Tom Waits for No Man

Tom Waits has donated an autographed jacket to a celebrity auction being run by the ACLU of Southern California.  The corduroy Levis jacket features an inscription from Waits that reads, “To the new owner: I raised a lot of hell in this jacket, but it’s a lucky one. My wife wants me to get rid of it cause its all ripped up. May the new wearer wear it well”.  The auction winner will also win a signed copy of the Zoetrope: All Story magazine Waits put together last year.

The auction is being run on Ebay.com and at the time of posting, the winning bid is $500.  The auction will end on September 26th, 2006 at 10:00 PDT.

The Tom Waits blogosphere just got a little bit bigger with the brand new Tom Waits Analysis.  It’s run by a Mr. P. Elmjoy and promises to be a very interesting experience.  I’m glad to see the Wide World of Waits getting bigger.

Jarlath came across a book called The Many Lives of Tom Waits on Amazon.co.uk a few months back. It’s written by Patrick Humphries who previously penned the Tom Waits bio Small Change: A Life of Tom Waits. However, this appears to be a new book on considerably longer in length and is probably a brand new effort. Amazon states that the book will be released on November 1st.

Press release just sent out from Stuart Ross, Waits’ touring manager:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 8, 2006

TOM WAITS
Intimate nightclub performance

“And there he is at the center of the frame, Tom Waits. Jumping right off the screen and straight into our f***ing laps. This is rock ‘n’ roll baby–the IMAX version.” Harp Magazine

“Even back in the ancient, pre-country days when the holy structure was an actual church, it’s hard to imagine a more passionate sermonizer gracing the boards than Waits…A few songs in, the band left the stage as a piano was wheeled out. With nothing more than 88 keys and a baby blue spotlight, Waits sat down, removed some of the gravel from his voice and turned the auditorium into an intimate nightclub. ‘Tom Traubert Blues’–with its echoes of ‘Waltzing Matilda’–was simply a moving thing of beauty…” The Tennessean

THIS Sunday, August 13 * doors at 11:00 PM
Ages: 21 +
On sale Thursday, August 10 @ noon

All ticket orders are WILL CALL and can only be picked up at the box office on the night of the event at door times (11 PM). There is a two (2) ticket maximum per household, and the guest of ticket purchaser must be present at the time of will-call ticket pickup.

All patrons will be required to present a valid picture ID matching the name given at the time of purchase AND the credit card used for the ticket purchase in order to receive their tickets and gain admittance to the show.

Patron names may not be transferred once the ticket purchase transaction is complete.

Tickets will go on sale Thursday, August 10 at noon via the House of Blues box office, Ticketmaster online (www.ticketmaster.com), or charge by phone at 216-241-5555 in Cleveland, 330-945-9400 in Akron or 330-747-1212 in Youngstown.

The House of Blues box office at 308 Euclid Ave. is open daily at 10:00 AM Monday through Saturday and at 9:00 AM on Sundays.

The famous Sarah V. found a copy of the concert poster for the upcoming Orphans Tour while browsing around. Don’t know if it’s official or not, but it sure looks it.

The Cottars, a celtic tinged group from Nova Scotia, have two Tom Waits covers on their recent album Forerunner.  The album features covers of both Georgia Lee and Hold On which originally appeared on Waits’ Mule Variations album.

Additionally, they are currently on tour and frequently perform Waits covers.  Has anyone out there heard them live?

I’ve got another huge list of catch up posts to make. I won’t cover everything, but I’ll do my best to get things back in order.

To begin, Tom Waits has won his suit against Audi for musical and vocal impersonation:

Tom Waits has won a landmark legal victory in Spain, establishing his moral rights in a case brought against car manufacturer Volkswagen-Audi (VAESA) and a Spanish production company for adapting one of Waits’ songs and impersonating his voice in a television commercial.
. . .
The commercial, for Audi cars, was originally screened in Spain in 2000. As well as having much the same melodic structure as the Tom Waits’ song ‘Innocent When You Dream’, the commercial’s music was arranged like the song and featured a Tom Waits’ vocal impersonation.

Via:The Auto Channel News

This should bode well for his pending suit against Opel for a similar violation.

It’s true that you find Tom Waits fans everywhere you look. Case in point, I just found this quote from an interview with Rob Zombie:

The Dude: Are there any artists out there who you can’t wait to hear their album or read their book, something along those lines?

