Originally posted: August 04, 2006
Back in 1998 my first job out of college was at an Internet Firm. This was in the middle of the Internet hey day when 22 year olds like me thought they were going to be millionaires, and previously disregarded nerds were getting laid for the first time in history. Well except me, unfortunately. I wasn’t cool enough when cool was cool, and I wasn’t nerdy enough when nerdy was cool. The consummate middle man. Ah, but it’s unimportant. What is important was that at my job a group of developers and I were crammed into a dark room where we’d rock out to music on the stereo while banging out web pages. There was this one guy who worked there. Schoop was his name. This dude was cool. Cool as in cool cool, and cool as in nerdy cool. I mean, he introduced himself to his bosses on his first day as Schoop! And he wore leather pants to work! And got away with both! He was cool, I tell you. He also used to play Tom Waits on the stereo in that web monkey room.
I remember first hearing Tom Waits and thinking, hmmm, this is way more interesting than the CDs that I was going to play when my turn came around. It was so interesting, however, that it was hard to dig right away. A lot like Scotch. I knew I was going to like this strange stuff, but it was going to take some time. And than one song came on – this beautiful simple ditty of a song of Tom just singing softly over a piano. Something about that song punched right down into the deepest part of my brain. It was one of those breakthroughs you have with a particular musician, where you realize that you have just instantaneously become a fan. And every song of the musician will sound better from that point forward. Unfortunately, I neglected to ask what the song was.
Well, a year or so later I got ungraded from the monkey room to a cube with a window, due to my seniority. I’d been there for two years or so, and in those days, that made me the equivalent of the balding fat 20 year company veteran. The one who gets creepy at the company parties. Schoop had left for greener pastures. I decided it was time to check out this Tom Waits guy for myself. After some research, I decided on Raindogs. I popped it into my computer and slapped on my headphones and hit play on that shitty Micrsoft CD Player application. And I discovered what brilliance sounds like. And I discovered why people call music an art form. And I never looked back.
For the next 8 or so years, I’d pick up another Tom Waits album every so often. Sometimes it’d be the newer avant-garde stuff (I don’t know what that means), sometimes it’d be the late-night smokey crooner stuff. No matter what it was, though, it always held more substance than every other non-Waits album I’d bought that year. With every purchase, I’d think about that one slow piano beauty that I heard on that fateful day in the monkey room. Every time I’d wonder if that song that began my journey would greet me when I hit play. I couldn’t remember how it sounded, but was sure that I’d know it when I heard it. I never heard it. Not for almost 8 years. Not after buying just about every Tom Waits studio album that existed.
Except for one. His first one. Closing Time. I bought that a couple months ago. On a whim. And I sat there listening to it on my iPod in my cube of my new job, two companies after that original Internet Firm. And when song 6 began, I heard the most beautiful sound ever. Piano chords. Slow and echoey, almost like a church piano. Those same piano chords that introduced me to the magic of Tom Waits back in that dumb dark room so many years ago. It was my song! It wasn’t familiar, really. It’d been too long. But it was the song. It was absolutely the song, and it was called “Martha”, and it was just as sad and beautiful as I remembered! I’d found it! After 8 years of looking! After 8 years of slowly growing into a bigger and bigger Tom Waits fan. After 8 years of growing more and more fascinated with this crazy genius. I’d found it! It was almost mystical.
And then that week I read in the news that Tom Waits was going to be touring the Southern States for the first time in almost 30 years. And I realized that it wasn’t almost mystical. It was mystical as shit! Man, there was no doubt about it!
Needless to say I was going to do anything to go to that show, and after a treacherously stressful 30 minutes of trying to order the tickets on a buggy ticketmaster.com on a hungover Saturday morning, I had in my possession two passes to Tom Waits Live at the Tabernacle.
Holy crap.
