SOUNDTRACK: TOM WAITS–The Heart of Saturday Night (1974).
What would be more shocking–hearing this and then going to Bone Machine, or listening to Bone Machine and then hearing this. Holy cow. Tom’s voice is so NOT Tom Waits on this record. It kept me thinking of The Eagles or something. The tone, the pacing, I kept expecting him to bust out “Desperado.” He also has some crazy beat-inspired poetry (what the kids today call spoken-word pieces) Indeed, these spoken pieces would stay with him in one form or another for his whole career. But seriously, how much a man can change in thirty years!
Like Closing Time, this album has several different styles. Primarily, it has a sloppy, bar sound, the sound that Closing Time‘s cover conveyed. And that sound is all over “New Coat of Paint.” But there’s also piano ballads. And those ballads, combined with Waits’ non-gravelly voice, give “San Diego Serenade” and “Shiver Me Timbers” that Eagles’ ballady sound. And then “Semi Suite” brings back that muted trumpet.
“Diamonds on My Windshield” is a beat poem set to a walking bass. It’s clichéd, except that no one actually does it as well as Waits. And although I don’t really like the blues in general, I enjoyed “Fumblin’ with Blues” quite a bit. There’s something about Waits’ sloppy (but not) style that makes the song interesting. Even though this is considered a classic, this album is just not really my style and it’s one I listen to quite infrequently.
[READ: September 21, 2011] “An Anonymous Island”
This story is translated from Korean by Heinz Insu Fenkl.
I felt like the heart of this story was completely unoriginal in content; and yet I can’t tell if it is a common story, if it is a kind of folklorish story, if it’s sort of a story from ancient writings or if it’s just something that happens.
The beginning of the story shows a woman listening to her husband. He is watching the television,bemoaning the fact that anyone can be anonymous these days (this struck me as a funny sentiment given how much everyone in America bemoans the lack of privacy or the fact that everyone is on the internet). You can get off at one bus stop past your own and no one knows you. Back when he was a kid everyone knew everyone else, a village was a family. And as the woman listens, she flashes back.
The flashback is to when she was a teacher in a small village. A village where everyone is related. Everyone treats each other with respect and deference. Except for one man, Ggaecheol. Ggaecheol is a bum–he has no job, he has no home. The village tolerates him because he is an idiot and he is impotent. But whenever he wants a meal, he simply walks into someone’s house and sits down and says, feed me. Which they do. Typically he sleeps outside, but when it’s cold, he walks into someone’s house and sits at the foot of their bed. He says he wants to keep the woman warm, so the men, amused by his impotence, allow this.
There’s an old Monty Python skit in which the town idiot, despite being mocked by all, does great with women. The punch line, showing the idiot with a couple of hot girls in bed with him: “I may be an idiot, but I’m no fool.” And so it is with this story. The bum is sleeping with everyone in town.
I guess what makes this story interesting is not that old story, it’s that the narrator tries to figure out why the men tolerate this man who they must know is sleeping with their women. There is one man who is willing to tell her the answer; and yet, for me, I felt like the answer was obvious all along. I was hoping for something different or more profound, I suppose.
There was nothing wrong with this story I just felt like I’d heard it all before.
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