Tom Waits, Edinburgh Playhouse
It’s Sunday night, so it must be Tom Waits in Edinburgh. A scrum at the Playhouse doors as passports are checked, a hum of excitement, a few London faces quietly resenting being made to travel all this way to see the man who last played here 21 years ago. All good.
He comes on late in a cloud of dust and leaves in a shower of glitter. The two and a half hours in between are truly captivating. Not once did the eye fly to the wrist, which in my experience is extraordinary. It’s so rare to see someone take complete stewardship of a stage. He twirls around the microphone stand like some cartoon cliché of an Indian rain dance, he stretches his fingers out to the crowd like some corny magician, he plays ringmaster and preacher, he goofs around with lightbulbs and hats. All the time, every second, he knows precisely what he is doing.
A Waits show is so far removed from the standard rites of rock performance that there is little to compare it with. Really, it’s theatre, and never ever less than utterly gripping. Waits is the mesmeric lead but his band of supporting players are absolutely sensational: they can do anything, from the tiniest feather stroke to the filthiest racket.
What did he play? Stompers, bawlers, lullabies, testimonials and skits. Thoughts about ‘fishcakes’ and ‘pigs in satin’ drift into the air. Jesus Gonna Be Here made the earth shake. I’ll Shoot The Moon was a five minute masterclass in theatre, mime, stand up and Vegas lounge act. Half way through he sat down at the piano and dusted off Invitation To The Blues and Innocent When You Dream, playing it straight and sentimental. He might not have played all your favourites but not for one second would you have noticed. Afterwards, the consensus was that it was a much more varied set than the he was playing on his last UK visit in 2004, with a balanced scattering of old and new. And even then, oldies like Raindogs were battered into fresh new shapes.
So what are you left with afterwards? Firstly, that stagecraft isn’t a matter of splashing the cash on the latest technology: all it takes is a few bags of glitter, some big boots and a floorful of talc, a boxing bell, a few megaphones and the odd bare lightbulb, all glued together by an overactive, feverishly smart imagination. If the whole thing cost more than $100 I’d be surprised.
Secondly, that people who come to live shows expecting to hear a list of their favourite songs will always be disappointed, and deservedly so.
Above all, that Waits works very hard to make it look like he’s just invited us to drop in on him, that he does this all the time and tonight we just happen to be here. But look at the back of his grey suit as he scuttles off stage, fingers twinkling behind him. It’s black with sweat, soaked through the layers. No wonder he doesn’t do this very often.
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I really..
wanted to see him in Dublin, but tickets were gone in minutes and they cost 131 euro! Only 40 euro in Italy though!
Cool
I'm going to the Phoenix Park on Thursday night, really looking forward to it and yes humphreym, the tickets cost a bloody fortune but then my rationale was, he doesn't come around every week.
That's true..
and I would have paid the money except I got there too late! I saw him in Dublin in 1986(?) and it was amazing. I just want to know why the Italians get him for 40 quid?!
Carty you jammy get
We need a blow by blow, here or on the blog.
What's the bugger got against Liverpool and Manchester, I ask?
Soooooooooooooooo
.....jealous.
When the hell is a concert DVD coming out?
...and when is "Big Time" finally going to come out on DVD?
Surely someone
at The Word Bunker can make some enquiries, what with their connections???
I bet he does a Rage Against the Machine and L Cohen
and refuses to have his live show recorded in any shape or form for this tour.
I bet he didn't have a video wall like Big Len though
Cheapskate.
Barcelona
Saw him there and it was fantastic.very pricey at 125 euros.
LOUDspeaker -Didn't know that info. Shoot! must destroy my Mini-disc of the show then.
What's He Doing In There?
Bet he was worth the wait. Nice review, would have love to have gone. Excellent bar next to the playhouse as well.
I was in Edinburgh last night too
and the performance was just extraordinary. However many Euros you need to find, find them. I was lucky enough to see him at Hammersmith four years ago and thought I had seen the best show I would ever see, but this time the selection of songs and performance were far superior.
As for recordings of the tour, I read somewhere that the Atlanta show is being broadcast on NPR some time this week.
And I presume you mean the bar next door but one to the Playhouse though, not the horrific 80s throwback bar next door. The mirrored walls made me feel as if I was in the opening scene of "Man With The Golden Gun". Or do you mean the one advetrtising a "Camp as Christmas" night with a large number of transsexual Santas outside?
Transsexual Santas
Fantastic. How Waitsian can you get?
It says..
on the NPR site that the concert will be available at 12 a.m. ET, which I think is 5 hours later for us? I wonder will they podcast it? Here's the link http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92916923
Waits in Edinburgh.....and DVD
I was in Edinburgh last night as well! I reckon it was the greatest gig I have ever seen in all of my life! Absolutely awsome!!!
Anyhoo, regarding the dvd.... We werent allowed to take photo's or anything (in fact I was caught by one of the ushers and threatened with 'camera loss' if I was seen taking any more!) BUT...., where I was seated I could clearly see a video camera recording every minute of the gig. After scanning across the room I saw another one on the other side! Both opperated by official looking people with 'access all areas' passes around their necks! (for anyone at the gig who didn't see them... they were in the private boxes either side of the stage)......anyway, could this be the secret makings of a live DVD? I for one most certainly hope so! And while we are on the verge of perhaps starting a DVD rhumor, I heard one that said this is Tom Waits last ever visit over to Europe! Could this be true??
P.S.. Thank you for listening to the ramblings and spelling mistakes of a man just home after 7 hours driving from Edinburgh!
Hard to credit, I know...
...but there was a time, around about 1980, when the world had lost interest in Tom Waits. Those of us who adored the Bones Howe-produced records of his Hollywood years were not growing in number and he hadn't yet had the Island records fairy dust sprinkled on him and become acceptable to the broadsheet scribblers. There he was, stranded.
It was round about this time that Mike Appleton invited him to record an in-concert for the BBC. I was there. It was recorded at the old BBC TV Theatre on Shepherd's Bush Green in a cityscape made up of leaning lamp posts and Top Cat trash cans.
Two elements made it an event that could never be repeated. The first was the fact that he smoked throughout. His filter tip was a prop. The second was that the studio audience, made up largely of over-50s from various improving civic societies in the south of England, had been dealt a bad hand by the BBC ticket unit. They asked for "Wogan" and in its stead they got one of Tom's nocturnal emissions.
Even now there must be elderly people looking at their lawns while auditing their lives and thinking 'did that *really* happen?'
And can you illuminate us as to the facts
about the time Ian Hislop and Tom Waits met.....Mr Hislop tried to be funny I understand..
"I'll plug it in my own damned way": Waits 1 Hislop 0
Jump to 6 minutes in for Waits + smug humorist "with a cue ball head":
aah great thanks
I did try to dig around for this and failed. Mr Hislop, as ever, the smug basket....I can almost see the same halo he carries around with him today
Lovely bit of writing
Thanks, Graeme, you lucky so-and-so
The NPR concert....
is now available in podcast form! You can subscribe to the 'NPR: Live Concerts from All Songs Considered Podcast' which can be found at http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_detail.php?siteId=15842121.
Live DVD & Big Time
Waits records his gigs for his own purposes. Much as many of us would like to see a DVD from this tour I don't think it is likely to happen.
The DVD release of Big Time would be nice too but that is not likely to happen anytime soon either. Seems to be a problem about working out who owns the rights etc. The director Chris Blum does have his own copy of the film which he shows from time to time. You can read a bit more about Big Time here:
http://pop.pressdemocrat.com/default.asp?item=2188506
I saw the Edinburgh and Dublin shows. Well worth the trip.