Here's a review of the recording by Ulf Berggren, from the Raindogs
Listserv discussionlist, 1999 (reproduced with permission):
... "I wanna tell you a story about a young Mexican kid in downtown
Los Angeles." Yeah, it starts with ROMEO IS BLEEDING, swinging and
rolling, with some really wild falsetto screaming from Tom. He's
howling like a mad wolf at the moon, in a sort of conversation with
the saxophone. It's the perfect song to kick things off, you get in
the mood of it, and pretty soon you're sitting in the audience in
Sydney, Australia. And the year is 1979. (The sound quality of this
thing is fantastic, by the way.) After that opener Tom sits down alone
at the piano and starts singing something that gets a laugh, but I
can't make out what it is. (Paris? Berries?) He laughs and changes the
tune: "Well, the evening stumbled home, with his tie undone, and the
moon sweeps up the avenue as usual..." It's ANNIE'S BACK IN TOWN with
not so much of the usual Kentucky Avenue piano; it's grown into more
of a song of its own. It's beautiful, but it's only the start of a
sort of "stream-of-consciousness" part of the show that goes on and
on.
Next up is a very different WITH A SUITCASE, slow ballad style. "I'm
gonna get a nose job, and change my name." That's over quick and then
there's a song about a buddy of Tom's, Chuck E Weiss, "the kind of guy
who would steal his own car." (And just listen to him laugh!) It's
JITTERBUG BOY and believe me, it's a wonderful version. He's lost all
his money on fast women and slow horses, unreliable sources, so while
he's holding up this lamp post, he sings a short snippet of I GOT
PLENTY OF NUTTIN', immediately followed by an equally short I DREAM OF
JEANIE WITH THE LIGHT BROWN HAIR flowing like a river. "But Jeanie
won't talk to me anymore. Ah, who needs'er! Let her marry that
insurance investigator! I don't care!"
That leads him into BETTER OFF WITHOUT A WIFE. Wonderful up-tempo
performance with tinkling piano. (It also contains one of the worst
"funny" lines I've heard Tom do: "The coppers rode him right out of
town... He was arrested on 17 counts of child molesting". He doesn't
get a big laugh for that one.) Some piano wanderings and it's back to
Jitterbug Boy, great great scat singing, growling and wheezing (and
possibly yet another song, but I can't identify it, "It's just down
the road, down the road". "Some people say that swing's on the way
out. I don't care what they're talking about". I mean it HAS to be a
tune, but which one is it?
And then "Cause I wish..." I WISH I WAS IN NEW ORLEANS, even greater
than the original. And we can hear the band come in, and so can Tom,
and the saints go marching in too, as usual, so of course (of course?)
it leads into a fullblown and totally brilliant version of WHEN THE
SAINTS GO MARCHING IN. At first you think it'll only be a line or two,
but then the band gets it together and Herbert Hardesty goes all
Satchmo and God, it's swinging! Terrific trumpet solo, wonderful
drums. The guitar fills come in as an afterthought, like "wait up! I
wanna be in on this!". He IS in New Orleans here!
Then it slows down for SINCE I FELL FOR YOU. It suits him
perfectly. He goes off on a story about a girl called Susie Montelongo
(sp?), sister of Joe Montelongo who played in a band called the
Rodbenders and always wanted to kill him. Anyway, Susie wore these
angora sweaters, and Tom's crazy about angora sweaters. And not only
that, she had angora socks and angora shoes! "I believe she was
originally FROM Angora." Anyway, every time he sees an angora sweater
nowadays, he thinks "maybe inside will be Susie Montelongo". He
doesn't know where she is now... "Maybe she's in New
Orleans... well... I'll... be... there".
He finishes the song quickly and the audience explodes, but there's no
rest. The drums start beating out RED SHOES BY THE DRUGSTORE, with Tom
hissing into the microphone. It's "a Christmas Carol, a tale of woe."
This is a hypnotic and dangerous version that easily outshines the one
on Big Time and... yeah, well, the one on Blue Valentine too.
Staying with the yuletide theme, he starts playing "a little story
about Minneapolis, Minnesota. A looooong way from Miami (?). It's COLD
in Minneapolis, you spend about six weeks waiting for your nuts to
drop back down again", but suddenly he breaks into a pretty SILENT
NIGHT before the real CHRISTMAS CARD FROM A HOOKER IN MINNEAPOLIS
begins. It's a slow sort of free-form interpretation of the song, with
loads of feeling. When he gets to "that record by Little Anthony & The
Imperials" (GOIN' OUT OF MY HEAD) he goes into the chorus of it,
"Goin' out of my head over you, out of my head over you, I'm out of my
head over you". So finally I know which record that was... "Oh, it's
been all this time..." He finishes Christmas Card beautifully.
There's a short break with a lot of applause before the band REALLY
starts cooking and Tom delivers a marvellous version of PASTIES AND A
G-STRING, mixed with HOKEY POKEY. ("Do the hokey pokey and shake it
all about, that's what it's all about!") Try to sit still to this one!
It's not one of my favorites on the Small Change album, but this is
how it should sound. Excellent sax solo, and a very jazzy guitar solo
too. I was on some Russian (I think) Tom site the other day, where
this was referred to as "Hockey Cookie". I love that! And anyway he
DOES get the puck out of there, cause side A of Dave's tape ends with
the crowd acknowledging a great performance.)
