Tag Archives: Tom Waits

Considerin’ Slitherin’

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EbeneezerSqueezer1919

If snakes were people this one would be a combination of Leon Redbone and Tom Waits. Cool, but in a mean, slick kind of way. Somebody you’d like to watch do his thing, but from way across the bar. And the waitresses, the ones that will serve him anyway, they all call him Tongue. Just because. This guy exudes menace like a cheap cologne.

If snakes wore shirts he’d have a straight razor hanging down inside his collar, and you’d want to watch close if he put his hand up to the back of his neck. He isn’t scratching, he’s reaching. Somebody’s going to get cut.

Here in New Orleans, just outside the 9th ward, there’s a bar, the one just off St Claude Ave. The one with the sign that hasn’t had working neon since 1946. The one with the broken juke box they don’t need to fix because there’s a kid there that will sing every blues tune you know for a quarter a throw. The one where if anyone got bit or squeezed real bad no one would say a word, because no one saw a thing. It has a spot at the end of the mahogany that no one will sit at whether he’s there or not. Even the most foolhardy tourist instinctively knows that’s no man’s land. That’s his bar and everybody is ok with that. They don’t go there if they aren’t, it’s bad joss and he can smell that on you.

Lots of snakes have chosen garish multi-colored skins, neon colored, they’d flash Vegas style if they could. But Big Billy Coils, that’s his given name, William Coils, but everyone who knew him by that is pretty much gone now. Victims of fights, booze, unpaid debts, horse, neglect and poor judgment. He’s found the colors that work for him. He’s leaving all the rainbow stuff to the wannabees, this look gets done whatever he wants done. He just stopped in tonight to check out the crowd. He hasn’t eaten in about 3½ weeks and he’s hungry. He’s off towards Algiers to see what might be hanging around the docks so he’s considerin’ slitherin’. I’d put off any late night strolls along the river tonight. Best you stick to the brightly lit streets.

Strike A Pose

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Music plays a large part in a birds life. They sing it. They listen to it. They have favorites. And those of you who have ever been outside and heard a bird sing you know they love it. But there are birds who can’t sing. Through some horrible genetic accident they can’t sing a note. Like these ravens. They can’t sing and when they try they all sound like Tom Waits after a night at the piano and a carton of Lucky Strikes. So what do they do? They’re birds. Music is their life.

Many choose to do something completely different. Ravens have a rep for being really smart, like Mensa smart, and they are incredible problem solvers. One time I was in Yellowstone, in the parking lot at Old Faithful Lodge and a whole band of bikers had parked their bikes near the entrance and gone in. A raven spent a full 10 minutes figuring out how to unzip the saddlebag on the back of one of the bikes then carefully pulled out what looked like stripper underwear, piece by piece. As it would pull out each piece, each one naughtier than the next, the crowd that had gathered around would let out a cheer. This seemed to encourage the raven to dig deeper and it didn’t stop until every single piece was out of the bag and lying on the ground. There was a Vegas sticker on the back of the bike so I guess whatever happened in Vegas didn’t stay there. In any event it shows that ravens like to be in the limelight.

I had stopped at an overlook to check things out and another car there had their radio playing, loudly, way too loudly for Yellowstone anyway, and as fate would have it Madonna was playing. She was doing that song Vogue and after a few choruses of Strike a Pose this ravens latent musical abilities had to find release somehow. It too began striking a pose and didn’t stop until enough other visitors had threatened to lynch the radio player and he turned the radio off. This just goes to show that you can’t mess with genetics. This raven couldn’t sing but it could let out, that musical expression it had, in the only way it knew. In dance. Sure it was a quiet dance, not very exuberant but not exactly sedate either, but it still allowed it to release that pent-up musical energy we know is in every bird. I just wish the radio playing guy had been playing James Brown’s “I Feel Good” instead. Would that have been cool or what? For those of you who’ve been living under a rock for the last 75 years and don’t know “I Feel Good” here’s what it sounds like.

I bet ravens from all over the park would come to join in.  Now that would be something to see.

Epic Fail

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EpicFail8736Bald Eagle  Yellowstone                      click to enlarge

At the beginning of the season, which starts in early spring, the songbird tryouts are held in Yellowstone National Park. Birds from all over the country fly in to audition and try to sell their stuff. It’s absolutely huge if you get picked to be one of the parks resident songbirds and the competition is incredibly tough.

This competition is a pass/fail selection process so each performer chooses their very best material to present to the judges. They only get one shot at this so the pressure is immense. The judges are unyielding in their quest for excellence and show the various tryouts little or no mercy in evaluating their performance. It can be brutal to hear their critiques.

The selection process is open to anyone who wants to try and the only requirement is that they be a bird. This young lady is back for her eighth straight year and although she is persistent that doesn’t increase her abilities. She has failed to be accepted each of the eight years despite several tearful attempts to sway the jury. The judges are looking for birds that sing melodious songs that are simple, easy to repeat, and identifiable. Ms. Maseve LaNez has never gotten past the first few stanzas of her perennial favorite “America the Beautiful” and she didn’t again this year. In fact one of the judges said she sounded like Tom Waits in a blender. Now I know that they have to be truthful, and well constructed criticism is helpful, but that is just plain mean.

The tryouts are over for the year and there were plenty of great selections to fill the resident songbird slots. As usual there is a fine representation of larks, warblers, trillers, pippins, syncopates, callers, rollers, and a new category this year, jazz scatters. There is however for the eight straight year, no large Bald Eagles singing “America the Beautiful” in our nation’s premier national park. At first you might think that just isn’t fair somehow, but then you haven’t heard Ms. LaNez sing it either. The Judges were right.