Tell me about Tom Waits

[Dr. Furface]

i have tried waits so many times, but the "i'm just a lonesome hobo, sat at the bar, singing da blues" thing just irritates me.

TBF he did that all that stuff a looong time ago. However, he did it brilliantly. And, ironically, you're next statement supports the view that he did it rather convincingly...

he came from a really comfortable middle class background but to listen to him you'd think he'd traveled the 'ol carnivals, going from town to town.

And btw, his parents were only schoolteachers, not lawyers or advertising execs or - like Joe Strummer's dad - bloody diplomats!

 

[billy_bob]

If a posh friend of mine started pretending his was from that old dust bowl, playing da blues before hitching that lonesome freight train outta here with the waitress from some dime store diner...id cringe. I do the same with waits. I think its that he chooses the same twee Americana cliches again and again when clearly hes just another middle class intellectual creative (nothing wrong with that).

I know what you mean, and I get that that's what puts some people off him, but it depends what you mean by 'pretending', I suppose. No one complains about what a fraud De Niro is for pretending to be a mobster in Goodfellas when he isn't really one.

 

[BigMoaner]

I need to keep trying him, I do admit. Maybe it will click. Also, my own horrifying, soul destroying (almost more so for my family), battle with th booze (now thankfully a decade sober) makes me flinch a little when I get a sense that someone is romantacising for profit the "lonesome bar fly" thing.

 

[BigMoaner]

I'm no waits fan but loved this. One of my fav pieces of TV ever

 

[billy_bob]

I need to keep trying him, I do admit. Maybe it will click. Also, my own horrifying, soul destroying (almost more so for my family), battle with th booze (now thankfully a decade sober) makes me flinch a little when I get a sense that someone is romantacising for profit the "lonesome bar fly" thing.

Tbf I think Waits himself went through a fairly similar epiphany about that, a good 30 years ago now. He's been sober about that long and none of his music since at least Swordfishtrombones could really be said to romanticise alcoholism.

 

[billy_bob]

To add - when I say 'similar' obviously I don't mean to claim to know what you've been through. Just referring to the realisation that the liquor-soaked troubadour thing is kind of bullshit.

 

[ouchmonkey]

If anyone can clearly lay out why a 45 odd year career making music is somehow a bunch of bullshit just because his parents were teachers I'd be curious to hear a convincing explanation. I will however be requiring full disclosure of your own parentage and their occupations before I assess your arguments.

 

[billy_bob]

If anyone can clearly lay out why a 45 odd year career making music is somehow a bunch of bullshit just because his parents were teachers I'd be curious to hear a convincing explanation. I will however be requiring full disclosure of your own parentage and their occupations before I assess your arguments.

I think the logic is he should only be singing about how it was a bit tough growing up because his parents often had marking to do in the evenings and didn't give him loads of attention, but on the plus side they could make up for it during the holidays because they were off work too. And they were pretty good at helping him with his own homework.

Anything else would be inauthentic.

This logic also demands that pop artists who write about falling in love etc. should stop doing so if they settle down and get married, and start writing about things like how annoying it is when someone puts the knife straight into the jar of marmalade, leaving bits of butter in it.

 

[bimble]

This is true. Also, only aliens should be allowed to write science fiction.

 

[BigMoaner]

i wonder if he's out there somewhere, fixing to ride that ol freight train with that doe eyed waitress from the all night diner.

 

[bimble]

He is, along with that fraudster Zimmerman, son of respectable shopkeepers .

 

[billy_bob]

And apparently George Clinton isn't from outer space at all.