To Hell with all Your Favourite Things (Blood Money - Tom Waits)

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Product:	Blood Money - Tom Waits
Date:	11/07/02 (36 review reads)
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"Jill Murphy asked me to write about one of my favourite things to help her celebrate her fourth anniversary of cancer-free living and to remind ourselves of all the nice things in the world. It takes more muscles to make a frown than a smile you know. If you'd like to join in, whether you've only just joined dooyoo, or you've been here ages, you're more than welcome. Just write about one of YOUR favourite things, make your title "A Favourite Thing: [your choice]" and include this paragraph at the foot of your opinion. And post before Friday, 9th August."


If Tom Waits is to be believed (and I think he should be), then "everything goes to Hell anyway". In which case all my favourite things will go to hell, and so will all of yours. Which ought to make Hell a rather nice place to be for everyone. So hoorah to that.

(The only exception to the 'everything goes to hell' rule is cancer, and all other human ailments. They have to sit on their own in limbo. And my boss - he's not allowed in either).

Anyway, Satan's minions promise me that if I behave wickedly enough (like posting this in the wrong category because I felt like posting for Jill today), then once I join them in that hot and smokey place, they'll play this album on the Infernal Stereo for all eternity...

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The simultaneous release of 'Blood Money' and 'Alice' this year confirm that Mr Waits is leagues ahead of his contemporaries. 'Alice', with its conflicting dialogues of perversion and compassion, is the more complex of the two, but 'Blood Money' is just as marvellous in its own way. The opening track 'Misery is the River of the World' typifies the album's wicked black comedy as Tom stomps back and forth like the devil with a hangover, battered by the clatter of calliopes, gongs and bells, his coal-dry voice growling the f
unniest lyric he's written in years:

"All the good in the world you can put inside a thimble, and still have room for you and me
Oh, if there's one thing you can say about Mankind, its there's nothing kind about man...
...Misery is the river of the world, so lets row, row , row!"

The grim humour cackles throughout the album, its lack of faith in humanity stamped enthusiastically into every note. Hardly surprising considering it based on Robert Wilson's play about insanity, medical torture and infidelity in 19th Century Prussia ('Alice' too is based on a Wilson play, as is Waits' earlier 'The Black Rider'). From 'Everything Goes to Hell', with its skeletal bongo dance to the tune of "Why be sweet, why be careful, why be kind - a man has only one thing on his mind - why ask politely, why say please?", to matter-of-fact assertion "I'd sell your heart to the junkman baby, for a buck, for a buck" in the demented sea shanty 'Gods Away on Business', Tom revels in the meanness of it all. He's digging around in the dirtiest recesses of our lives, looking for such attributes as lust, greed, violence and despair and crying "Ha-ha!" at the frequency with which he finds them.

At times the comedy blackens to the point where it disappears into the shadows entirely, as in 'Another Mans Vine', a song thick with malevolence and betrayal that nevertheless manages to paint a most seductive portrait of adultery, with its horny "Now I see a red rose, I smell a red rose, a red rose blooming on another man's vine". At other times it seems Tom's just playing devil's advocate, the nastiness belying a heart of gold. For even here, in the darkest of tales, he finds room to affirm both love and humanity. Listen to the achinging beautiful 'Lullaby', sounding like a crow weary of a life scavenging life's tragedies, tryi
ng to coo like a dove. Or the naive optimism of 'All the World is Green', played to lazy, jazzy stroll: "Pretend that you owe me nothing, and all the world is green. We can bring back the old days again, and all the world is green". But then those green rolling fields are revealed to be nothing more than Nature's sexy dress, draped over world of merciless cruelty, when Waits bellows "You can drive out Nature with a pitchfork, but it always comes roaring back in".

Waits evidently enjoys getting his teeth into Wilson's material, into the slutty, vicious world of brothels, shadowy alleyways and drunken brawls. Just as much, he enjoys rummaging through his and co-writer wife Kathleen Brennan's trademark musical territory of the last decade or so. Discordant rhythms, Weill-esque cabaret, and every musical instrument you can think of, from plaintive cellos, foot-tapping harmonicas, and percussion of every shape and size (if it makes a noise, Tom'll hit it).

Its a delight to hear him in such form after the acclaimed by to my mind overrated 'Mule Variations'. Though it doesn't quite hit the heights of 'Bone Machine', 'Blood Money' has all the sinister eccentricity of 'The Black Rider', and is more consistent than that album, switching from comedy to tragedy with such ease that the two faces of the coin seem to merge as they spin, making this one very satisfying whole.

"If you live in hope, you're dancing to a terrible tune". This might be a hopeless portrayal of humanity, but it sure sounds good to me.

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