Tom Waits – Live, Edinburgh Playhouse, Sunday 27th July 2008
What a rubbish gig this wa… ah-haha! No it wasn’t, it was fucking brilliant, of course it was. I’ve seen Tom Waits once before, almost by accident, in about 1999 in the Orpheum Theatre in Boston and he was inspired. Songs like The Earth Died Screaming lurched and howled around you as if they’d been summoned from the very depths of hell, and when he then sat down to play a little more whimsically and romantically on the piano by himself the contrast was unnerving. Genius, it was. Consequently when he played London about five years ago, having missed out on a ticket by legitimate means, I stared at a £450 Buy It Now button on eBay for nearly an hour a day for the whole week preceding the gig, knowing I couldn’t afford it and nevertheless thinking that maybe, just maybe, I might somehow get away with it.
Fortunately, for once in my life I showed a modicum of restraint and am hence not bankrupt as I type this, but fuck me there was no way I was missing out on this chance even if I had to wrestle a kingpin from the international trade in black market internal organs to get a ticket.
There’s something surreal about sitting in a gig like this, the attendance at which is to all intents and purposes an act of pilgrimage. It means you aren’t just sitting and enjoying the music, it means you are basking in the occasion – it’s a Tom fucking Waits show. Tom Waits! We were so excited that all the other people vaguely affiliated with this website who went along – Martin from The Savings & Loan, funnyguytom, (Quiet) Jon, Scott from Uhersky Brod and his girlfriend Clare, Euan from The Kays Lavelle and Trampoline, and his wife Pamela, my friends Morgan (who took these amazing pictures, naughty boy that he is) and Alan, my Dad and myself (and this was just Sunday: half of Broken Records, Mrs. Toad and Mother Toad, a couple of guys from work and a few others are going tonight) – played the Tom Waits challenge. We all wrote down fifteen songs we thought might be on the setlist, chipped in a pound, and the winner took the pot. Given Waits’ prodigious back catalogue the winner could well have had only a handful of songs right, but as it was Quiet Jon took the honours with a very respectable seven. So it wasn’t just a gig, this was a rare moment for hushed and awestruck reverence. He could have come and played Nintendo on stage for an hour and a half and I think we’d probably still have absolutely loved it.
I’ve heard talk recently of the latest Tom Waits tour being the grown up one – the one where he finally shelved the manic spasms and simply performed his best songs with panache and verve and stopped acting the fool. This wasn’t far from the truth last night, judging by that one performance. The meandering clarinet variation on Cemetary Polka, the gorgeous restraint of Invitation to the Blues, the manageable eccentricity of songs like Jesus Gonna Be Here and I’ll Shoot the Moon – it all highlights the fact that he is no longer throwing down a direct gauntlet to his audience, and possibly to himself, by pushing the bounds of what counts as music to breaking point. He has done this in the past – just think back to the madness of the Big Time movie, or listen to a few live bootlegs.
So what kind of a set was this then? It was a brilliant one where the deft and well-practised mid-song digressions were masterfully delivered. Where the re-workings of the old classics were so well done that you caught yourself wondering whether they shouldn’t perhaps always have been that way. For the most part things were delivered straight up by an incredibly tight, pretty trimmed down band, and the musicianship on display was truly superb – two saxophones at once? What?
If I were to pick on one small point though, it would be this: I kind of missed the real peaks of madness he has treated us to in the past – the antisocially eccentric clashes, squawks, shrieks, crashes and whistles that make people listen to albums like Bone Machine and visibly recoil, asking themselves what the fuck that cacophony is supposed to be. Some of the songs on the setlist were some of his more feral, and it would have been nice to see him attack these like a man possessed, like he has in the past. But, you know, that’s a churlish complaint, really, for a man in his sixties who can deliver as amazing a night as the one we just enjoyed. It was a beautifully arranged journey through the work of the man I consider to be pretty much the all-time pinnacle of the musical profession.
Sitting there as the hall sang along to Innocent When You Dream was a magical moment. Him ending his show with All the World is Green – a song I will forever associate with those heady days at the beginning of my relationship with Mrs. Toad, when I was so giddy with excitement I could hardly see straight – was a magical experience. Listening to him digress into discussion of obscure laws that still exist in certain places (“It’s illegal to get a fish drunk. They’ve ruined everything.”) was phenomenal. Watching him stamp and lurch his way through Raindogs and Cemetary Polka was amazing. Watching him snarl his way through Falling Down, reclaiming it from that scrotum-shrivellingly dismal vanity project of Scarlett Johansson’s, was triumphant. Hang Down Your Head was just breathtakingly gorgeous.
I think I need a sit down and a long glass of water. I may not regain composure for weeks. The elated gloating may not subside for months.
Here’s the setlist, lifted from this blog, with download links to the ones I guessed right.
Lucinda/Ain’t Goin’ Down to the Well
Rain Dogs
Falling Down
On the Other Side of the World
I’ll Shoot the Moon
Cemetery Polka
Get Behind the Mule
Cold Call Ground
Circus / Table Top Joe
Jesus Gonna be Here
Picture in a Frame
Invitation to the Blues
House Where Nobody Lives
Innocent When You Dream
Lie to Me
Hoist That Rag
Bottom of the World
Hang Down Your Head
Green Grass
Way Down in the Hole
Dirt in the Ground
Make it Rain
(I was doing miserably badly at this point, but fortunately I aced the encore, to restore just a little dignity.)
