Sitting on a balcony overlooking Owhiro Bay last weekend, Jack and I played with an amazing Tom Waits book (thankyou, Richard Buckley!). We drank gin and tonics, cooked steak and basked in the sun while our friends walked the 100 steps up to the house. We were perched up there like Bhuddas, drink in hand, welcoming our tired pilgrim friends with Maggie Onion Dip flavoured chips and Bloody Marys. Anyway. This is about the book.
Its called Innocent While You Dream and is basically a collection of interviews with Waits, starting from the beginning of his career in the 70s and ending up with some awesome contemporary stuff.
A fun game to play with the book is to open it randomly and read aloud...I think Tom Waits must be the most intelligent man alive, he rambles and plays tricks on you, goes wildly off topic, even invites an interviewer to the dump. I'd totally go. "Sorry I'm late, Tom Wairs wanted me to go to the tip with him"...you'd find the best treasure.
On ladies:
"No, I'm just looking for the right one. I've tried all kinds and nothin' works. I may have to settle for livestock, like my first meaningful experience. Her parents didn't like me so we broke up. She was a small heifer. I'm looking for a woman who owns a liquor store. There's one maniac who sits on my porch every night -- it's like "Play Misty for me." No comic relief there at all; she's a few bricks short of a full load."
An instrument:
"I pick up junk when I find it. I wanna get a thing that I can do a stick sound with like eight sticks mounted on a frame, almost like a pitchfork, only the forks would be wood, and on a spring base, so that when you hit it against the ground you get a flam, a stick flam of eight characters. You get the clack, clack, clack, but you'd be able to do it with just one stick, hitting the stick and hitting the sound of eight sticks. I dunno..."
I think he is totally dreamy.
On a different note: The rains have come, my washing is out!
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