Fridge Funny Heartwarming Main Music TearJerker YMMV main index Narrative
|
 "We all hear our own stories in our favorite songs (that is why Tom Waits sings in werewolf language—you can pretend it is about anything you want!)." —John Hodgman, More Information Than You Require "This is a man who writes songs for the angels and sings them in the voice of Beelzebub. The Carny, the Sideshow, the circus freak show is a world I've always wanted to be in, and that's exactly where Tom Waits is." Describe Tom Waits here.Okay... but how?Well, everyone seems to use the cliched phrases like "whiskey soaked," "gravelly-voiced," "barfly," "hobo," "raconteur troubadour."With that out of the way, Tom Waits is an innovative musician, generally classified as Alternative, but borrowing heavily from European and American folk music, gospel, lounge music, pop, the blues, cabaret, and occasionally country and even rap (he beatboxes on the 2004 album Real Gone, and he appears on N.A.S.A's "Spacious Thoughts").His work can be divided into two periods, his jazzy, lounge singer period, lasting from the '70s to the late '80s, and the reinvented, experimental sound of his "Swordfishtrombones" album on, and his shift to a mysterious, Carnival-and-Sinister-Junkman persona. This shift was caused by his abandonment by Asylum Records and his marriage to his co-songwriter and muse Kathleen Brennan. Brennan introduced him to the music of Captain Beefheart, whose influence can be seen in "Swordfishtrombones" and later albums.He is known for his theatricality, dark and dense lyrical style, and a charming sense of humor - he's one of the few musicians that tend to get long interview sessions on late night talk shows, occasionally getting more laughs than the host. He wrote the scores of four musicals: "Franks Wild Years" [sic], written with Kathleen, and his collaborations with Robert Wilson, "The Black Rider", "Alice," "Woyzeck" (the last being released as Blood Money).He has also acted in several films, notably Coffee and Cigarettes as himself, Mystery Men as a Mad Scientist, Bram Stoker's Dracula as Renfield, and Wristcutters: A Love Story as Kneller, whose dog is missing. He plays Mr. Nick (the Devil) in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, which also happens to be Heath Ledger's last film. His latest role is a bird named Virgil in Rosto A.D.'s Monster Of Nix.In 2011, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, making him either the second (after R.E.M.) or third (depending on if you count The Velvet Underground or Talking Heads) Alternative Rock artist to be inducted.References to Waits were a Running Gag on Mystery Science Theater 3000.Also, for some reason, he's the curator of The Museum Of Everything.He provides examples of:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
0 reviews 
alternative title(s): Tom Waits
Privacy Policy
29