I'd love a bite of your sandwich

I'm going to spend many of the next 24 hours driving up to Mount Desert Island, where I'll be housesitting for the next two weeks. I'm told the house is all wired up for the Internet, so I'm bringing the computer with me in order to keep MeTube going. But just in case I can't do a timely update, I'm putting a longish one up here today.

This is an episode of Fishing With John, a very, very deadpan look at fishing in various spots around the world with actor/musician John Lurie and a different guest star every show. Unlike most of these sorts of shows, we get a lot of the dead-air moments. I suspect the show prefers these times to the times they actually catch something.

This show's guest is Tom Waits, so you know we're talking classic. It's a half hour long, in three parts.

A little bit older, a little bit slower

Today's my birthday.



In honor of my reaching 37 on 2/19, I'm posting two clips wholly unrelated to each other and barely related to me. One is of the scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where they talk about systems of government, strictly for :29 to :33.



The other is a cover of the Tom Waits song "2:19." Even though it relates to the time and not the date. Trust me, this is better than all the "February 19" entries.

Cool Yule

There are any number of cool rock musicians who have cool Christmas songs. I'm just going to post a few of my favorites here. You'll note that neither Lennon nor McCartney is represented. That's not an accident.

We'll start with the King, by request - here's "Blue Christmas."



The Ramones kicked out the jams with "Merry Christmas (I Don't Want To Fight Tonight)."



Billy Squier leads perhaps the most joyous rockin' Christmas song, "Christmas is a Time to Say I Love You." I make no apologies for loving this.



The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl combined to immortalize "Fairytale of New York." Check out the Wikipedia entry - it's fascinating stuff.



Finally, the greatest (and not coincidentally the most depressing) of them all, Tom Waits's "Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis," with a few bars of "Silent Night" thrown in for good measure.

Eggs and sausage and birthday cake

This marks the first time, I think, that I've celebrated the same celebrity's birthday more than once. But when it comes to Tom Waits, there's so much gold out there that you can't pass up an opportunity to celebrate it with him. So here he is in 1976, blowing everybody's mind on The Mike Douglas Show.



I have to say, I really appreciated Mike Douglas's handling of this. He doesn't act condescending toward this guy that's clearly on another wavelength, but rather, he does his best to draw him out, and I think he genuinely appreciates him on some level. So score one for the squares.

A cartoony Tom Waits

I never knew this existed, so I can't tell you how excited I was to find this.



"Tom Waits For No One" is an Academy Award winning short (for Scientific & Technical Achievement), with Waits singing "The One That Got Away" from his Small Change album. The footage got rotoscoped and was designed to be one of the first videos to go on the barely fledging MTV. Things led to other things and it never happened, but here it is now. Said it before, say it again - God bless YouTube.

Happy Birthday Tom Waits

57 years ago today, Thomas Alan Waits was born - according to a set of liner notes, in the back of a cab, but I can't confirm that. He went on to a very idiosyncratic career, and God love him for it.

What's unusual about his music is that he took such a hard left turn in midstream. He started out doing the hip nightclub jazzman thing - here's a good example of that from the parody talk show, Fernwood 2Nite, with Martin Mull and Fred Willard.



Then, in the early 80s, he got married, switched labels and turned out some abrasive, yet somehow soulful, music that was wholly different from what he'd done before, but still entirely Tom Waits. Here's his video for the atypically melodic "Downtown Train," made famous by Rod Stewart's inferior cover.



I prefer the earlier phase to the later one, but hey, de gustibus non est disputandum...

Tom Waits Sells Out *snort*

If Michael Jackson wants to work for Pepsi, why doesn't he just get himself a suit and an office in their headquarters and be done with it. -- Tom Waits

He was between labels, he'd just gotten married, and he needed the money. So Tom Waits decided that just this one time, he'd do a voice-over for a commercial.



He also vowed he'd never do it again. To my knowledge, he hasn't - in fact, he's sued and won more than once when companies used soundalikes.

Incidentally, the ad won several awards. So if he's going to slum, it's nice to know he's terrific at it.