Small Change

This Tom Waits album is from 1976. It's his fourth, and again he has evolved just a bit. With more than half of the album about drunkenness and alcohol, Waits has deviated quite a bit in writing style. He is still quite hysterical in Step Right Up, but now there are mournfully slow songs like Bad Liver and a Broken Heart. The music itself is much more depressed, with lower notes and slower speeds on many songs, but diversely more laughable lyrics on others.

An excerpt from Small Change's-
Pasties And A G-String

Strip tease, prick tease, car keys blues
And the porno floor show, live nude girls,
Dreamy and creamy and brunette curls
Chesty morgan and watermelon rose
Raise my rent and take off all your clothes
With trench coats, magazines, a bottle full of rum,
Shes so good, to make a dead man come

8👍 5👎

Chee-Who-A-Who-A

A way of pronouncing Chihuahua, reserved for the Chihuahuas owned by fat people, body builders, and gay men.

"Looky there at the Chee-Who-A-Who-A and it's owner...

...I've never seen a person waddle so much like a penguin."

...I've never seen such a big guy and a small dog."

...I've never seen such a bright shirt in public before."

6👍 1👎

Real Gone

The sixteenth album by "self proclaimed junk-man," Tom Waits, released in 2004. With fifteen full length tracks, and a hidden one, it's a beautiful seventy minutes. The music on the album seems to be a cross between waitsian and mechanical. Metropolitan Glide is one of the odd ones here, it's quite grainy and loud. Dead and Lovely is a sad story of a girl dying because she lied about who she was. Another great is How's It Gonna End, about murder, lies and gossip. Waits is darker than ever, and still just as beautiful.

An excerpt from Real Gone's-
Don't Go Into That Barn

Black cellophane sky at midnite
Big blue moon with three gold rings
I called Champion to the window
And I pointed up above the trees
That's where I heard my name in a scream
Coming from the woods, out there
I let my dog run off the chain
I locked my door real good with a chair

5👍 11👎

Closing Time

Closing Time was Tom Waits' debut album, from 1973. It held twelve beautiful tracks, and lasted a great forty-five minutes. Some highlights from the album are Ol' 55, Ice Cream Man, and Grapefruit Moon. The music relies heavily on Waits' exceptional piano-playing skills, and his vocals.

An excerpt from Closing Time's ninth track-
Ice Cream Man

Clickin' by your house about two forty-five
With a sidewalk Sundae Strawberry Surprise,
I got a cherry popsicle right on time
A big stick, mamma, that'll blow your mind

'Cause I'm your ice cream man,
I'm a one-man band (yeah)
I'm your ice cream man, honny,
I'll be good to you.

11👍 5👎

Sithter

1. A sister so evil she could have been the inspiration for Darth Vader, Count Dooku, or any of the other evil Star Wars people.

It's difficult to use sithter in a sentence....

I did it!

Swordfishtrombones

Album number seven from artist-in-the-shadows, Tom Waits. Released in 1983, it was a forty minute, thirteen track, carnival mad house of wicked instrumentals and monologues. The album's title track is a story of a demented soldier returning home, hell bent on giving a show. The second track, Shore Leave, is a squeaky love ballad from a sailor to the land and his girl.

An excerpt from Swordfishtrombones'
Gin Soaked Boy

I got a belly full of you and that Leavenworth stuff
Now I'm gonna get out and I'm gonna get tough
You been lying to me, how could you crawl so low
With some gin-soaked boy that you don't know

I come home last night full a filth of Old Crow
You said you going to your ma's but where the hell did you go?
You went and slipped out nights, you didn't think that I'd know
With some gin-soaked boy that you don't know

7👍 3👎

Vine

In a sense taken from the music of Tom Waits, a vine is a man's life, and more specifically, his love life.

If one were to listen to the song Another Man's Vine, a song of envy and infidelity, you would hear that a man's lover is a rose on his vine, and when she is unfaithful...Another man picks that rose.

An excerpt from Another Man's Vine,
From the album Blood Money,
By Tom Waits-

"Golden Willie's gone to war
He left his young wife on the shore
Will she be steadfast everyday?
While Golden Willie's far away
Along the way her letters end
She never reads what Willie sends
I see a red rose
I smell a red rose
Red rose blooming
On another man's vine"

158👍 243👎