I have a friend at work named Rusty, and the other day he came into the produce back room as I was trimming celery and said, "So Matt, yesterday I heard a song on the radio by that guy you're always talking about on Facebook, whatshisname--"
"Tom Waits?!" I nearly shouted.
"Yeah, that's him."
"And?"
"And... he's not really for me. Sorry"
I took a deep breath, then set my knife on the sink (so as to avoid any charges of involuntary manslaughter). I raised may hands in front of me and fixed Rusty in my eye.
"Whoa, bro--you cannot write off Tom Waits after hearing one song. That's like saying you don't like a movie after watching one half of one scene. Uh-uh. No way."
After a brief discussion (in which I likened the music of Tom Waits to a Forest, a Visiting Extra-Terrestrial, and the Entire Continuum of Human Existence), Rusty agreed to accept a cd from me, a cd containing one track from each Tom Waits album, so that he could dip his toes in the various Tom Waits pools. I delivered said cd the next day, and I am waiting to hear Rusty's thoughts. (I am highly optimistic, because Tom Waits rules.)
The point of this anecdote (roundabout though it may be) is that you can't listen to one--or even ten--Tom Waits songs and formulate a permanent opinion on the man or his music. I was not being facetious when I compared his music to the Entire Continuum of Human Existence, because it has it all: joy, sorrow, elation, fear, magic, death, love, hate, anger, peace, despair, hope. Tom Waits has a soft spot for the underdogs, losers, and freaks, and as a result he touches on the universal within us all. He sings about broken hearts and damaged souls, and if that isn't a little bit of each and every one of us, I don't know what is. Coupled with the fact that he writes in styles ranging from piano ballads and jazz numbers to blues and apocalyptic junkyard stomp, Tom Waits just isn't a guy to listen to only once.
And if you do, you'll only be cheating yourself.
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