Small Change

by Tom Waits

It's dark, I'm sitting in a cheap hotel room in an semi-familiar city drinking warm beer out of a can- a city filled with both great memories of life, love and friends as well as heartbreak, loss and missed chances. Guess it's time to whip out the Tom Waits albums...

You'll see me reference my teen-aged years frequently in blog posts about musicians and albums because that's what most of my teen years were- living life vicariously through music. That's not to say my parents kept me locked in a cage, but through everything I did, I had either my tape or CD player (kids, ask your parents) or later, my brick of an mp3 player (teens, ask your twenty something year old older siblings).

I was a teenager when I decided I'd try Tom Waits, my brother Baz had 2 of his albums (1983's Swordfishtrombones and 1987's Frank's Wild years -part of Waits' 'Frank' trilogy that included 85's Rain dogs) and I fell in love with 'em! I listened to the 2 albums who knows how many times, could recite the words to '16 shells from a 30.6' without thinking twice about it and I would tell friends about this artist and these albums- including my other brother Jabba (yeah, I'm gonna do that internet thing of using fake names instead of my close friends/family's real names cause...) and my girlfriend at the time Beetlejuice (there's a story as to where she got that nickname from, it may be for another blog post), who was the type of girl who'd talk to her parents about a lot of things including her boyfriends eclectic taste in music, and as it turned out her dad was a Tom Waits fan too.

This rambling has a point, I swear:

Both Jabba and Beetlejuice kept referring to a song called 'The Piano has been Drinking' and would quote little lines in it- Jabba, in fact, was teaching English as a foreign language in France at the time and would use the song, specifically the 'has been' part to teach the 'past present continuous' a grammar set that isn't seen in many other languages.

But I tangent....

I hadn't heard this song, so I had to find this song and the album that came with it! (I've always been an album fan, I don't think I've actually bought a single since I was 5 years old and one was handed to me for free along with The Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles Official Soundtrack) and it is gorgeous! So grab a bottle of Scotch, a pack of Dunhills and your dustiest jacket!

Track 1 is Tom Traubert's Blues (Four Sheets to the wind in Copenhagen) and opens with a gorgeous piano melody overlayed with weeping violins- beautifully sombre and sad then Tom croons in with that opening line:

wasted and wounded; it ain't what the moon did

and the whole song of the aftermath of a bad night out fills the room as Waits tinkles the ivories (possibly ones that have, in fact, been tinkled on) the song is downbeat, lonely and is laced with the kind of hardship and heartbreak very few will ever truly feel in their life, and may all the luck in the world be given to anyone who ever has felt the pain that this man sings about.

To pick us up after that is Step Right Up and a powerful upright bass leads us in a song of commerce, bargain savings and that gadget the door to door salesman tells you does everything.

It lengthens, and it strengthens....

and it finds that slipper that's been lodged under your chair lounge for several weeks

the whole beat is toe tapping but using a minimal approach of just the upright bass, snare drum, Tom's voice in a higher register than on the last track and the occasional saxophone line punctuating the beat.

After that interlude, we're back on location of outside the nearby bar with Jitterbug Boy telling that story that we've all been familiar with at one point or another but never really acknowledge- that of the mad drunk just outside the bar

so you ask me what I'm doing here;

holding up this lamp-post;

flipping this quarter

trying to make up my mind

The whole album tells a story backwards (a point I will touch on in a bit), and this is the later stage of drunkenness, maybe just after that last bar you drowned your sorrows in has either kicked you out or called last orders for the night.

The piano tells the story in this, as much as Waits' voice- the drunk man's soliloquy is being matched counter note for counter note by the piano -this drunk man's whole story is being laid out for anyone who'll listen, he's been around- he's got drunk with Louis Armstrong and remembers the old songs but now his audience are the pigeons on the street and anybody who'll stop for a minute to listen as he decides what he does next.

If it's head I'll go to Tennessee

Tails I'll buy a drink

if it lands on the edge, I'll keep talking to you

We then lament again with I wish I was in New Orleans (in the ninth ward) as Tom coughs up the vocal intro before those weeping violins and that tearful piano comes in again, and the lovelorn antagonist of this reverse play laments where he is in life compared to his memories of where he was with:

a bottle and my friends and me

The story in the song is a man dis-placed, he's lost some, if not all, of his whole life and the woman he loved and he's left reminiscing in a bar about his glory days.

The music is much more orchestral here, but still has those classic jazz elements of a light snare and a saxophone punctuating the main beat.

We go back to light hearted bar banter here, with the great tune The Piano has been drinking (not me) as the barstool lothario defends himself by telling you his piano is the drunkard, not him. The piano is the key part of this, leading the melody that Tom sings around the melody telling the tale of the entire room in that night

cause the bouncer is a Sumo wrestler
cream puff casper milk toast
and the owner is a mental midget
with the I.Q. of a fencepost

Though it is meant to be light hearted, it's still quite sad as he tells the story of the tired, weary bar filled with tired, weary tenants and at the end pianissimo as he weeps 'the piano has been drinking ….not me, not me'

The sad man's story continues in Invitation to the Blues again piano led melody that Tom sings around, the whole thing a lament to his world and the situation this heartbroken man finds himself in

and you feel just like Cagney;

She looks like Rita Heyworth

at the counter of the Schwab's drugstore

You wonder if she might be single, she's a loner likes to mingle

we're in a diner now, either as a break from drinking for some lining or as a precursor to the 2nd round feast of booze to come. Saxophone periodically wails again as Tom laments where he is and why he's left alone.

