much detail that I asked myself 'WTF' about an hour after I'd begun.
America, it's good to say 'WTF' every once in a while. We should do it more. It'll test you and those nearby. Keeps everyone on their toes.
And, it's a good time for Tom Waits, of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, who had his highest debut ever with 'Bad As Me.'
Seems I am not alone.
Good as that!