Tom Waits
Big Time

THE REVIEW

GOOD EVENING

The most terrifying greeting one can hear. This is the drunken ogre's rasp with which Tom Waits, in 1988, decided to conclude his first fifteen years of studio albums with a "Great Event" like this: a live performance featuring the best of his '80s repertoire ("Franks Wild Years", "Swordfishtrombones", "Rain Dogs") reinterpreted with emotion and involvement never felt before. On stage, he brings his best stories, his bespectacled musicians dressed like Indian porters, and his music that's born old and outmoded. He clings to the microphone stand, plays with the lamp hanging from it, bares his teeth mockingly, then brays, neighs, shouts; in short, a real stage animal. He gives a new guise to his songs, you can feel even more the scent of folk music ("Rain Dogs"), the marches, the accordions, but also the electricity ("15 Shells From A 30.6", "Underground"), of repetitive and hypnotizing mantras ("Red Shoes").

Like any respectable circus, Waits' has roamed half the world; thus, the pieces captured on this album come from all the places Tom had "within shoe reach": Dublin, Los Angeles, Stockholm, Berlin: cities that, for one night, became the settings for the stories evoked by Our Guy. The band of chameleons following him is one of the best Waits has ever had: Marc Ribot on guitars, Hayward on drums, Clark on bass and followed by a slew of sitar, trumpets, banjo, congas, bongos, percussions, saxophones, accordions, horns...as if a dusty antique shop came to life and started to play... And then comes the piano, adding that wobbling and tipsy touch to accompany Waits' stories, jokes, and introductions.

Indeed, because in these concerts, he's the first to have fun: he shouts, encourages the audience, laughs and makes others laugh, dances, hops, acts, and makes people emotional. Tom knows full well that the core of his art is all there, in the concerts, and so he doesn’t miss the chance to record everything and even create a film from his performances. His is not a conventional show, it's a cabaret, a theatrical representation of his flair and characters; it's a moment of enchantment and disbelief, and he, with his customary gray hat and confetti in his pocket, is the lion, the monkey, and the tamer at the same time.

Recently, the "Daily Telegraph" defined him: "the greatest entertainer on Planet Earth"; I always distrust superlatives, but I know Waits and my passion for him and I believe it might truly be so: one of the finest American singer-songwriters, a mysterious and fascinating musician, but above all one of the greatest circus performers of the 20th century.