Wasted & wounded, it ain't what the moon did

First off, a brief review of Sting's career trajectory. He starts off in the Police and gives us many a good tune, most notably my favs Spirits In The Material World, Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic and the oft-misunderstood creep out Every Breath You Take (its not a wedding song). Then he goes solo. We get some fairly decent songs, one beautiful song (Fragile) and two good records, The Dream Of The Blue Turtles and Nothing Like The Sun. And then the man that gave me one of my first gay "moments" (when he takes his shirt off in the video for Don't Stand So Close To Me, i was 10 or 11 and lost my proverbial shit) goes horribly horribly wrong. Fields Of Gold anyone...his career turns into The Worst Of Adult Contemporary, fighting it out with Savage Garden and Celine. And need i remind you of the risible disaster/embarassment of All For One from the Three Musketeers movie. Your critical career is officially over when you record a duet with either Rod Stewart or Bryan Adams. But when you record a song as a trio (get it??) with both, critically, you are the equivalent of Yanni.

Proving everyone wrong who predicted he could not get more pretentious after 2005's "My Funny Valentine: Sting At The Movies", Sting's latest "opus" is "Songs From The Labyrinth", which are madrigals from the 15th century...on a lute. This from a man who sang "Roxanne". Someone shoot him.

Enough ranting...

Don't You Want Me...The Human League

OK...today is about watershed moments for me. This was one.

I grew up in NW Indiana in the 80's. AKA, to anyone that knows the area, it's The Region. Its right up there on the lake and pretty much influenced by Chicago radio, TV and politics. Its a whole lot of strip malls and suburbs and of course the steel mills, Gary and Michael Jackson. I lived in Crown Point, which at the time was the border town between The Region and row after row of corn (the 4-H kids from the town to the south of us, Lowell, actually bragged about being in 4-H). There wasn't much to do...basically we'd just drive back and forth between Burger King and McDonalds and the Southlake Mall and occasionally get drunk on whatever liquor we could steal out of our parents liquor cabinet (I have thrown up ever flavor of Schnapps known to man). Likewise, there were not alot of options for a junior highschool music-wise...the radio basically played Air Supply, Olivia Newton-John and Kansas. Plus country music. It was rough.

But then this song. I remember hearing it for the first time. The instant driving beat, entirely electronic and cool. The fey, romantic vocals. Well, and of course, the line. I wanted to work as a waitress in a cocktail bar. That much IS true. I immediately rode by bike to the courthouse and went the local record store there and bought the 45. Every night, in the dark, i would listen to the song and dance around my room. It was my first introduction to a totally new sound, something totally different. And it caused divisions...if people knew you liked that song, you were a fag or a sissy. Because Phil Oakey wore eyeliner. This, of course, from people who liked Kiss.

Lest you think i instantly became cool and all new wave, around this time my best friend Angie and I were at her pool one night and instead of getting drunk or smoking Capri's, we actually pretended we were dolphins and tried to communicate underwater by "squeaking". We were like 15. We rebounded, we both made prom court. Neither of us won, but rumor is, i was cheated by a vote counting scandal. Angie just lost. That much is true.

Tom Traubert's Blues (Three Sheets To The Wind In Copenhagen)-Tom Waits

This is off of 1976's Small Change album. This is from the pre-experimental days, much more of a piano and voice album that his 90's work. Its no less brilliant because of it...and his voice, well, even back then it sounds like a nothing else out there. Reviews always compare him to a Foghorn...i always thinks he sounds like what any deep voice would like after 8 whiskeys, numerous shots and a pack of Marlboro Red cigarettes, unfiltered. The whole album is brilliant, sad and often, fucking hilarious, most notably on "Pasties And A G-String" and "The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)". But this song...its one of my favorite of all a time...and there is a story about it.

Prior to hearing this song on a mixtape in '93, i had heard Tom Waits only once. My first encounter with him was on "Stay Awake" which was a very cool compilation of Disney tunes covered by different artists. Yma Sumac, Betty Horn, Sinead O'Connor, Natalie Merchant & Michael Stipe doing "April Showers" and perhaps most notably, Sun Ra and His Arkestra doing "Pink Elephants On Parade." Well, Tom is on this...doing Heigh Ho from Snow White. His version, well, what can you say. It doesn't sound like the Disney version, like they are happy and cheerful to be working in the mines. They sound sad and impossibly tired and maybe not so happy about being picked on and that there is some strange woman living as a freeloader in their house. I hated it. From the get go. I thought "this man cannot sing...he's torturing this song."

