tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-665713763624541378.post1793976332009514078..comments2023-06-14T07:11:22.757-04:00Comments on Exile on Plain Street: Measures of Waits Part One: "What Becomes of All the Little Boys Who Never Comb Their Hair?"Seth Peaglerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01806292374068671954noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-665713763624541378.post-28439950025661927362011-03-30T13:32:43.239-04:002011-03-30T13:32:43.239-04:00Henry, thanks a lot for reading and offering feedb...Henry, thanks a lot for reading and offering feedback. I'm glad you're enjoying the Waits' posts. I'm just now starting the '80's Waits article, and think I've got an interesting take on those albums. I too, after all, am also a rain dog.Seth Peaglerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01806292374068671954noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-665713763624541378.post-36149315681096787252011-03-30T10:26:03.093-04:002011-03-30T10:26:03.093-04:00I kinda feel like Tom Waits is the kind of guy who...I kinda feel like Tom Waits is the kind of guy who was always an old man at heart. Much like Robert Crumb. You see pictures of Crumb and Waits in their 20's and they're dressed like retirees in Yonkers waiting for a bus to arrive. I suppose much of that comes from being obsessive and observant of the culture of the past. Thinking about what kind of music was flooding through from the airwaves of the early 70’s, Waits’ interest in gin soaked jazz and tinkling piano key melodramatic ballads seems remarkably anachronistic. In a lot of his earlier work I do think that Tom Waits was trying to distill the essence of an age that he was born too late to really participate in. Something that he knew primarily from scratchy records and yellowed magazines. You see the same thing in Dylan, when he was trying so desperately to be Woody Guthrie. That sometimes the songs don’t quite come off is, as you’ve said, because the life experience is not there in his voice yet. He’s a great song writer, one of the best, and he creates a mood and a place and a time so effectively in his stanzas, but once his life experience catches up with his desires, I do think you can hear it in his singing.<br /><br />Small Change is one of my favorite albums of all time. The sweetness of “Can’t Wait to Get off Work” and the bawdiness of “Pasties and a G-String” somehow find a way to synthesize with the further strangeness of straight out carnival barking (“Step Right Up”) and the colorful account of a small timer gunned down in the gutter that gives the album its title. It’s amazing stuff. And while I love Blue Valentine and Closing Time an awful lot, soaked as they are with rainy nights and melancholy, Small Change is the king of my heart so far as the early stuff goes.<br /> <br />Really great article, Seth, I love thinking back to what made me love this man when I first heard his music. Really looking forward to the 80’s: Swordfishtrombones, Frank’s Wild Years and, especially Rain Dogs. For I am a rain dog too.Henry Eudyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04003440480802849915noreply@blogger.com