Tag: Tom Waits

Return of the Interbiker: Songs from Uranus

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
On the road again
Eastbound and down, loaded up an' truckin'.

LAS VEGAS, Nevada — Technology is not always our friend, and all too often the march of progress resembles the drunkard’s stumble that Tom Waits famously described in “Nighthawk Postcards (From Easy Street)” as “using parking meters as walking sticks.”

For example, we now enjoy “Italian” bikes wearing Asian components, “high-speed Internet” that is anything but, and “smart” phones that no longer need humans to place calls, choose music or launch apps.

The Italian-Asian hybrid you already know about. The Internet of the Living Dead was at the Fairfield, where I spent much of last night pushing one pixel at a time through a virtual soda straw.

And the “smart” phone? It was in one of the cargo pockets in my shorts when it decided Interbike was boring and needed a fresh soundtrack. Thus throughout the day my iPhone 3GS would randomly set Tom Waits, Gladys Knight and the Pips or Elvis Costello to singing, Ace Ventura-like, out of my butt, generally while I was trying to conduct a little business.

When that proved so 15 minutes ago it started ringing up people in my contacts list and launching apps at random. What’s next — texting my editors to ask them whether they’re wearing crotchless panties? Some of them probably are, and then where the hell will I be?

Oh, yeah — I’ll be on the road, that’s where. Show’s over, and I’m Colorado bound.

All quiet on the western front

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

Eggs and sausage and a side of toast

Coffee and a roll, hash browns over easy

Chili in a bowl with burgers and fries

What kind of pies? — “Eggs and Sausage,” Tom Waits

Going to Interbike as a “cycling journalist” is a lot like deliberately overeating. Everything that goes in must eventually come back out, one way or another. Then it’s stand back, boys, she’s gonna go a gusher.

Outdoor Demo is but an appetizer, a trifle. It’s too hot to think, and people are either fresh from getting settled into their hotel rooms and routines and/or discovering with dismay which key piece of pro equipment they forgot to fetch with them from Podunk (MiFi, digital recorder, camera, Visa card). So they nibble around the edges out there in the desert outside Boulder City, ride a bike or two or three, gulp a beer in the VIP tent, take a deep breath.

Tomorrow the show opens for real at the Sands Convention Center. I recommend wearing Wellingtons, a slicker and a welder’s mask.

• Late update: Meanwhile, Lennard Zinn waxes rhapsodic over a $2,600 wheelset. Well, he’s waxing something, anyway. Jesus.

Tom Waits for no one

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 2 Comments

Here’s an early present for you — the Los Angeles Times reports that Tom Waits may (or may not) produce a new studio album in 2010.

In the meantime, the maestro has already given us some good quotes regarding the writing of music. Quoth Waits: “It’s like diamond-cutting or hunting for bear or dropping out of a tree. Sometimes, it’s like ping-pong. Other times it’s like operating on a flamingo. Every song’s different. Some are like empty swimming pools, and you’ve got to be the water.”

• Extra Credit Bonus Celebrity Artist Quotage: Here’s Terry Gilliam on making movies: “Once the voices are in your head, it’s either make a movie or kill a lot of people. That’s probably what I should be doing to get money for the movies: saying, ‘If you don’t give me the money, I will have to slaughter large numbers of people to deal with these voices in my head.'” Gilliam and Waits worked together on “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus,” which looks seriously weird (gee, imagine that; weirdness from Waits and Gilliam).