Tom Waits: Hang On St. Christopher

I am currently enjoying some Glenfiddich and a Whitbread Pale Ale. In a few minutes, I will be on the road (not driving, of course) to Louisville to see Tom Waits at the Palace.

Tom hasn't been around these parts much in twenty years or so. I am very excited. Tom feels the blues in a swampy, carney sort of way. He speaks of all manner of human passions. His poetry is the poetry of Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Joe Strummer. He understands the blues not as a form to be emulated, codified, and turned into pastiche, a heritage industry. Tom Wait's blues are primal and universal, the mystery of a human being confronting his subjectivity in the world.

I don't know how cogent a review I will be able to produce, but I'll try to produce some details.

Here's a classic for ya.

Update: Victorian Voodoo Laterns

One ten ounce plastic traveller flask o' 'Fiddich, one twelve ounce Bluegrass Pale Ale, and two 20 ounce bottled water later...

Reflections...

First off: It was a little weird to see Fourth Street in front of the theater closed, and we were herded into alphabetical lines. The reason, as it was going around the lines, was that the entire show was will call in an attempt to curb scalping. Must have ID and Credit Card. I appreciate the effort, though I have to wonder if there is a more efficient method. Maybe killing scalpers? Or maybe its just the fact that my right testicle now has a flat spot from standing in the 90+ degree heat with the aforementioned flask down my pants? Who knows?

Secondly: The bar service at the palace was atrocious, and I'm not just speaking for the lushes, because the bar was the only place to get any kind of beverage, including water. The Main Floor Bar was packed...ten lines out to the lobby, and in the line we got trapped in, Wavy Gravy was slinging drinks like old people fuck. Worst part...once the show started, the bar service closed, so you had one go and buy up all you could carry...thus the Pale Ale and the two waters.

All Bitching Aside: The Palace is beautiful, ancient and genteel, the kind of place that operas are splendourous, almost otherwordly, the kind of place that in a kind of bizarro world way suited the carney blues opera proceedings tonight, for the music was all of that and much more.

Tom Waits and his elegantly shambolic henchmen went through his eighties and nineties works (mostly) with a sloppy precision that comes only to the seriously (self) possessed. Bathed alternately in stark white lights and blue and red, the effect was starling, with the shadows resembling a seance, and the band a voodoo stereopticon. Woozy, underworldly, primal forest witch doctoring at its most tender and fierce. Contrasted with the stately, somewhat faded theater, I felt I was in some remote past thrown into the future, watching a revival, watching Waits speak in tongues, his own language of God. Disorienting in the truest sense. I was glad I brought my Fiddich, and had some waters, for it allowed me lose myself in this nocturne, with out all the usual rock show lunacy...A nice drink, refilled at will, and the spectacle I slipped into.

It is impossible to overstate the raw power of this event, though Waits doesn't do the Iggy thing: Iggy does, and though they mine the same deep ooze of existence, their trips are different. Power doesn't require amplifiers and devil may care writhing. Putting all on the line isn't about humping Marshalls and stage diving (not to denigrate Iggy for sure). Waits put it all out there tonight, and I feel as though I witnessed something truly wonderous and amazing, something I have not ever seen or felt at a concert: Completely egoless, given over to the man, the music, the moment.

Oh, and to whatever disgusting little sycophant that kept shouting "We Love You, Tom Waits", as if anybody had to be reminded who was on stage: Fuck Off. Respect the ritual, man. Respect the hypnosis. Respect the spell and the spellcaster...

Simply, one of the greatest things I've ever seen, if not the greatest. I am moved and disturbed beyond comprehension.

Here's a shaky audience clip from the Nashville Show.