I couldn’t find a decent live performance of this track, but it is one of my favourites and one of Tom’s classics. I guess I like it because it emphasises the complete avant garde, dada-esque, surealist beauty of his work. The words, whilst lyrical and sensible, offer an edge of insanity that is obviously comical, but also disturbing – and the piano playing itself is wonderfully broken.
I have heard people talking about Tom’s live performances, saying that he is a natural and spontaneous artist; he is not. He is a brilliant showman and performer; every thing he does (aside from the odd adlib) is rehearsed and perfected, and designed to look unplanned. He is vaudevillian to the core of his being.
The Piano has been Drinking (not me)
The piano has been drinking my neck tie is asleep and the combo went back to New York the jukebox has to take a leak and the carpet needs a haircut and the spotlight looks like a prison break cause the telephone is out of cigarettes and the balcony is on the make and the piano has been drinking
the piano has been drinking and the menus are all freezing and the lightman’s blind in one eye and he can’t see out of the other and the piano tuner’s got a hearing aid and showed up with his mother and the piano has been drinking
the piano has been drinking cause the bouncer is a Sumo wrestler cream-puff casper milk toast and the owner is a mental midget with the I.Q. of a fencepost cause the piano has been drinking
the piano has been drinking and you can’t find your waitress with a Geiger counter and she hates you and your friends and you just can’t get served without her and the box-office is drooling and the bar stools are on fire and the newspapers were fooling and the ashtrays have retired and the piano has been drinking
the piano has been drinking the piano has been drinking not me, not me, not me, not me, not me
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