QUEENS

Queens Of The Stone Age - Another Love Song



Queens Of The Stone Age - Goin' Out West (Tom Waits Cover)


Come on out with that new album already, you shy little badger you.

I love "Another Love Song". But I can't stand that dominatrix chick at the end telling me she might let me crawl back up her pussy. That's actually kind of a swear where I come from. But it's not that. It's the act. It feels fake. Fake in the way 90s divas in films were fake. All pose and glittering prose and inflated ego overdose. And you can't help feeling that if you sneezed on them they'd crawl back up their own pussies in a heartbeat. And you can hear her tongue swirling inside her mouth and, for some reason, in this case, I really don't find it all that sexy. I don't know what it is, but it gives me the creeps, it's like a crustacean crawling up my ear. Fuck off, sweetheart, please.

The second one, on the other hand, now that's something. I was crazy about "Goin' Out West" ever since I heard it in Fight Club. Those lyrics stand out: "I know karate, voodoo too. I'm gonna make myself available to you. I don't need no make up, I got real scars..." oh, I can see the skins peeling off in the wind as the beast is walking into the arena, broken horns, missing an eye, bleeding from everywhere and ready for a fight. I like Tm's version a bit better, though. It's that fucking voice...

TOM

Every now and again I shuffle back to Tom for comfort. I know I've said...well, not bad things, but certainly ignorant things about his latest album, Bad As Me. If you ask me, that was praise in disguise, really. That was my intention, anyway. But he wouldn't care what a crusty bug like me would have to say about his music anyway, so fuck it. I love the man and that's all there is to it.
 I've been listening to Bad As Me some more and it grew on me like weeds on a dead poodle. Can't get rid of this guy when he's reached the bloodstream, he's a hacker and a heckler, barging into your Sunday afternoon of a brain and Monday morning of a heart, growling drunken, heaven & hell verses that just cut through the bone. Some songs sound like seaweeds belly-dancing with the current (Talking At The Same Time), others make you feel like going shitty-shitty-bang-bang, like you're riding some sort of Disney train towards the land of Shattered Hopes and Broken Dreams (Chicago), and I can't even begin to describe how I feel about Bad As Me, the song. Well, the description is in the lyrics themselves: this song is the "blood on the floor, the thunder and the roar" of the album. Not to mention "Satisfied" in which he tips his hat to "Mr. Jagger and Mr Richards", so that put a few curls on my bald head for a while.
Now then, enough talk, let's hear the man.

Tom Waits - Bad As Me


Tom Waits - Chicago



Tom Waits - Satisfied



Tom Waits - Talking At The Same Time



And then there's this, a song I've been long since obsessing over. The song is the mother of all hangovers, I feel hatchets buried in my skull and rusty nails running through my veins and rubber smoke on my tongue when I listen to this one. Every lyric is a spit in my face, you can hear the phlegm sizzling in the back of his throat, and the bass sounds like a beggar tugging at your coat. There's dust and rust all over this one.
"Don't you know there ain't no devil, that's just God when he's drunk" - one of the greatest lyrics of all time. It must be.

Tom Waits - Heartattack And Vine

BAD AS ME

As the great philosopher Gregory House once said, "Anybody can hate humanity after getting shot. Takes a big man to hate it beforehand." I'm not talking about Tom Waits, I'm talking about me because, to paraphrase, anybody can dig great music, but it takes a special kind of man to get bored with it. I mean, it's Tom Waits, okay? he can't really screw up, can he? The man has never put out a bad album. You can prefer some and skip others, but there's really no bad music on any of them.

But I'm special.

I am bored with him being so great and perfect. And, while Bad As Me is a good album, it's not his best. I want him to fuck it up big time, I want to listen to Tom's Nocturama. If he never fucks up, things just get boring. If every album he makes is gonna be above average (by his standards - which means "fucking amazing" for nearly everybody else) and since Tom always sounds like Tom, well then, where's the surprise? Good and better songs will keep on coming, but, since that's become a norm in his case, I kinda feel the need for either extreme: his best or his worst. Something to stand out.This album has maybe three songs that stand out a little: "Chicago", "Raised Right Man" and of course "Bad As Me", which I'm not gonna put up here cause everybody else will. The rest are either Tom Waits leaves-in-the-wind kind of songs or Tom Waits big-throat-bark kind of songs. The instrumentation is what you'd expect: stomping, clapping and the blues, you know the drill. No big experiment here. And maybe it's my fault for always needing one. What's wrong with me, really?

So, yeah sure, I am impressed, but, again, by his standards (and mine) this is a work of average genius.

Tom Waits - Chicago

BAD AS ME

New Tom Waits album  - Bad As Me - due Oct 25.
First single, the title track "Bad As Me". Sounds delicious, just like frozen rats down your throat with a bit of rusty throttle aftertaste.

Tom Waits - Bad As Me
 
And here's Tom pissed off about the whole thing.

Tom Waits & Peter Murphy - Christmas Sucks

Tom. What the fuck can you say about this guy? He's like a howling wet dog, he's fucking brilliant. I don't think there's one Tom Waits song that I can honestly say I don't like. I like him. They don't make them like that anymore, he's got that stylish vagabond thing about him, that Chaplin thing, the scattered gentleman. Who else can mystify you with his ramble like that nowadays?
Anyway, I couldn't really pick some favorites, they all are.

Tom Waits - Lie to me


Tom Waits - Clap Hands


Tom Waits - Better off without a wife