9. Tom Waits' Bone Machine (1992)

Allow me to paraphrase a line from I review I once read on Amazon.com: If all civilization as we know it were destroyed in a giant nuclear holocaust, and the earth's contents turned into an endless heap of ash and metal, and one man survived, and he decided to make music, this is the album he would create.

Bone Machine was my introduction to Tom Waits. I was in the stage of my musical education where I stayed up late at night flipping through the All Music Guide, trying to find all the artists with five-star albums that I didn't know anything about. I got to Tom Waits, and, well...the All Music Guide provides a list of applicable genres beneath each artist's name, right before the bio. And for Tom Waits, it said "Singer-Songwriter/ Experimental." And I thought, "What the hell kind of a genre is that?" It didn't really sound like something I would like, so I waited a while on Tom Waits. When a friend borrowed Bone Machine from the library, he also loaned it to me. I put it in the stereo, and out came...the insane ramblings of a madman! But it wasn't bad. In fact, some of the songs were downright catchy. I could suddenly see how "Singer-Songwriter/ Experimental" was perhaps the only appropriate description of his style. Since there was no picture of Tom Waits on the cover, I drew this wild image in my mind of what he must have looked like. He was about 80 years old, with a big, crazy beard, and with half of his teeth missing. When I actually saw a picture of him I thought, "Oh, he just looks like an ex-con or something."

I feel pretty confident in saying that Bone Machine is Tom Waits' second-best album, behind Rain Dogs. What sets it apart from his other post-Rain Dogs albums is, ultimately, the strength of the songwriting. Sometimes Waits can fall into the habit of repeating himself, or relying more on schtick than emotion. But with Bone Machine, not only do the funny songs stay funny on repeated listens (revealing new details each time), but they're more than just funny. They're also stylistically different from each other. And they don't really sound like other Tom Waits songs that you've heard before (not even on Rain Dogs). For some reason, on Bone Machine, he was in the zone.

I'm not surprised that Tom Waits is one of the few singer-songwriters to have been able to maintain a credible acting career, because such a heavy facet of his appeal lies in his delightfully theatrical delivery. Take "Goin' Out West," for instance, sort of like a freaky, mutant version of "Act Naturally":

Well I'm goin' out west
Where the wind blows tall
'Cause Tony Franciosa
Used to date my ma
They got some money out there
They're giving it away
I'm gonna do what I want
And I'm gonna get paid
Do what I want
And I'm gonna get paid

Little brown sausages
Lying in the sand
I ain't no extra baby
I'm a leading man
Well my parole officer
WIll be proud of me
With my Olds 88
And the devil on a leash
My Olds 88
And the devil on a leash

Well I know karate, Voodoo too
I'm gonna make myself available to you
I don't need no make up
I got real scars
I got hair on my chest
I look good without a shirt

Well I don't lose my composure
In a high speed chase
Well my friends think I'm ugly
I got a masculine face
I got some dragstrip courage
I can really drive a bed
I'm gonna change my name
To Hannibal or maybe
Just Rex
Change my name to Hannibal
Or maybe just Rex

I'm gonna drive all night
Take some speed
I'm gonna wait for the sun
To shine down on me
I cut a hole in my roof
In the shape of a heart
And I'm goin' out west
Where they'll appreciate me
Goin' out west
Goin' out west

Can't you just totally see this guy? Some crazy piece of American trash who thinks he's got what it takes to be a movie star even though he's probably about as sociable as Mike Tyson? What I love about him is his confidence. "I'm gonna make myself available to you" - like he's doing Hollywood a favor. And each detail is more outrageous than the last. But what really sells it is the performance. Waits isn't just writing some song from the point of view of a crazy guy; he actually sounds like that crazy guy! The song is like a whole world unto itself. It's better than most short stories or movies, in a way. The twangy surf guitar lick also helps.