Rob Zombie: I really don’t have too much time to read, so I hardly ever read anything. As far as music goes, the only person who makes a record that I have to run out and get instantly is Tom Waits. But that’s it. It’s not that I don’t buy other records, it’s just that’s the only one I’ll pick up immediately.

[Via: Interview: Rob Zombie - Movies Online]

Well, not really. However, according to the excellent research of Dorene, Mr. Waits will be designing the Winter issue of Zoetrope: All Story which is a quarterly literary magazine started by Francis Ford Coppolla. According to the brief mention, the design has already gone through the early design passes and will hit the stands in mid-December.

Next Saturday night, November 5th, the 7th Annual Tom Waits Tribute Night will be held at Sam Bond’s Garage, Eugene, OR. From the website listing:

This year’s Tom Waits Tribute Night will feature Mood Area 52 and many special guests. In contrast to years past, we will be presenting the entire album of “Alice” with a variety of performers. There will, of course, be time for folks to sign up and do their old favorites, as well! We are now booking performers of all stripes - puppeteers, dancers, musicians, magicians, etc - to perform numbers from “Alice” with Mood Area 52 and/or to do their own thing.

[Via: Eugene Poetry Slam]

Tickets will be $3-$5 on a sliding scale, though on what they don’t say.

Sam Bond’s Garage is located at:
407 Blair Blvd.
Eugene, OR 97402

More information can be obtained by calling (541)337-7660.

I’m really starting to get sick of this. This is the second time I’ve gotten official confirmation of a Tom Waits performance from the venue only to get burned in the end (the Katrina benefit PPV was the first).

Stuart Ross, Mr. Waits’ tour manager, just announced on the Raindogs mailing list that Mr. Waits will NOT be appearing at the “Impossible Boulevard” benefit. This just after I got confirmation from the organizers of the event that he would be there.

You have my sincerest apologies about this. I really try to pass along only legitimate news and I always feel extremely low when these bogus events slip through.

In a related story to the recently broadcast Martin Scorsese directed Bob Dylan extravaganza, the Sunday Herald re-published a short review of Mr. Waits’ favorite Dylan album written by the man himself:

The Basement Tapes (live session recordings, 1975)

By Tom Waits

It’s difficult to say anything about Bob Dylan that hasn’t already been said . Suffice it to say Dylan is a planet to be explored. For a songwriter, Dylan is as essential as a hammer and nails and a saw are to a carpenter. I like my music with the rinds and the seeds and pulp left in – so the bootlegs I obtained in the 1960s and 1970s, where the noise and grit of the tapes became inseparable from the music, are essential to me. His journey as a songwriter is the stuff of myth, because he lives within the ether of the songs. Hail, hail The Basement Tapes. I heard most of these songs on bootlegs first. There is a joy and an abandon to this record. It’s also a history lesson.

[Via: What’s Dylan’s Best Song? - [Sunday Herald]]

This was originally published in their list of Mr. Waits’ 20 favorite albums.

Thanks to Jarlath on the Rain Dogs mailing list for pointing this one out.

Well, it’s official, Mr. Waits is now suing Opel for their use of a sound-a-like singer in one of their ads. As boring as most lawsuit announcements are, you can always count on a little spice from a Tom Waits case:

“Apparently,” Waits said, “the highest compliment our culture grants artists nowadays is to be in an ad — ideally naked and purring on the hood of a new car. I have adamantly and repeatedly refused this dubious honor. Currently accepting in my absence is my German doppelganger. While the court can’t make me active in radio, I am asking it to make me radioactive to advertisers.”

[Via: Tom Waits Files Suit Against General Motors’ Opel and Ad Agency for TV Commercial: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance]

PLEASE, I know I posted a picture based upon the cow udder quote, there is no need to graphically represent this one.

The “heavy, beautiful, dark, slow” music collective The Book of Knots has a new track called “Hammer” that features Tom Waits. You can hear a rough cut of the track at their MySpace page. It’s very much in line with his stuff on “Real Gone” and as such is pretty cool.

UPDATE- I just noticed that this was posted back in May, so it’s probably a little misleading to call it new. However, it’s the first I’ve heard of it so it’s still worth passing along. Enjoy . . .

I have to say, that I was tempted to run out a buy a plane ticket to Albuquerque when I heard that Mr. Waits was going to appear. However, apparently the award ceremony was extremely short and the interview even shorter:

Tom received an award of some sort, but the exchange happened so fast I’m not sure what it was for

[Via: alibi . august 4 - 10, 2005]