Tom Waits Week – Day 6

March 29th 2014 – Day 88

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

Tom Waits, 1976

Namaste.