Thank God the wizards got that Twitter problem sorted out. Between bouts of bicycle comedy I and a bunch of people I’ve never met have been trading tweets that consist entirely of Tom Waits lyrics. And that’s important, because without Tom Waits, the terrorists win.
So now of course I’m listening to “Bawlers” from “Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards,” right after reading an interesting Q&A with the man himself. To say I’m easily distracted is an understatement on a par with calling Rush Limbaugh a bloated, dope-addled fartsack with the intellect of a crab louse and the morals of a hyena on a gutpile.
The Mombo Club-El Rancho Delux mob saw Waits a couple or three times in his jazzy, bluesy days, when he was cutting albums like “Nighthawks at the Diner,” “Small Change” and “Foreign Affairs.”
The first time was at a most unlikely venue — the Red Rocks Amphitheater, where he filled in for an ailing Dan Fogelberg as the opening act for his Asylum labelmates the Eagles, who had covered his “Ol’ ’55,” from Waits’ first album, “Closing Time.” Waits was on his second or third song before most of the country-hippie stoners in the audience figured out that he wasn’t just another roadie tuning the piano for Glenn Frey.
Another time was at a much smaller venue in the Denver clusterplex, and several of us dressed in our best Waits style, which is to say battered tweed jackets and newsboy caps. I believe we were also wearing shirts, pants and shoes, but I can’t swear to it.
Waits was using a massive, old-style brass cash register as a percussion device during “Step Right Up,” and gin-soaked legend has it that at one point he caught a glimpse of us and muttered, “Who are those guys?”
• Extra Special Bonus Tom Waits: An appearance on “Fishing with John,” as in John Lurie, one of his co-stars in the Jim Jarmusch film “Down By Law.” Several fish were harmed in the making of this episode. And at least one pair of pants.
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