Tom Waites a bum-pirate, well I never.
hahaha how did I not miss that, jesus christ.
Metal Machine Music
- Thread starter STN
- Start date
hahaha how did I not miss that, jesus christ.
Yeah Zhao was on the "he's a poseur" shit, not you. Sorry to confuse.
Now that changes everything...
of the first order.
you look up the word "poseur" in any respectable dictionary and there will be a picture of Tom Waits in his oh-so-transparent and laughable blue collar affectation, pretending to be an ordinary working man down on his luck, posing as the anonymous urban underdog who haunts dives filling up on cheap booze.
whether he came from a rich family or not is not even important. the point is that his music is not good enough so he invented this pretentious-as-fuck personality to sell it. it's a shameless cheap schtick, to be sure, but apparently works really well because it has a hell of a lot of people fooled. his fans will never see through the forgery, no matter how blatantly obvious it is.
i've cursorily enjoyed "nighthawks" when i was much younger, at a time more prone to self pity, but soon saw through the 1 dimensional shallowness of both his character and music.
with all of that said, i salute the man as a thespian, not a musician.
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Tentative Andy
I'm in the Meal Deal
Not sure how heavily I want to get into defending Waits, as I suspect he's not too popular round here anyway - but basically, the whole point, and the thing that has made him interesting, is that it's always all been an act.
So I take it you also hate David Bowie then. Or Notorious B.I.G.
Of course you could argue that their music IS good enough to do some pretending, which would of course be completely arbitrary.
Sorry to divert from Lou here, just the fact you think you can say things aren't good based on your idea that it has people who like it "fooled" is utter, pompous horse shit.
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and that is why i salute him as a thespian.
but the fact that he tries to pull one over on his fans, in attempting to disguise his act as reality, disguise the fiction as truth, makes him a Poseur.
imagine if the Beatles presented themselves as salt-of-the-earth Southern American folk-rock singers, and tried to hide the fact that they were from middle class Liverpool. that would be a poseur move wouldn't you agree?
nope. Bowie is not a Poseur because his act is blatantly an act. in fact he switches acts every year (just about) -- he is consciously playing chamelion, and being honest about it.
yes many rappers would also fit in the poseur category --- i.e. affecting a gangster persona which is far from reality.
and who said anything about "hate"? i said Tom Waits is a mediocre poseur. i don't "hate" him.
nochexxx
harco pronting
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droid
Guest
Not sure this is really fair TBH.
Part of Waits' appeal and schtick is the fact that he is constantly self-mythologising, to the point were its obvious that much of it is fantasy and bullshit. He's almost an anti-poseur... He's the guy who makes up so much stuff that its impossible to give any of it credibility, he doesn't fake authenticity - he's deliberately perverts it...
interesting way to look at it. but try telling this to the legions of die-hard fans who dress like him and affect his affectations and live by his music...
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droid
Guest
Number one rule of music appreciation - never judge an artist by their fans... If we judged dancehall and reggae by the sub-moronic rantings of people on DHR we'd never listen to it again...
Number one rule of music appreciation - never judge an artist by their fans... If we judged dancehall and reggae by the sub-moronic rantings of people on DHR we'd never listen to it again...
well no i would never do that, and it was not my point with the "try telling that to his fans".
my point is i'm not sure how many see the meta stuff you read into Wait's fictional character. and i'm not sure if i buy it either - i have not heard every album or know everything about the man, but seems to me his tongue is not really in cheek, and he's really trying to make-believe that he is the character he plays.
not like Bowie, who much better fits your description of "self mythologizing fantasy"...
I have never met anyone in my life who believes that Tom Waits is actually some sort of alcoholic carnie, but plenty who like the aesthetic. I don’t think you have to compose as Mr. Smith the bank manager to make honest music, just because that’s who you actually are. I’ve also never heard Tom Waits himself ever describe himself as being this sort of person. It’s like how Biggie uses this nihilist, hedonistic, hyper-violent exaggeration of himself to tell stories, or how Cormac McCarthy has an affection for the turn-of-the-century lawless American South, or how the New York Dolls all dressed up as chicks. It’s just a context, or aesthetic.
Likewise, I’ve never heard a Nick Cave fan ever say that he thinks Mr. Cave actually murders people for inspiration. If your criticism was simply that you don’t like his music, it wouldn’t have bothered me – everyone is up for grabs there. It’s how in a lot of your criticisms you seem to try and assert your position above the stupid, ignorant masses who can’t value things in the right way that really gets me.
Likewise, I’ve never heard a Nick Cave fan ever say that he thinks Mr. Cave actually murders people for inspiration. If your criticism was simply that you don’t like his music, it wouldn’t have bothered me – everyone is up for grabs there. It’s how in a lot of your criticisms you seem to try and assert your position above the stupid, ignorant masses who can’t value things in the right way that really gets me.
STN
sou'wester
I'm not an enormous Waits fan, though I do love Big Time. I read some interviews with him and he seemed like a chief, which is beside the point I suppose. I agree with Sick Boy, insofar as I think he is one of the artists whose fans suspend disbelief most - they know it's a fiction, but it's a fiction they like (and one I don't, especially, I think it's rather corny); they like Waits's ideas of himsef, his persona, not the fact that he actually leads some Algrenesque existence surrounded by dwarves and one-legged sailors. I do find the fiction itself irritating (personally) but I don't find people believing it irritating, simply because I don't think they do believe it.
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padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
not a Waits fan by any stretch of the imagination, can't stand his music, but you're off there. the only ones who believe in his schtick are a certain breed of his fans. back when I was really into the punk/traveling scene here in the States, riding freight trains around & stuff, I used to run into tons of those guys, ex-punks who got really into some weirdly idealized version of Great Depression hobo culture and started wearing fedoras and carrying around banjos. I know, it's a strange country. even our white middle class dropouts can't get it right. anyway, also who cares if he's a poseur? CCR, who I also hate, were from a suburb of Oakland but obviously their fans don't care if they weren't born within 1000 miles of any bayous.
Tentative Andy
I'm in the Meal Deal
Hahaha, I always thought CCR were lucky not to be dragged into the whole 'faker's hate' annals. The music's mostly great though innit, I guess that must be part of what gets them off the hook. Very tight and stylish sounding.
to me Waits will always be much more annoying, pretentious, corny, and poseur than Biggie, Bowie, NY Dolls, and most other musicians who incorporate an element of fiction into their public persona.
whether this is due to more than personal taste but because his project is genuinely more dishonest, manipulative or exploitative (of the underclass), i will refrain from arguing at this time...
it will suffice for me to say that his work consists of unoriginal and unconvincing card-board cut-outs; and the work of those others mentioned are often much more than that.
whether this is due to more than personal taste but because his project is genuinely more dishonest, manipulative or exploitative (of the underclass), i will refrain from arguing at this time...
it will suffice for me to say that his work consists of unoriginal and unconvincing card-board cut-outs; and the work of those others mentioned are often much more than that.