There is a beautifully rendered sax solo in the middle 8 where Tom shows that he can let the instruments carry as much as his words, and there is some crying from that instrument before he begins to sing again with violins tearing at their plucked heart strings behind the piano.

Pasties and a G-string (at the Two O’clock Club) bangs in next, a mostly percussion led piece as Tom trades beats and rhythm with a drum as he tells about a mis-adventure in a strip joint (possibly the one pictured on the cover)- this is upbeat and going as our wayward drunkard is out to just have some fun an forget everything that has gone before. Each smashing cymbal is a declaration of victory

The piano then chimes in for our next track Bad Liver and a Broken Heart (in Lowell) and we are crying into our stout/ales/beers declaring

I don't have a drinking problem;

'cept when I can't get a drink

and we've just lost the love of all of these song, the beautiful lost girl of this whole album, that has caused this night of debauchery and this need to forget!

Tom's vocals tells the piano where to go, as it counters what he's saying with octave melodies and punctuated extra notes around each phrase. It's heavy, sad and it'll see you

at the bottom of a bottle of some bargain scotch

Now it's time to lose the girl, with The One that got away led by a bass and the faint click of fingers, our hero sings of the adventures going on that night each ending with 'the one that got away'

Whoever this girl was, he knows that she may have been the cause of a lot of problems and mental drains but she was still 'the one that got away'

The vocalist rests and the saxophone chimes in for a lament, for a few notes before Tom tells you the next story about the next victim of 'the one that got away'

he's at Ben Franks' every day

waiting on the one that got away

The story is told like a Personal Investigator's case notes of the occupants of his local bar. He knows these guys, and their stories buy he's no exception, cause he's lost his one too.

The eponymous track comes in next Small Change (got rained on by his own .38) that opens with that damn sax setting the mood, with a minor keyed cry before Tom declares

Small Change got rained on by his own .38

completely without backing melody- this track is a spoken poem set over the laments of the saxophone that is practically weeping of loss, death and missing lives. It's simplistic, beautiful and pulls right at the heart strings.

Like a Raymond Chandler story, this piece is a tale set in the 'noir' world about a body, a murder, and a bunch of people who 'didn't see nothing'

After that tale, there is the upbeat, positive and hopeful I can't wait to get off work (and see my baby on Montgomery avenue) and is the song about a man finishing work and having a reason to work and somebody to come home to.

The piano gets to play a positive major chord here as Tom declares

Well I don't mind working

cause I used to be jerking off

most of my time

...in bars

Keeping the melody going is the bass as it assists the piano in keeping that tune going, occasionally letting the piano match Tom's vocal rhythms, the song is sung by a man in love and having something to come home to.

The whole album tells the story of a man's journey from falling in love (I can't wait to get off work), losing himself after he loses her (Small change), lamenting her loss (the one that got away) then trying to forget her in bars (Bad liver through to Tom Traubert's blues -though this is all one night) strip clubs, street lamp-posts and eventually the gutter but backwards. The whole album is a concept album, telling a story of a man's love and loss, life and relationships but in reverse.

This album is for post-breakups, divorces and huge fights with the other half. Listen to it with a beer or a glass of whiskey n the rocks and enjoy!

Sidebar Story: How Tom Waits saved and strengthened my relationship with an ex's father

As I said, Beetlejuice's father was a Tom Waits fan.

He also wanted to kill me, one of the first times I met him, because I left a visible hickey/bite mark right in the middle of his daughter's neck....

I was young, didn't know what to do properly, just knew she liked what I was doing, so I kept doing it and the resulting hickey was seen and a series f dirty looks and looming posing on his part ensued...

But this was early February, and I was still around come December that year when Beetlejuice and Mammy Beetlejuice are doing their Christmas shopping and are blanking on what to get Dad. So Beetlejuice happens to bring it up in conversation whilst talking to me and I tell her about Tom Waits new (at the time) album 'Orphans' which is 3 discs of some really great, diverse material.

Beetlejuice and Mom get him it, and he loved it! Really dug the album and the gesture, and somewhere along the way, it's let slip where the seed for the idea came from.

A couple month's later, (maybe about a year after the hickey incident) I'm over at Beetlejuice's place, and next thing, I hear the familiar throaty croon coming out of the radio, and I casually stroll towards the stereo to hear it clearer, and I'm met with Daddy Beetlejuice giving me a look as he leaves the CD case on the kitchen table.

Nothing said, just an acknowledging look...

It was enough! We then knew we could talk music to one another, amongst other posturing bollocks that a 50+ and a 15-16 year old can relate on, but we definitely had common ground in Tom