Today I am wearing my pair of pants that make me look like I have no ass, in honor of having seen
Tom Waits, the king of "pants that make him look like he has no ass," perform last night. Hell yes.
I must say, short of time-traveling back to his early shitty-bar gigs, I can hardly think of a more perfect venue to see Tom Waits perform at than the
Akron Civic Theater, shimmering with gorgeous woodwork, breathtaking architecture, and a ceiling painted to look like the night sky, complete with brilliantly-shining stars. And I think he was in just as much awe, joking that the theater used to be a barber shop back in the day. Heh heh.
For some reason, by the time Sunday rolled around, my excitement about going to see him perform had dissipated a bit--perhaps because it was a long, stressful week and I just couldn't psych myself up for some reason. But once I got there and saw how wall-to-wall packed the place was with people just jumping out of their skin to have the opportunity to finally see him perform, my enthusiasm flipped on like a fire-hose, and I was so excited I thought I might actually explode. I just wanted to keep grabbing people and shouting "Hurray!" every two seconds.
For some reason, the Akron Civic Theater only allowed two tickets per household, so when we purchased the tickets, we had to purchase one solitary one that was sitting off in la-la-land in order for all of us to be able to go. But I was more than happy to sit by myself (and my fellow concert-goers were gracious enough to let me do so), as the seat was a couple handfuls of rows closer to the stage. And blessed be to Jesus, I was surrounded by quiet, undrunk people all night.
The show started late, as always--I never quite understand this when there's no opening band and they pretty much have all day to set up, but whatever. So all by my lonesome self, I people-watched for awhile, listened in on conversations in which I heard that the Atlanta show had sold out in 10 seconds, and got myself more and more excited to see the performance. And after much lengthy anticipation, the white curtains on the stage erupted with light and then each band member's silhouette swallowed up the backdrop for a moment, looming absurdly large as they approached and then dissipating into a normal-sized shadow. And when the silhouette of Tom Waits graced the curtains, his hands out at his sides, fingers cocked in his very Tom Waits-ian way, the place absolutely exploded with excitement. I have never before been to a concert where people were just so completely and unbelievably excited to be there.
He began his set with a very crowd-pleasing rendition of "Make it Rain," making the crowd pretty much writhe in delight with the sheer energy and force of the performance. For about the first 15 minutes of the concert, I just sat there like a big ol' fool, the happiest of grins smeared absurdly across my face--I was just so absolutely pleased to be able to see someone perform whom I'd admired for such a long long time. My cheeks were achey with delight. And he did not disappoint.
I've never seen a performance with such fantastic lighting--perhaps a strange thing to be so enthused about, but we all agreed that at moments, it was just breath-taking, making the performance taking place look like a work of art, a strangely painted canvas. The lighting made the more bizarre songs all the more carnivalesque and the pure and touching songs all the more gorgeous to watch.
Highlights of the show were a strange variety... He played amazing versions of both "Waltzing Matilda" and "A X-mas Card for a Hooker" on the piano, with only him and an accompanying upright bass thunking in at dramatic moments, the piano keys projected very subtly on the curtains behind him. If I were to pick any song of the evening that just floored me and broke my heart, I suspect it would be "A X-mas Card for a Hooker"--I love this song, and his live version was absolutely heartbreaking as well. His very stark version of "Day After Tomorrow" which opened his first encore also broke my heart and was the recipient of many cheers from the crowd in response to its questioning of war.
On less sweet and love-torn fronts, he rocked the stage out with some other fantastic numbers--"Falling Down," "Clap Hands," "Tango Til They're Sore," and a bizarre and crazed version of "God's Away on Business," a song that I don't think I'd paid much attention to on the album but whose cacophonous denouncement of "killers, thieves, and lawyers" made me itchy with delight. Another favorite which surprised me (as the version on the album kind of annoys me--it's one of those "songs" you can't really listen to more than once with any sense of enjoyment) was "What's He Building in There," a spoken-word piece in which his accompanying band squeaked and squawked out a bizarre back-drop for his inquiries about his neighbor and his mysterious activities. Another favorite, which makes me eagerly anticipate his new album,
Orphans: Brawler, Bawlers, and Bastards, was the song "Lost at the Bottom of the World" which was catchy and yet devastating all at the same time.