So its 1993 and i am working at this horrible car dealership fresh out of college, where i was, well, let's just say, unimpressive with my 2.6 and my 4 D last semester. Shocking that nobody would hire me except Enterprise rent-a-car. I was living in this dismal lonely basically uninhabited building on Montrose & Sheridan...i actually rented it because you could see the lake (uh yeah, for about 4 inches of the 8 foot view). Idiot i was. A guy i worked with made me a mixtape of cool stuff and put this song on and i was listening to it in the car. My reaction was one of complete revulsion. Again, that "oh my god, what is he singing...that voice." I hated it and turned it off. He was the worst singer i'd ever heard.

So i was working as a bouncer at Roscoe's...the Friday and Saturday shifts til 3. And dating this guy Dan, who i guess i really liked (or really liked the thought of liking him, not so sure which). And he came into work, while i was at the door, and broke up with me. In like 3 minutes. Casually, as if he was meeting me later or just saying hi. And left. And i worked the last 2-3 hours in a total haze. And of course, as all late-night workers do, i went out for drinks til 4:30. And got drunk. Sad and lonely, i walk outside, only to discover i have no money for a cab. So i decide i'll walk home.

That fateful walk. I often wonder if i would have ever discovered Tom Waits had it not been for that night, the liquor, that old boyfriend. It is a pivotal moment in my life in that i realize how much music means to me and how it can chance your perspective on things; how it serves as a touchstone on events that happened to you...its your soundtrack. It was raining, drizzling...and cold. So i put my headphones on, pressed play, and began to walk. I don't remember what was on first but it didnt matter. And on comes this song...the piano begins to play, the strings begin and on comes Tom.

His first lines, well, they made me really really listen. "Wasted and wounded, it ain't what the moon did". It literally stopped me in my tracks. The song is basically about a breakup, about a woman that left him, tormented and sad, wandering the streets at night. And lyrically it shows why Tom Waits is an American treasure (an overused compliment, to be sure)....singularly genius in his own perspective. Many of his songs have characters that could be in a Diane Arbus picture. Or Edward Hopper's paintings. Often you are catching somebody at a very vulnerable moment. Anyways, i digress.

I could quote the whole song...but you should hear it sung first. If i wrote this song, and never another, i'd think, on my deathbed, i'm a genius. Two examples:

I begged you to stab me, you tore my shirt open
And I'm down on my knees tonight
Old Bushmill's I staggered, you'd bury the dagger
In your silhouette window light go

No, I don't want your sympathy, the fugitives say
That the streets aren't for dreaming now
And manslaughter dragnets and the ghosts that sell memories,
They want a piece of the action anyhow

Ok...how do i describe this...how do you write about brilliant writing. You can't.

But its the refrain that got me. Anyone that has heard this song, and particularly if they love this song, doesn't know it by the title or "Three Sheets To The Wind In Copenhagen". They know it by "Waltzing Matilda", the national song of Australia, which ends every verse. Every time he sings it, the music swells a little bit, your hopes rise a little bit, maybe she'll come back. But she won't...because you can hear it in his voice.

Me. Ok, by this point before the ending i am soaking wet, sobbing and drunk and i now believe that Tom Waits is not the worst singer in the world, but the best singer in the world. I had been converted. In other words, i "got" him.

It's a 7 minute song of quiet devastation...a song of complete and utter sadness that so sums up the mixture of love and loss that goes with a breakup. It's not that you hate the person...that'd be easy. Whatever your feelings, you know they will never be in your life in that capacity again. Completely and utterly earth-shattering brilliance.

And it ends.

And it's a battered old suitcase to a hotel someplace
And a wound that will never heal
No prima donna, the perfume is on an
Old shirt that is stained with blood and whiskey
And goodnight to the street sweepers, the night watchmen flame keepers
And goodnight to Mathilda, too

Strings out.
Fucking Christ