Tom Waits – Small Change

Bet y'all didn't know thats Cassandra Peterson aka "Elvira" on the front cover...well it is...

I own no Tom Waits albums ...

“So what am I doing here writing about Tom Waits?” A fair enough question, with a rather easy answer, “There’s no place to just write about the man, so I just picked an album, this album, and I’m writing about Tom Waits.”

I don’t like losers, Tom Waits isn’t a loser, but he’d likes to see himself that way, though only a loser in the sense that he’s smarter then everyone else, that he has an eye, an ear, and a spirit which both perceive and understand more then those around him. In no way is he tragic, in no way is he honest, Tom Waits is a character, a character who has developed and morphed over time. If Waits is in the area, I’ll be at the show ... I’ve been at his shows for forty years or so. I’ve met the man several times, had some short talks with him ... each time I stood there thinking that I don’t really want to talk to this guy anymore then I want to talk to the drunk college professor who’s been standing at my side trying to buy me a drink every five minutes for the last hour. To the professor I just say, “Get yourself a drink, I’ll join you in a bit.” To me, Tom just waves his hands with small gestures, rummages through his pockets, with the most memorable thing he ever said being, “Will you say that again later, I left my notebook backstage?”

I liked Waits in the old days, back when I could see him in a small club that brought drinks right to your table while the act was going on. I liked sitting there in a small booth off to the side, Tom nearly invisible, but not his music. His music filled the air, mixed with the cigarette smoke and caused small creases of knowing from the corners of my mouth as I smelled the sweet smoke of marijuana drifting across the room. There I’d sit with no less then four or five magazines, never a book, nothing to really concentrate on, just something to fill the space between me and Tom Waits ... who’s hushed harsh lyrics were spilling out over the stage like a leaking faucet, with the water circling a rather stained, well used, and all too small sink.

I’ve never pulled the plug on Tom either, I accept who he is and what he does. Everything about him is like something from a bygone era, yet magically in the moment. I have however, asked friends if they’d mind finding something else to play at dinner other than Tom Waits. Hearing Tom’s records has on more than one occasion ruined a perfectly good high, reducing me to long exhales of frustration and anxiety ... one for which even Valium refuses to help. Tom is like “Outsider Art,” but he’s been around so long that he’s nearly mainstream, and if not mainstream, certainly part of our collective consciousness; where even if we don’t know the Wait’s reference, we understand the joke.

Then Tom gained the acceptance he would seem to shun, and there I stood at the back of a rather large venue, unable to take a seat in a row of so many others, others who were lost in the darkness of the auditorium, with Tom on a stage that made him all too present. So I stopped going to his shows, with album after album flipping by year after year, like tearing off calendar pages, until Tom fell out of fashion and I could once again see him in a small venue. Of course there’s no smoking now, and just as the corners of my mouth are smiling with delight at the smell of some fine herb drifting across the room, a dorky college professor, or worse, lab assistant, tries to buy me a drink. Now I just drop one of my magazines on the chair next to me, saying, “It’s taken.”

But wait, the shows been over for at least forty minutes, and the guy asking for the barstool next to me is Tom Waits, and I say, “Sure, it’s all yours, but I don’t want a drink thanks,” and Tom just rubs the corners of his mouth with one hand, then both of his eyes with the heels of his palms and exhales looking deeply into the bar-back mirror, thinking something to himself, and then he scribbles that thought into a notebook he fishes out of his pocket.

I love the music of Tom Waits, but don’t own any of his albums …

*** The Fun Facts: In his hipster beatnik glory meets Hollywood noir period (1973-1980), Tom Waits was sharing the bill with a Burlesque show on the Lower East-Side of Manhattan, at the Club Copacabana. Photographed here taking a break between sets, he sits in the dressing room with a dancer from the show. The sultry posed girl is none other than Cassandra Peterson who would later be known as Elvira, "Mistress of the Darkness," though Peterson will not claim authenticity to his fact.

Also featured is a glass bottle of Miller beer, a jar of Vaseline, an amber pill bottle (no doubt Quaaludes), a Floral Design Tissue Box, a copy of Dxing Magazine, pack of Old Gold filtered cigarettes, can of Helen Reddy Hair Spary, a small circular makeup mirror with cocaine residue, and a box of Trojan Condoms ... yes, there's much more, this is all I could discern.

Review by Jenell Kesler

I know this just got a CD reissue, but will there also be a 2018 vinyl reissue? Thank you!

*EDIT* Just found that this gets reissued on vinyl along with the other Asylum era releases on June 18th, 2018. Cheers!

The cover girl is Cassandra Peterson later to become the character Elvira - Mistress of the Dark.