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Having just returned from a solo drive across Canada I was shocked to learn that in my absence the great Tom Waits had announced a pair of shows in Toronto and I was further dismayed to find that none of my friends had secured tickets for themselves, much less picked one up for me.
And so it was that I paid some scalper around double the ticket’s face value for this show, but ethics aside it was worth every penny. I had waited years to see this guy and on August 24th, 1999 the storied troubadour did not disappoint.
He was full of creative surprises from the moment he walked onstage, taking his place atop a wooden platform that was wired to amplify his stomping feet. The platform was also covered with, was it flour?, filling the stage with a dry-ice effect with every stomp. Tom was wearing a disco-ball bowler hat adorned with tiny mirrors that sparkled throughout the theatre, jerking about with every scarecrow-like jolt and jitter. To calm us down he did a few slow rotating turns, the spotlight reflecting off of his bon chapeau and making the room glitter like a high school prom.
Waits would occasionally call for his piano, and a team of coverall-wearing lackeys would lift and carry Tom’s old squeaky upright onstage. When he was done with it they would scurry back onstage and carry the piano back into the wings. This happened several times throughout the night, so much that it became comical. One of those times he merely tinkled the ivories to accompany another of his endless stream-of-quirkiness stories before having the guys carry the piano back offstage. He hadn’t even played a song on it!
After an evening full of breathless gems Tom Waits returned for encore after encore. It seemed like we couldn’t get enough of each other until finally the night was over for good. Numb and reeling, I walked out of the theatre and quietly found the nearest barstool and ordered a straight bourbon.
I’m sure Tom would have appreciated that.
Todd Man Out 