Just like a stranger with the weeds in your heart

[sovay]

Many thanks to muchabstracted, whose knowledge of LJ style overrides has enabled me to self-promote even more shamelessly than usual. (See sidebar. Look, I'm very proud of it.) I've even got a formal bibliography now.

Picked up Tom Waits' Blood Money today: you can't tell from listening that it's music for Woyzeck, but it's fantastic stuff all the same. It's all ramshackle piano and carnival drums, derelict brass and a drunken calliope, and dryly bleak as hell except for the few songs that are so wistful and fragile, you know they'll shatter in the next scene. Bump-and-grind in a hall of mirrors. Shilling for a sideshow while the moon drops out of the sky. I know Woyzeck (or Wozzeck, if you know the Berg opera) is Büchner's, but I'm still reminded of Brecht. If there's one thing you can say about mankind / There's nothing kind about man . . .

And now for some egregious memery, unapologetically stolen from Tim:

Choose a band/artist and answer in song TITLES by that band: Tom Waits
Are you female or male: "Gun Street Girl"
Describe yourself: "Dead and Lovely"
How do some people feel about you: "Little Drop of Poison," "Trouble's Braids," "Another Man's Vine"
How do you feel about yourself: "Everything You Can Think Of Is True"
Describe an ex-girlfriend/boyfriend: "Watch Her Disappear"
Describe your current girlfriend/boyfriend: "Coney Island Baby"
Describe where you want to be: "Anywhere I Lay My Head"
Describe what you want to be: "The Briar and the Rose"
Describe how you live: "Innocent When You Dream"
Describe how you love: "Tango Till They're Sore"
Share a few words of wisdom: "The Piano Has Been Drinking"

(I'd have done this with the Dresden Dolls, but I think they need to put out another album before I can ransack them for musical memes . . .)

Comments

[spectre-general.livejournal.com]

Share a few words of wisdom: "The Piano Has Been Drinking"

Put a Pssst! in front of those words of wisdom and picture a six year old boy in a two year old girl's dress and blonde, curly wig and pink bow saying that.

Really. Do it.

[sovay]

. . . Do I have to?

[thomasfreund.livejournal.com]

Okay, I took in a slightly different direction, but I would like to call your attention to my LJ where I've done this meme with Mozart arias and ensembles.

Run.

[sovay]

Durch Zärtlichkeit und Schmeicheln . . . : )

[gwynnega]

My favorite Tom Waits record is Frank's Wild Years. And yay for self-promotion! :-) I just read your interview that was linked from your journal...very cool!

[sovay]

I don't know anything from Frank's Wild Years other than "Innocent When You Dream," but that was the first Tom Waits song I ever heard (as part of the film Smoke; I thought it sounded like a bunch of drunken Muppets on a carousel) and it's still one of my favorites.

Thank you! I'll have another interview up in a few weeks, so I'll hope you like that as well.

Nice icon, by the way.

[upstart-crow.livejournal.com]

Ohh I'm a waits fan too!

[upstart-crow.livejournal.com]

Also! Blood Money is my favorite of his albums (though Real Gone is up there too -- get this if you don't have it). I agree that it's more Brechtian than anything.

(Side note: I'm doing dramaturgy for Caucasian Chalk Circle)

[sovay]

I need more Tom Waits. The only albums I own are Closing Time, Rain Dogs, and Blood Money (the latter two of which I truly love), and then there's a handful of scattered songs from other albums on my computer. All I've heard from Real Gone is "Dead and Lovely," which I got from oldcharliebrown. Have you any thoughts on Alice? I am very fond of the title track and currently coveting the album in a sort of inchoate way.

[upstart-crow.livejournal.com]

Alice is worth your time. My favorite songs on it are the title track, "Poor Edward" and "Table Top Joe". Invest in Bone Machine as well as Real Gone. And if you liked Blood Money, you'll really love The Black Rider -- a musical he wrote with the author of Naked Lunch.

I'm too lazy to italicize.