Then there's "In The Colosseum," apparently sung from the point of view of an overly-enthusiastic Roman spectator:

This one's for the balcony
And this one's for the floor
As the senators decapitate
The presidential whore

It's always much more sporting
When there's families in the pit
And the madness of the crowd
Is an epileptic fit

Sure, the evocative instrumental clang definitely takes you there, but what really does it is the jarringly-echoed vocal, which makes it sound like some split-faced guy from a Picasso painting is doing all the singing. Then you've got "Jesus Gonna Be Here," in which Crazy Old Man Jimbo pledges his devotion to his savior in what sounds like a West Virginia shack:

Well I've been faithful
And I've been so good
Except for drinking
But he knew that I would
I'm gonna leave this place better
Than the way I found it was
And Jesus gonna be here
Gonna be here soon

Despite the comedic elements, the song is also quite affecting, because it suggests that a lot of toothless old miner people ultimately mean well.

Bone Machine's one weakness is probably its ballads, which, as a friend once put it, are "a little too Springsteen-y." There are three songs on the album I usually skip: "Who Are You," "Little Rain" and "Whistle Down The Wind." I can see what he was trying to do, but I get the impression he felt like he needed to write a couple of "normal" songs because he couldn't just fill the album with crazy songs, could he? Well sure he could. Let everyone else write the normal songs, Tom, because no one else can write the crazy songs as well as you can. The one exception to the ballad rule, "Dirt In The Ground," is a haunting hymn which genuinely manages to be sad instead of just "sad" in quotation marks like so many other Waits ballads, and is probably the best song on the album. Over a mournful piano and a wheezy saxophone Waits summarizes the Buddhist idea of "life as suffering" with image after image of chilling beauty: "Hell's boiling over/And heaven is full/We're chained to the world/And we've all gotta pull." While some might find this worldview nihilistic, I ultimately find it liberating, because (much like the final title card in Barry Lyndon) it suggests the absolute egalitarian nature of the cosmos: no matter how different we like to think we are, one day we're all going to be dead.

As "Dirt In The Ground" and most of the other songs illustrate, Tom Waits is one of the few artists from the '90s to successfully record acoustic-based instruments without draining all the life and energy from the sound. Part of the way he achieves this is by using 2 x 4s and trash can lids as percussion (hence the "last man to survive a nuclear apocalypse" vibe). But the other part of it is that, unlike most other veteran artists from the '70s, he's simply refused to become complacent, a stance that's perhaps unintentionally summed up to perfection in "I Don't Wanna Grow Up," a song that at first appears to be some sort of country hoedown Toys 'R' Us jingle parody/homage, but upon closer inspection possibly reveals itself to be Waits' very own artistic (and philosophical) manifesto:

When I'm lyin' in my bed at night
I don't wanna grow up
Nothin' ever seems to turn out right
I don't wanna grow up

How do you move in a world of fog
That's always changing things
Makes me wish that I could be a dog

When I see the price that you pay
I don't wanna grow up
I don't ever wanna be that way
I don't wanna grow up

Seems like folks turn into things
That they'd never want
The only thing to live for
Is today

I'm gonna put a hole in my TV set
I don't wanna grow up
Open up the medicine chest
And I don't wanna grow up

I don't wanna have to shout it out
I don't want my hair to fall out
I don't wanna be filled with doubt
I don't wanna be a good boy scout
I don't wanna have to learn to count
I don't wanna have the biggest amount
I don't wanna grow up

Well when I see my parents fight
I don't wanna grow up
They all go out and drinking all night
And I don't wanna grow up

I'd rather stay here in my room
Nothin' out there but sad and gloom
I don't wanna live in a big old Tomb
On Grand Street

When I see the 5 o'clock news
I don't wanna grow up
They comb their hair and shine their shoes
I don't wanna grow up

Stay around in my old hometown
I don't wanna put no money down
I don't wanna get me a big old loan
Work them fingers to the bone
I don't wanna float a broom
Fall in love and get married then boom
How the hell did I get here so soon
I don't wanna grow up

Me neither, Tom. Me neither.