I’ve seen gigs cause a fuss in my time, but the stir occasioned by the pending shows by the great Tom Waits reminds me of the eighties, when the whole country would scramble for tickets to what might only be only Irish show by a major star that year. Who knew the mad old bugger was so beloved here?
6 Comments
Yeah, well, you’ll miss Aliens verses Predator on Film4.
(btw, when did Film4 start showing Aliens verses Predator style movies?)
[…] me for using an Neil Young song title for a post about the Tom Waits gig but as Fergal points out, there has been a touch of Waits-Fever online today as people finally got a chance to splash out on […]
I’ve decided to take a shocking but overdue stance on the whole matter.
First: the gig is a rip-off and a total jip. Too much cash for such a large capacity venue which has deceitfully been called a ‘cellar’ when it’s actually a massive tent…
AND (here’s the nasty bit) Tom Waits is and has always been great and moving and powerful and a whole bunch of wonderful, but he is now an overrated, overhyped, oversentimental, oversentimentalised chancer.
Believing this will ease the pain and justify my lack of ticket as well as provide the preemptive strike in the gloating war between me and smug ticket-holders. I was into Waits before it was universally cool to be into Waits (or even know his name). Now I’m anti-Waits before it’s recognised he is a cod (but not before he makes another few cool million ripping the rest of you clueless sheep off).
All these big shows are a rip-off really. A whole generation of ageing rockers are lining their pockets at the expense of us clueless sheep who just want to see them before they snuff it. By the end of the summer I’ll have spent hundreds on Neil Young, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen and Bruce Springsteen, all of whom are well past their heydays. Part of me knows I’m being ripped off, but I can’t help myself.
I’m one of the ‘sheep’ going on Friday. Sure it’s a ludicrous amount of money to pay for a gig but TW is probably one of the few artists currently living who’d make me part with so much of the hard-earned.
I generally despair of the money-grabbing ticketmaster-ising of gigs in this country and this is the first time I’ve ever paid more than 60 or 70 quid for a ticket (I refused to cough up for Neil, Leonard etc). After the TW gig I’ll return to my position of non-attendance again. This is an exception.
While there are plenty of “over the hill” chancers milking punters dry I don’t think you can describe Tom as one. He’s still maintaining a pretty high standard of challenging work – and why wouldn’t he be? Age shall not wither him (well, not artistically anyway).
I can’t wait.
That’s an interesting point Fústar – TW has long looked like a very old man, he’s certainly long sounded like one.
Perhaps, in a deal of a similar family to the one made by Dorian Gray, Waits sold his visual and audial youth in return for the immortality of his artistic abilities.
Or maybe he just decided to keep trying new things, even if they sometimes don’t work, as opposed to churning out slight variations of a single theme like some “classic” acts tend to do. I dunno.