TOM WAITS FOR NO ONE
A musician’s attempt at understanding Ol’ Raspy and his annoying fans.
For 20 years, I have been punished by inebriated men in questionable hats, the kind who snap their suspenders as they bark jumbled-up Bukowski quotes. They corner me in bars, in stairwells, in dark alleyways under the premise of a cigarette with their annoying (albeit, innocuous) intent. I know what’s coming. But like a child who endures the presence of a clown for the promise of a balloon animal, I hang around just long enough for the payoff:
“Say, you a Tom Waits fan?”
For years and years, my favorite Tom Waits song was the theme track to The Sopranos. I hated it at first, but eventually it grew on me, and nobody could tell me there wasn’t a lyric in there that went “Shave my body.” I was shocked and dismayed to discover that it was not, in fact, a Tom Waits song. That honor belongs to the British band Alabama 3, whose Englishness makes the blues-y romp and Waits-ish vocals even more confounding.