Goin’ Out West
All the World is Green
I was reading his official site and it appears that lots of his fans are pissed off that he didn’t play any gigs in England or Scandinavia. I wanted to see him on the US leg of this tour but the closest gig was in Columbus, Ohio. Columbus fucking Ohio? I live near DC for fuck sake, but no DC show, no Baltimore show, no Philadelphia show. Not even a New York show. Of course, if I lived in Columbus I’m sure I’d feel forever grateful. Was he consciously playing cities he hadn’t played in a while? Or places off the beaten path? I hear he hadn’t played Scotland since 1987 or something?
Yes, apparently, C&B. I read that the cities he played/is playing are ones he’s not played before or for bloody years.
You think it’s bad not being able to see him in DC? Try living near his own home in Northern California, and not seeing him He only play that god awful Bridge School Benefit. OK, it’s not so bad, but I’m not paying $60, to see a 30 minute set of his. Please Tom, play SF. Please!
For poor C&B (and me) who could not travel a few hundred miles for TW, NPR will be sharing the Atlanta show on their website: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92916923.
Based on the photos your friend took, that venue is beautiful! But huge! My god, I don’t think we’ve got a theater that elegant in Los Angeles.
How’s his “Hoist that Rag” growl live?
The guitar riff was the best thing about Hoist That Rag, if you ask me. But the growl in general was in fine form. Maybe a bit hard on the people who don’t know every word off by heart though, but my Mum and Mrs. Toad still really enjoyed it, which was a relief considering the price they had to pay for tickets.
Teenidol, that’s an excellent link, thanks very much.
C&B – I think he just doesn’t like foreign touring very much. It’s probably easier now his whole family are in his band, but I don’t think he really enjoys carting around – hence two or three shows at every stop.
The man got a standing ovation at the Edinburgh Playhouse because people thought he was about to come on stage … and then another one 15 minutes later when he actually did.
I think he knows only too well that he can play wherever the f*ck he pleases and I’d imagine that’s just what he’s done.
PS> Anyone know if he’s actually recorded that soul-powered, funked-up version of Jesus Gonna be Here ?
So far not that I’m aware of – you may have to check bootlegs and the like.
We at NPR are exclusively webcasting and podcasting a concert from Tom Waits’ Glitter and Doom tour. The show was recorded July 5 at the historic Fox Theater in Atlanta, GA. Here’s the link to the page to stream the show:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92916923
And you can download the show via our All Songs Considered Live in Concert podcast, here:
http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_detail.php?siteId=15842121
Enjoy!
NPR Music
I saw the gig at the playhouse on Sunday and it was awesome, despite the anti touting measures it was well worth it and since the master is 56, I doubt if I will get the privilege to see him live again in the UK. The best thing about the whole evening? Listening to his two sons play beautifully throughout the evening and his eldest son playing the drums looks like his father back in the late 70′s…..Im sure that his sons will take after him and carry the music for future generations and I was surprised at the range of ages of people attending young and old alike were there to what I would call ‘Glitter and doom- a celebration of Tom waits and his music’ …Roll on the next time he’s in Scotland or wherever and if you are reading this Tom, thanks for taking the effort to come to Scotland and giving us the privilege of listening to you
Just back in England after seeing the first Dublin show last night. Echo all the sentiments above: worth the crappy delayed Ryanair flights; worth hunting for a taxi at midnight in the rain; worth our taxi driver having NFI where our hotel was; worth four hours sleep to repeat painful travelling in reverse straight back to work… For the voice, the music, the energy, the manic staggering around to Singapore, for the sound of rain drumming gently on the tent listening to Tom whisper “stand beneath a rainy sky” in Green Grass, the surreptitious doing up of the fly during the encore (or so my partner swears), for the reworked Dirt in the Ground that sent the same shivers up my spine as it did when first heard Bone Machine (Tom who?) fifteen years ago…
Brilliant.
He’d have got a standing ovation from me for every song he did (on Monday night), but I didn’t want to upset the people behind me! What impressed (and surprised) me was how MUSICAL the whole thing was, and how soft Tom’s voice can still be at times. Absolutely awesome show.
Even the missus came back loving it, would you believe. Not only that but she said that although the piano ballads were lovely and really easy to like, she almost preferred it when he went mental and started lurching around. Good lass!
I was there Sunday night as well, I have been excited for the whole time since buying the ticket having been a fan for nearly thirty years and not once getting to see him live for various reasons. I was in awe sitting there waiting, perched up in the gallery. I knew it was going to be good but he surpassed all my expectations. I LOVE his raucous stuff, the opening was superb, the merging of the two songs, the reinterpretation of a lot of his new material. The whole show was just incredible, I will never forget it. Getting pissed off at reading moany commnets on other sites about his set. Great to come and read this. I told the friend I’d coerced into coming my six degrees from Tom story, it was two degrees back in 88, as I spoke to Jim Jarmsuch on the phone once when I was employed looking after Joe Strummers kids one summer as the “nanny”, but I never had the nerve to ask Joe to ask Jim about Tom ! Incidently energy wise Tom reminded me very much of Joe, putting his whole heart and soul into the gig. No pretentious ego stroking crap. I am still smiling. Thanks for a great personal review and the link to pics. Thank you Tom and co for Edinburgh.
I was at the Monday night (which was very jolly indeed- well worth the twenty year wait!)
I must say I think your chums photos are fantastic- is there any way that I could get a copy of them so that in years to come I can gather the grand-children around the fireside and bore the crap out of them with stories of what real music sounded like and how great it was
Did anybody else notice Edinburgh was being filmed?
A night beyond words,
Cheers Tim.