Tom Waits, Tom Waits and more Tom Waits. That is the essential concoction for the times, the elixir of the minute and moment.
It started at the gym with Rain Dogs, then moved into the car, and then at home. Now, it informs my sleeping thoughts. Frank's Wild Years, Swordfishtrombones, Closing Time... There is an acid cabaret dancing daily within my ears, a stumbling carnival of nearly mistaken insight.
Next up, Heartattack and Vine, then Mule Variations.
The songs feel like short films, floating with woozy misadventure, populated by circus oddities, a laugh in the face of regret, as if performers and stagehands alike are all marching around my mind to the sound of some lost, drugged, fugitive band. The music feels forbidden, illicit.
It's the always out of orbit romanticism that informs and reminds, this crazed sense of irrational hope and desperate faith in so much of his work. It prevents the tunes from lapsing into pure self-pity and self-pathos, most of the time.
When I was young I wanted to be in The Clash. Then later, I thought that maybe The Stones would also be a fun band to have been in. Now, only Tom Waits' band will do. A tour of small, smoky bars. Everybody in the band would be a multi-instrumentalist, so we would swap parts and instruments depending on mood and inspiration; a shadow carnival come to life, dressed and dancing as puppets on string, spilling out into the streets and then the afterward.
A bracing exhaustion, exasperation, the near-perpetual crises of one's best years.
That's my latest dream: to be in Tom Wait's band, at least through winter and well into spring. Beck would eventually recognize my talents and we would do a few albums together, etc.
To clutch desperation and hope in a single hand strumming and picking, stomping on a bass drum pedal in time with a jangly tambourine hat designed by Dr. John. The loaded waltz of an accordion and banjo-eyed jig sending the revelers ever spinning in semi-circles.
Falling James in the Tahoe mud
Stick around to tell us all the tail
Well he fell in love with a Gun Street Girl and
Now he's dancin' in the Birmingham jail,
Dancin' in the Birmingham jail.
Dancin' in the Birmingham jail.
Took a 100 dollars off a slaughterhouse Joe
Brought a bran' new Michigan 20 gauge
Got all liquored up on that road house corn,
Blew a hole in the hood of a yellow corvette
A hole in the hood of a yellow corvette.
He Bought a second hand Nova from a Cuban Chinese
And dyed his hair in the bathroom of Texaco
With a pawnshop radio, quarter past 4
He left Waukegan at the slammin' of the door
He left Waukegan at the slammin' of the door
[Chorus:]
I said John, John he's long gone
Gone to Indiana
'Ain't never coming home
I said John, John he's long gone
Gone to Indiana, he ain't never coming home.
He's sitting in a sycamore in St. John's Wood
Soaking' day old bread in kerosene
He was blue as a robin's egg and brown as a hog
He's stayin' out of circulation till the dogs get tired
Out of circulation till the dogs get tired
Shadow fixed the toilet with an old trombone
He never get up in the mornin' on a Saturday
Sittin' by the Erie with a bull whipped dog
Tellin' everyone he saw
They went thatta way, oh boys
Tellin' everyone he saw, they went thatta way
Now the rain's like gravel on old tin roof
And the Burlinton Northern' pullin' out of the world
With a head full of bourbon and a dream in the straw.
And a Gun Street Girl was the cause of it all.
Gun Street Girl was the cause of it all.
Gun Street Girl was the cause of it all.
Riding in the shadow by the St. Joe Ridge
He heard the click clack tappin' of a blind man's cane
He was pullin' into Baker on New Year's Eve
With one eye on the pistol the other on the door,
One eye on the pistol the other on the door.
Miss Charlotte took her satchel down to Kingfish Row
And the smuggled in a bran' new pair of alligator shoes.
With her fireman's raincoat and her long yellow hair, well
They tied her to a tree with a skinny millionaire,
They tied her to a tree with a skinny millionaire.
[Chorus]
I said John, John he's long gone
Gone to Indiana
Ain't never coming home
I said John, John he's long gone
Gone to Indiana, ain't never coming home.
Bangin' on a table with an old tin cup
Sing I'll never kiss a Gun Street Girl again,
Never kiss a Gun Street Girl again.
I'll never kiss a Gun Street Girl again...
[Repeat chorus]
.
