It's often said about Tom Waits, and several hundred other artists, that he is constantly re-inventing his sound. Like a Madonna whose target audience is composed largely of music geeks, beat poetry enthusiasts and Charles Bukowski wanna-bes, he effortlessly moves from one niche musical idiom to the next without losing his artistic cred or making appreciable upward progress in the sales department. Which is how us music geeks like it.With Bone Machine, Waits was in transition away from his Kurt Weill-ian oompa-band phase and starting to explore the kinds of truly evil noise he could coax out of distorted electric guitars and "found" percussion instruments. In front of a reverbed Joe Gore guitar line that sounds like a surf-rock instrumental gone Halloween, Waits growls out lyrics about an ex-con tough guy who harbors lots of unfortunate assumptions about the entertainment industry. Among them: the notion that success in the acting field derives mainly from having a lot of your own facial scars; that looking "good without a shoit" depends on the hairiness of one's chest; that having a ma who used to date a deceased b-list actor with a difficult reputation would lead to a foot in the door, etc.
This ugly dude, with a heart-shaped hole in the roof of his car, might be in for a rude awakening out west, but maybe he'll get lucky. He knows voodoo, you know. And with the line about "little brown sausages lying in the sand", is probably prepared to take a shit on cue. And that's just the kind of go-getter attitude they're looking for at the major studios.
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AWESOME song!
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