What can I say about that show? Well, first of all, the only form of ticket available was Will Call. So when we arrived an hour or so before, there was a line that seemed to wrapped around 4 or more Atlanta city blocks. And the whole hour we stood there I worried that TicketMaster had somehow found a way to screw up my order and there’d be no tickets waiting for me at the window. And then we waited a good twenty minutes at the bar for a damn Bud and Bud Light. And when we finally made it through the lobby into the stage area, we walked about ten steps before we couldn’t go any further. It was too packed. The Tabernacle had sold every single centimeter of free floor in the place. And I barely had enough arm room to lift my beer to my mouth. And we were positioned right next to the make-shift aisle and were pushed and shoved every two minutes by someone trying to get closer to the stage. And there was some Chris Carrabba-looking son of a bitch in front of me who must have pulled his Famous Stars and Straps belt too tight that morning, for he had a permanent scowl on his face, and glared down at every single person who dared bump into him on the way into the crowd. He almost started two fights in the first fifteen minutes. One with the bouncer who had the audacity to tell him to get out of the aisle, and one with some long-haired gent who dared step past him without, presumably, calling him sir. And it was hot. And it was crowded. And I was sweaty. And I had to stretch my neck out like a turtle and cock it awkwardly to the side to see around the tall dude in front of me. And if I were at any other show, it would have been too much for my impatient panicy nuerotic brain and I would have bailed out by the second song to sit alone in peace at the downstairs bar listening to the bass drums vibrating through the ceiling.
But not that night. Not at that show. Cause when Tom Waits stepped out from behind the curtain, clad in his familar brimmed hat and jacket and walked up to the microphone, and the crowd went absolutely nuts, I understood just how damn lucky I was to be there. To be at the first Atlanta Tom Waits show in almost 30 years.
When the band began the opening chords of “Make it Rain”, and Tom began his shifty groove up there behind that microphone, his shadow projected up over the backdrop and loomed over his fans like some kind of back alley scarecrow god. The arms of this massive shadow apparation streched out to abnormal lengths and the long fingers twitched long and eerie, looking like something from a Tim Burton movie. Or from the CD inlet of Mule Variations. It was freaking awesome.
He followed up “Make It Rain” with “Hoist that Rag,” and the crowd went nuts again. I realized that, with the show selling out in about 30 minutes, everyone in the audience was a fan. A serious fan. Who, like me, had gotten up on a hungover Saturday and clicked refresh on shitty TicketMaster.com until the page read “Tickets available.” And I didn’t think a single one of them was going to be disappointed.
Along with a healthy dose of his newer stuff, he played a smattering of past greats such as “9th & Hennepin” and “Blue Valentine,” as well as “Singapore” and “Heart Attack & Vine” for the double encore. He switched between standing intrument-less behind the microphone, stumming on a guitar, and sitting down in front of the piano. Oh, and he played maracas for one song, too. And never has an almost 60 year old man looked cooler playing maracas.
He came out alone for an encore, just him and his guitar, and played a beautiful rendition of his anti-war ballad, “Day After Tommorow” from Real Gone, and the entire audience stood there in absolute silence, mystified. I tell you, the lyrics were so powerful and sad, as was the energy of thousands of totally engaged fans, that I almost shed a tear. Holy crap. This guy is such a master of words that he could run for president of his homeowner’s association and would somehow end up being voted into President of the World. I’m serious.
He also pleased the crowd with his legendary gravel-voiced wit. When he first spoke, he said something along the lines of, “Well, its been 30 years since I’ve been down here. And I was thinking of you the whole time.” And in regards to the ticket prices (I assume), “Remember what I told you last time I was down here? Save your money.” Later he discussed how he’s been in Atlanta for the last couple of days and remarked on the “statue with half of the butt cut off” (not sure what statue he’s talking about). “I wonder what they did with the rest of that statue?” he asked. “There’s probably a statue down the block that’s just… a butt.”
Also of note, the drummer of the band was his 21 year old son, Casey. Now, how damn cool is that? Can you imagine being that kid? Can you imagine? Shit, at 21 years old you can still get completely hammered at a bar without people calling you a drunk! Oh, to be that kid. Or any 21 year old kid.
Well, that’s about all I’ve got to say. As usual, this review was 90% intro, 10% review, but hey, what do you need? If you’re a Tom Waits fan, then yes, it was as good as you would imagine it would be. The guy is the ultimate in performers, and a living legend. I think I can safely say that everyone in the audience was in awe. And felt the same way that I did – that they were seeing something that they quite possibly will never get a chance to see again, and they were damn lucky to be doing it.
Atlanta had been waiting almost 30 years for a dose of absolute cool, and we got it on Tuesday night.
Thanks Schoop.
