Tom Waits for No Man

This has to be the wierdest Tom Waits spoof I’ve ever heard of:

“Tom Waits” is a franchise. The last album of his that he was involved with was Small Change. Not coincidentally, everything he did back then was crap. At one point the label realized that he had a marketable image, but not a speck of talent. So they hired a team of eleven silent technicians to make records and release them under Tom Waits’ name. This is why “his” style changed on or about Swordfishtrombones, when he became great: It wasn’t actually him any more. It was a team of technicians in lab coats. The man who actually sang “Union Square” and “Temptation” doesn’t even exist: It’s all done with a sophisticated vocoder. All of the instruments are simulated. “Marc Ribot” does not exist. He never existed. That character was created by marketing people in an epic latté-fuelled brainstorming session. Every “musician” who “plays with ‘Tom Waits’ ” is a fictional character.

[Via: The Damnation of Tom Waits@Everything2.com]

Make sure to read the whole thing, it’s a riot.