Hang on, St. Christopher…
Posted on Thursday, Aug 10, 2006
Last night was quite a landmark evening in my musical career.
Chris and I saw the incomparable Mr. Tom Waits, live.
The downside is that I was sick as a dog. I rode my bike to work in the morning, and after about two hours at the office, I started to really exhibit some nasty GI symptoms. The same symptoms Carrie had on Monday. So I left the office, and rode home.
I text messaged Carrie and told her that if she got me too sick to see Tom Waits, I would never forgive her. Luckily, I managed to suck it up and go to the concert.
It was hard to really get into the “concert” mood, so I spent most of the time sitting still and drinking water. But the music was amazing. You really have to experience the man live to fully understand his magic. His physicality is indescribable. Plus, as Chris said, nobody puts a sentence together like Waits. For example, he told a story about going to the Wiener Circle that, if told by anyone else (Jennifer Aniston, for example), would have been completely uninteresting, and fell flat. But in the words of Waits, it was a hilarious, magical journey.
I was a little disappointed by the set – I’m much more of an Asylum-era Waits, and he was definitely into his new stuff. But I can appreciate it – he’s all about reinventing himself, so I can see why he wouldn’t be playing a lot of stuff off of Heartattack and Vine, for example. But he did play a beautiful rendition of “Tom Traubert’s Blues” on the piano that was one of the most transcendent experiences I’ve had at a concert ever.
The show posted very strict “NO CAMERAS!” notices on the website, so I left mine at home, although you could tell plenty of people were snapping shots from the audience. So I had to grab this picture from an earlier concert on the tour from Flickr.