Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Tom Waits Interviews Himself

The press conference with himself wasn't enough.

From his record label website

Here are some highlights:
Q: What's the most curious record in your collection?
A: In the seventies a record company in LA issued a record called "The best of Marcel Marceau." It had forty minutes of silence followed by applause and it sold really well. I like to put it on for company. It really bothers me, though, when people talk through it.

Q: What's heaven for you?
A: Me and my wife on Rte. 66 with a pot of coffee, a cheap guitar, pawnshop tape recorder in a Motel 6, and a car that runs good parked right by the door.

Q: What's hard for you?
A: Mostly I straddle reality and the imagination. My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane. Math is hard. Reading a map. Following orders. Carpentry. Electronics. Plumbing. Remembering things correctly. Straight lines. Sheet rock. Finding a safety pin. Patience with others. Ordering in Chinese. Stereo instructions in German.

Q: What's wrong with the world?
A: We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness. Leona Helmsley's dog made 12 million last year... and Dean McLaine, a farmer in Ohio made $30,000. It's just a gigantic version of the madness that grows in every one of our brains. We are monkeys with money and guns.

Q: What is on Hemmingway's gravestone?
A: "Pardon me for not getting up."

Q: What remarkable things have you found in unexpected places?
08. Most unlikely location for a Chicano crowd: A Morrissey concert.
11. A Chinese man with a Texan accent in Scotland.

Q: What are some sounds you like?
A:
01. An asymmetrical airline carousel created a high pitched haunted voice brought on by the friction of rubbing and it sounded like a big wet finger circling the rim of a gigantic wine glass.
02. Street corner evangelists
03. Pile drivers in Manhattan
04. My wife's singing voice
05. Horses coming/trains coming
06. Children when school's out
07. Hungry crows
08. Orchestra tuning up
09. Saloon pianos in old westerns
10. Rollercoaster
11. Headlights hit by a shotgun
12. Ice melting
13. Printing presses
14. Ball game on a transistor radio
15. Piano lessons coming from an apartment window
16. Old cash registers/Ca Ching
17. Muscle cars
18. Tap dancers
19. Soccer crowds in Argentina
20. Beatboxing
21. Fog horns
22. A busy restaurant kitchen
23. Newsrooms in old movies
24. Elephants stampeding
25. Bacon frying
26. Marching bands
27. Clarinet lessons
28. Victrola
29. A fight bell
30. Chinese arguments
31. Pinball machines
32. Children's orchestras
33. Trolley bell
34. Firecrackers
35. A Zippo lighter
36. Calliopes
37. Bass steel drums
38. Tractors
39. Stroh Violin
40. Muted trumpet
41. Tobacco Auctioneers
42. Musical saw
43. Theremin
44. Pigeons
45. Seagulls
46. Owls
47. Mockingbirds
48. Doves
The world's making music all the time.

Q: What's scary to you?
A:
01. A dead man in the backseat of a car with a fly crawling on his eyeball.
02. Turbulence on any airline.
03. Sirens and search lights combined.
04. Gunfire at night in bad neighborhoods.
05. Car motor turning over but not starting, its getting dark and starting to rain.
06. Jail door closing.
07. Going around a sharp curve on the Pacific Coast Highway and the driver of your car has had a heart attack and died, and you're in the back seat.
08. You are delivering mail and you are confronted with a Doberman with rabies growling low and showing teeth...you have no dog bones and he wants to bite your ass off.
09. In a movie...which wire do you cut to stop the time bomb, the green or the blue.
10. Mc Cain will win.
11. Germans with submachine guns.
12. Officers, in offices, being official.
13. You fell through the ice in the creek and it carried you down stream, and now as you surface you realize there's a roof of ice.

The European part of the tour has been announced...it's not looking good for the Northeast USA and Canada...Australia, Asia, Africa...

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