What I enjoyed most (and had looked forward to the most) about Tom Waits' performance were the more carnivalesque aspects of it--those of you who like his music know that he likes to play in strange ways with his voice. It is all the more amazing to see him do this on stage with absolutely no help from anything other than a pair of cupped hands. Megaphone be damned, the man alone is a sorcerer of cacophonous sound which explodes from his mouth with a strange otherwordliness--often it is hard to believe that the sounds you are hearing are coming out of a human being. He is most definitely a performance-theater kind of guy though--he plays dramatically with his form while singing, he cocks his hands in strange ways, he plays up the bizarre shadows cast across the stage, and in "Eyeball Kid," he pulled out an absurdly large magnifying glass that he held up to his face and sung through. This is the Tom Waits I fell in love with.
Admittedly, there were a few classic songs whose live performance didn't do too much for me, mostly because they were altered so drastically from the originals. "Shore Leave" was strange and beautiful, but the heartbreaking chorus, where Tom Waits' voice normally and suddenly slips away from his gutsy growl into a heartbreaking and strange high-pitched whine of longing was waylaid by a more low-key and undramatic growl. Most disappointing was a version of "Murder in the Red Barn" which had been transformed from a strange and chilling ballad of autumns and murders into a fairly-traditional and relatively uninteresting blues song.
Sadly, I would've also liked more of Tom Waits' infamous stage-banter, but I do realize that given the difference in venue and crowd-size between now and when he used to play dive-bars, that's mostly just wishful thinking. He did try his best though, joking about having visited the blimp museum in Akron and about the divey-hotel he was staying at. But people's incessant need to shout stuff during silent moments (coupled with the fact that I'm sure he was absolutely burnt-out given that it was the last show on the tour) made the witty banter a bit more limited than it would've been at, say, a rowdy but sparsely-populated bar.
His performance wasn't flawless--he forgot or flubbed up lyrics for quite a few songs. But he made good on these flubs, his witty stage banter slipping in to make fun of himself at awkward moments. And good god, given the vast number of songs he's written and given their extremely narrative nature (so many of them tell elaborate stories), the man would have to be a fricking robot to have gotten every one of his lyrics right.
During the course of the night, he played a lot of newer stuff which I'm not quite so familiar with--I'm a pre-
Mule Variations kind of gal, truth be told. And I found myself wishing that I would've heard some more of his classics. But then I had to remind myself, the man's been performing since the dawning of the universe and has gone through many phases in his musical style, and like any performer, he is playing what he's in love with most nowadays, with a few hearkenings back to the good ol' world. So this made me feel better about not having heard some of my favorites.
I still wish he would've played "Going out West" though.
To make up for the few weak spots, however, he busted out for not one but TWO encores, a feat I'd normally hold against a performer since I'm not a fan of the obligatory encore, but we shall forgive him, simply because he is master of the absurd and so it seemed somehow fitting.
Oh, and lest I forget to rub it in, I mean, "mention it," who else did I see in the audience but none other than the Tom Waits of the film-world,
Jim Jarmusch. I was so nerded up about this (along with Tom Waits, he's one of the folks on my list of "Top 10 Famous People I Respect and Adore") that I couldn't control myself and poked the people sitting next to me, so I could blurt out this fact to *someone* who might share in my excitement. Even more charmingly, he didn't have front-row seats--his giant white explosion of hair was looming somewhere about 15 rows back or so throughout the whole show, much to my delight.
The energy of the concert was amazing--you could just cut the absurd adoration for Tom Waits that hovered in the theater with a knife--and even E (who isn't really familiar with Tom Waits at all) admitted afterwards that it was the best concert he's seen.
I feel like I could go on and on gushing here, like I'm not even tapping into a smidgen of how exciting it was to see him live, but this'll have to do. And perhaps if/when I think of more things that excited me about the show, I'll come back here and fill in the blanks.
But let it be known, I can now die a happy woman, having seen the one person in concert I never thought I'd see.
(If you're listening though, God, that wasn't an invitation. Just so we're on the same page.)
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