Tom Waits’ latest, ‘Bad,’ is good

October 24, 2011October 24, 2011 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

The latest from Tom Waits, “Bad As Me,” hit the stores today, and I bought my copy from the fine folks at Independent Records & Video, reasoning that Bibleburg could use the sales tax to plug a few of the potholes that keep knocking my wheels out of true.

I sprung for the deluxe edition, which includes a smallish book containing all the lyrics, photos, a breakdown of who plays what on which tracks and three additional tunes. And I wasn’t disappointed.

Musically, Waits is all over the map on this one. There’s less banging on shit just to hear what it sounds like and more toe-tappers; an occasional tip of the bowler to the bluesy old days of “Nighthawks,” “Blue Valentine” and “Small Change”; and a couple of audio political cartoons that I enjoyed a lot, especially “Hell Broke Luce.”

Herself thought she detected some marital distress in a few numbers, like “Face to the Highway,” “Back In the Crowd” and “Kiss Me,” but I’m not sure her spidey-sense is tuned into the Waits frequency. He’s always loved a good weeper, like “Ruby’s Arms” from “Heartattack and Vine.” And if there’s ever been a better fuck-you-I’m-gone track than “Frank’s Wild Years” from “Swordfishtrombones,” I’ve never heard one.

“Last Leaf,” a duet with Keith Richards, is just a song about the last leaf on a tree, says Waits. Uh huh. Whatever it is, it’s beautiful. And “New Year’s Eve” could be a Pogues number — it reminds me of “Fairytale of New York,” and I know Waits is a fan of the band and of Shane Macgowan, though like the rest of us he wishes the manky git would do summat about them teefuses a his.

Quitting the booze and the butts has mellowed the man’s voice without constricting his vision. If you’re a Tom Waits fan, you want “Bad As Me” in your collection.

• Extra credit bonus Waits: Libby, a longtime friend of the DogS(h)ite, sends this link to a Guardian interview with the man himself. It’s a good read.

Slow news day

October 23, 2011 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments

Turkish bags some rays — Turkish has almost come to terms with the New World Order, which requires him to wear a leash outdoors. Almost.

Seems like it’s either feast or famine in the ol’ VeloBarrel. Last week it was nothing but heartache; today, it’s been mostly nothing. I wrote up the men’s World Cup in Tabor (having overslept and missed the women’s race), posted some results and an Andrew Hood piece, and … well, that’s about it. Bor-ing.

There are things going on, of course. There are cyclo-crosses from coast to coast, the Pan American Games, the Japan Cycle Cup Road Race, but because we are short on staff, free-lancers and travel money my in-box remains appallingly free of dispatches from the front. Only Agence France Presse chimes in from time to time, and that lot mostly speaks Frog: Le Belge s’est imposé en solitaire lors de la seconde épreuve dimanche, à Tabor (République Tchèque). Parti très tôt, dès le quatrième tour, il a laissé derrière lui un groupe incapable de s’entendre pour refaire son retard.

C’mon — we saved you guys from the Nazis and you can’t give us a race report in U-nited States American? And who are you callin’ a retard? Merde. Where’s my big ol’ Google translation hammer?

Between bouts of doing not much Herself shaved my dome, Turkish got some quality time in the sun and I whipped up some tuna salad for lunch. And if my in-box doesn’t go ping! real soon I’m gonna grab a bike and enjoy what looks to be one of our last few really nice days before a winter storm blows in.

What do we want? A permit!

October 22, 2011October 22, 2011 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 2 Comments

Will wonders never cease? The Bibleburg bureaucracy has granted the Occupy crowd encamped at Acacia Park a 30-day permit that will allow them to set up two more 10-by-10 pop-up tents and a portable toilet. The police department’s Homeless Outreach Team even walked the protesters through the permitting process — you may recall that Bibleburg has a no-camping ordinance after an eruption of creekside tent sites a couple of years back made the town look like a sound stage for a remake of “The Grapes of Wrath.”

Surprised? So am I. It wasn’t that long ago that Bibleburg had an American Opinion bookstore about a block from where the Occupy folks are parked plus a Ku Klux Klan chapter (the David Duke flavor). More recently the cops were tear-gassing local antiwar rallies and beating the snot out of old ladies during the annual St. Patrick’s Day march.

The professional cynic in me suspects that this has less to do with an official embrace of alternative viewpoints than with a burning desire to show potential employers and investment capitalists — the latter a group that is ostentatiously ignoring our fair city — that Bibleburg is more than a sinkhole for One World Gummint fantasists and bush-league Elmer Gantrys.

What do we want? Jobs! When do we want them? Now! Hmm … maybe there is some harmonic right-left convergence going on here. Whaddaya think?

Last leaf on the tree

October 21, 2011 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments

Bibleburg as seen from Palmer Park. I used the Vivid mode on my little Canon 300 HS to pimp up the colors a bit.

People often ask me why I choose to live in Bibleburg. Seventy-degree days in late October have quite a bit to do with it.

I slipped out for a pleasant afternoon ride yesterday. Took the arm warmers, just in case; never needed them.

Lots of people were playing hooky. Dog walkers and joggers, moms pushing strollers, folks just slouching along, soaking in those last few sunny moments before it all goes sideways and snowy.

At one point I was high up on the south side of Palmer Park, looking west across town at the mountains. You can’t see the vacant storefronts, unpatched potholes and tinfoil-beanie wingnuts from up there. It’s all fall, all the time, green, orange and gold on a blue background.

This morning I streamed the new Tom Waits album, Bad As Me, and it included a poignant number, “Last Leaf.” The refrain goes:

I’m the last leaf on the tree

The autumn took the rest

but they won’t take me

I’m the last leaf on the tree.

Good stuff from start to finish. We’ll be adding that bad boy to the Waits library when it’s released on Monday.

Refried beaners and the Repo Man

October 18, 2011October 18, 2011 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 21 Comments

The gift that is the race for the GOP presidential nomination just keeps on a-giving. SNL, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report might as well just add their writing staffs to the unemployment stats, because the candidates are serving up all the material they’re ever gonna need, and for free, too.

Herman “Just Kidding (Not Really”) Cain wants to electrify the fence between the United States and Mexico; I’m not sure who picks up the tab for that, but I suspect Cain plans to bill grieving Mexicans for the cost of electrocuting their kinfolk. “Careful, señores, hot fence!”

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney says that rather than providing foreclosure relief to struggling homeowners, he would let foreclosures “run their course and hit the bottom,” put all those bums on the street, and then sell the bums’ houses to investors, who could turn around and rent the bums’ houses back to them (assuming the bums could pass the credit check, raise first, last and damage deposit, and get out of the leases on the Dumpsters, refrigerator boxes and pup tents they’re living in).

And he says this in Nevada, where a day without foreclosures is like a day without sunshine. It’s like throwing an anvil to a drowning man — more than 80 percent of homeowners there are underwater on their mortgages, and one in 44 houses has been hit by a foreclosure filing in the third quarter of 2011, nearly double the number in runner-up California and putting the Silver State squarely atop the foreclosure heap.

Remember, this isn’t your crazy Uncle Hermie who talks to the toaster and Thurston Howell III, who was a TV caricature of an obscenely wealthy, amoral fuck, not the real deal. These are the frontrunners for the GOP nomination. One of them could actually become president.