I don't know if there's an edit or not, but I like to think there
isn't. Side B starts with an aching trumpet belting out the melody of
Gershwin's SUMMERTIME, leading into what is nowadays my favorite Tom
Waits performance. The audience gives the trumpet some little
applause, but when Tom says (kind of in awe), "Mr Herbert Hardesty"
they ROAR; hell I'd forgotten there were so many of them! Then Tom
gets down to business:
"It rained all day the day that Elvis Presley died. And only a legend
could make it do that! You know, I remember when my baby said we were
through, and she was gonna walk out on me. It was Elvis Presley who
talked her out of that." Man, Elvis gave you your first leather
jacket, he taught you to comb your hair just right in a filling
station bathroom, he gave you a rubber on prom night and told you to
look real sharp! "And you know, I think maybe he just got a little
tired of repairing all the broken hearts in the world" (and Herbert
just won't stop playing 'Summertime'). He was "the kind of guy who
teaches you everything he knows, who gives you the courage to ask her
out. In a small little town where dreams are still alive. There's a
hero on every corner, and they're all on their way to a place called
BURMA-SHAVE".
And you just sit back for one of the saddest stories ever told. At
least on a "pop" record. Incredible vocal delivery, staying with the
original lyrics at first, and then: "How old are you? Ah well, that's
a problem..." "You know a guy named Eddie Alvarez? No? Well, Presley's
what they call ME. Why don't you change the stations, baby? And count
the grain elevators, watch'em go by in he rear view mirror." "Any way
you point this thing has gotta beat the hell out of the sting! Cause
every night I go to bed with all my dreams. I lie down and they die
right here every morning. So come on, Presley, and drill me a hole
with a barber pole, cause I'm jumping my parole like a fugitive
tonight. Let's have another swig of that sweet Black Velvet. That
sweet Black Velvet... Let's pass that car! Are you brave enough? We
can get there just before the sun comes up. You and me, on the way to
Burma-Shave. Cause I'm going crazy in this town, man. My old man gives
me nothing but shit! I don't know. I don't care what they say. Let's
get out of town tonight!" "Vrooooom, vroooooom, vroooooom" (That's Tom
making passing car noises.)
The trumpet solo kills me (incorporating 'Summertime' again). It gets
a well deserved BIG hand, and Tom goes: "I was talking to my
brother-in-law and he said there was a wreck out on the highway. He
saw the smoke from the tires and the twisted machine. Oh, but all
you've got is just a nickle's worth of dreams! They've been swindled
from you on the way to a place called Burma-Shave. You let the sun hit
the derrick, and cast a bat wing shadow up against the car door on the
shotgun side."
And no matter when I hear it, I almost start to cry when he says "And
you know something baby, I swear to God, when they pulled you from the
wreck, you still had on your shades. And dreams are growing wild every
night, just this side of Burma-Shave. And there's another young girl
out by the highway tonight, with her thumb out. Just a few trucks
going by... Vrooooom." "Fish are jumpin', fish are jumpin', and the
cotton is high". Tom delivers a heartfelt vocal to Summertime and it's
so great I can't find words for it. Then this long and wonderful
number comes to a close. "Hush pretty baby, don't you cry. Don't you
cry. Don't... you...cry."
The band immediately goes into a cracking, swinging instrumental with
Tom saying, "It's quite a joint, innit? We've been playing nothing but
toilets lately." He introduces the ensemble: On sax, flugelhorn and
trumpet "my main man" Mr Herbert Hardesty (and jeez! the crowd goes
apeshit), on guitar Mr Arthur Richards, on upright bass Mr Greg Cohen,
on the drums Mr "Big John" Thomassie. "My name is Perry Como, thank
you again and good night". The band is cooking now and the crowd too,
but it has to stop sometime. Thunderous ovations of course, and then
the first encore:
"I kinda borrowed your unofficial national anthem on this little
thing" (and the crowd goes WILD again). "I'll give it back when I'm
done". "I met this girl named Matilda, you know. And I'd had a little
too much to drink that night. So this is about throwing up in a
foreign country." And if you listen carefully you can hear Tom's
little aside to Herbert Hardesty and Greg Cohen: "With feeling". And
that's just what you get. TOM TRAUBERT'S BLUES down under is laid back
and pretty (yes, even more so). He changes the rhythm of the chorus a
bit, possibly so all the Aussies won't start singing along? Naaah, no
real danger of that, they're quiet as church mice (except for one
fucking idiot who thinks this is the right moment to wolf-whistle, and
the usual one of course, who whoops to say "This has my stamp of
approval". I hope they killed 'em both, quietly). Accompanied by bass
and beautiful flugelhorn, it's a magnificent rendition of a
magnificent song.
And then there's a barely noticeable edit, so the next encore starts
just as soon as he's said "good night" The sax plays the intro to
SMALL CHANGE and Tom takes his time telling the tale. "This is a story
that takes place on 23rd street in New York city on a HOT summer
night. A place called Chelsea Hotel. On this particular night, there
was an incident that never made the papers. No one squandered over
this thing. Kojak wasn't there this night. Some little guy with bovine
perspiration on the upper lip area walked over and said 'Bag 'im and
tag 'im'." (And there are a few in the audience who recognize the
Zappa quote, delivered in an FZ kind of voice.)
Halfway through, the whores hiking up their skirts and fishing for
prophylactics make him think of BIG SPENDER, so he goes into that one,
"Hey big spender, why don't you spend a little time with me?", and
Herbert picks it up beautifully, answering every line from Tom before
finding a nice backup for the verse: "The moment you walked in the
door, I could tell you were a hot big shot, a real big spender. Cool
to look at, so divine." He sings the rest of the verse too, but I'm
damned if I can make out the words. They slide back into 'Small
Change' and after some great sax playing (what's that tune he plays at
the end? It's 'Big Spender' again, isn't it?) it's over. And I can't
help wondering what songs are missing on this boot! Maybe the songs
that are on Kansas City? Who cares, huh? Are you still awake?...
Love and drinks all 'round, Ulf
And if you say you've got a better boot, I swear to God you'd
have to tell a lie.