Jockey Full of Bourbon

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Tom Waits, "Jockey Full of Bourbon," (download until 1/19/09) from "Rain Dogs."

Tom Waits is many things, but one thing he's not is authentic. I know, I know, all you crit theory hipsters—the jargon of authenticity and all that. Shoot me. But let's call a spade a spade. Tom Waits, quite talented, with a good ear, an ability to turn someone else's phase, is the least original “original” I've ever come across.

I'll point out that he makes good music. This particular tune was the first of his I'd ever heard, when I was a kid and saw the trailer for “Down By Law” at the Ken theater in San Diego. Remember the Ken? Still there. The video store next door, the single best video rental store I've ever even heard of, is still there, too. I remember seeing that trailer, and being much more interested in the song than the movie—though at this point I without question think that Jim Jarmusch is an original original, a real one.

Tom Waits is the Beck of ten years earlier, or vice versa. Both reference others' originality, and both make very, very good records. Both incorporate the trappings of popular music—in the record store they call it “folk,” but we'll say “popular,” “of people” as opposed to “of the culture industry,” of which both Beck and Waits are, without a doubt, and good for them—as a means to hipness and legitimacy. There the similarity more or less ends. Beck programs his music or has someone program it for him, and Tom Waits plays his or has others play it for him.

That's worth pointing out. Tom Waits is no virtuoso, but he is a player. The records sound it, above all “Rain Dogs” which to this day is the best-engineered thing he's done. The tonal quality of the recording, above all the sound of the room itself, is just beautiful. The musicians—and this really was the peak of his groups, better than either of the other two really good Tom Waits records, “Swordfishtrombones” or “Frank's Wild Years”—are not simply stellar but clearly have a feel for each other.

The melody and structure of the song are flawless, absolutely flawless. At some level, that's really all there is to the appeal—that's and a fantastic performance, well-recorded. It's as great as ELO was, and for the same reasons. Perhaps I'm not fair. ELO was good, and Tom Waits is really good. But to what are we listening? Some cool Cuban drumming. Dylan lyrics off “Highway 61 Revisited” either more focused or less free depending on your mood. Giving the man some credit, he's not doing the Harry Partch thing on this track, but it's all over the rest of his career from “Swordfishtrombones” forward. Straight outta Harry Partch.

He's good with words, but not so much to produce meaning as atmosphere. There's not a clunker of a line on “Rain Dogs” though to my ear—and it's in the sound of it that you can tell a good lyric—none of his other records are as consistently good with the words. I feel often as if in a fog of some sort listening to this or any of his best pieces, like I can't see to the end of my fingertips which flail in front of me, trying to find something to grasp. I say his best, because in the tunes where he is a bit more concrete about things he becomes a lot less interesting on any number of levels. The words of this tune make me feel like what I imagine I'd feel if I'd read a Charles Bukowski book, which I've never read and am never going to you. That, with the pirate references thrown in.

Above all, it's kind of lonely. It must be lonely to make empty references, and lonelier to listen to them. A person needs to communicate to not be alone, no matter how smart one is.