I thought that on Wednesdays (halfway through my listening journey) I would start posting a song that I have been really enjoying from the weekly album. This song was made famous by Rod Stewart but I am really, really enjoying the original Tom Waits version. Great video as well. Sorry about the subtitles; this was the best quality version of the full video that I could find.
Excited to write about this one come Sunday.
You've just taken me back to a Friday evening in the eighties, in my mother's house back in Widnes, eating my tea from a tray on my lap just before going out to the pub, remote control close to hand.
ReplyDeleteIn those days when I lived at mum's I would tape music to VHS from an amazing TV show that was called The Tube, which is incidentally the best music show there has ever been, bar none. Google it. It's all true. No word of a lie.
I 'own' this video on one of the many PAL UK tapes that currently reside in boxes in my bathroom closet, unplayed since my UK all-regions VCR died a few years back.
An amazing video to a captivating song.
The Tube got Tom Waits to play live on the show, and the video you posted up there was played as a precursor to the excitement of the show getting such a coup. Of course in those days you either saw it or you missed it, something that many folks grapple with as a concept these days.
Nowadays you can simply go to You Tube and type in 'Tom Waits The Tube' and watch the entire performance, which I just did and am now linking as I feel it adds to some of the wonderfully illustrative language and points that you raised in your assessment of Rain Dogs. He does a fiery Cemetery Polka from that record, as well as a heart-stopping In the Neighbourhood. 301+ views I see. Let's make it more.
This is amazing footage. You have to understand that this angel-slash-beast of a man landed fully formed on early Friday evening UK television, in a time when the charts were knee-deep in Madonna, Springsteen, Duran Duran, and USA for Africa.
The audience at the front are laughing at him, I'd wager mostly from discomfort. There was nothing like him around at the time.
It was incendiary stuff. You have no idea.
Too freakin' much.
Thanks Caleb. xo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpxaPCNcU1g