In late 2005 word came out that many years earlier Waits had done a commercial, despite his vocal disdain of the idea. While he did not sing or allow his music to be used, he did act as a voiceover performer in a 1981 ad for dog food. He decided to take the job around the time he was severing his ties with Herb Cohen. With Waits's contract status what it was, his financial state was becoming highly precarious. He read the following copy in the commercial for Purina's Butcher's Blend Dog Food:
As dog travels through the unbeaten and often tempting world of man, there's one thing, above all, that tempts him most â the taste of meat! And that is why Purina makes Butcher's Blend. Butcher's Blend is the first dry dog food with three tempting meaty tastes. Beef, liver ân' bacon. All in one bag. So c'mon, deliver your dog from the world of temptation. The world of Butcher's Blend. The first dry dog food with three meaty tastes.
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The commercial was well respected in the advertising industry; it won major industry awards in 1982 at the Clio Awards and the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.
While Waits had never exactly made a secret of this, it still came as a bit of a shock to fans. Not just that he had done a commercial after so many years of decrying them but that such a well-known one had flown under the radar for all these years. Waits had even made an offhand acknowledgement of it to writer Jonathan Valania of
Magnet
in 1999, “They always want me to do ads for underwear and cigarettes, but I never do them. I did one and I'll never do it again.”
63
Waits's name is plainly mentioned in the credits listed for the Clio Award. Still, the ad was pretty much forgotten until the copywriter for the ad tried to sell the original masters of Waits's voiceover, along with the signed Screen Actors Guild contract, on eBay. The sale was quickly withdrawn from the site, undoubtedly due to legal pressure, with the auction notice reading curtly, “The seller ended this listing early because the item is no longer available for sale.”
64
Since
Real Gone
has made it into the stores, no word of a follow-up of new material has surfaced. But that is no cause for alarm. In fact, it has become par for the course. Waits is a notorious perfectionist, and he's undoubtedly right now in a Northern California studio getting the kinks out (or putting the kinks into?) a new set of tunes. Or maybe he's trying to channel the inspiration he found at the Salvador Dali exhibit in the Philadelphia Museum of Art with his family.
65
He is choosing from amongst a voluminous catalogue of musical snippets and songs that he has birthed, hammering and ratcheting them into shape. Trying desperately to capture the sounds he hears in his mind. When it is as close as possible to the perfect aural junkyard that he imagines, he will share it with the rest of the world. Of this, you can be sure. You can also be pretty darned sure that it will be tonally interesting and lyrically stimulating.
No one knows what he'll come up with next, but at least one thing is certain. Whatever it is will be stimulating and thought-provoking. Waits is an artist who can still surprise and challenge himself and his audience thirty years into his career. How many others can make a similar claim?
To a degree, Waits's longevity can be attributed to the fact that he
has never been a flavor of the month. And you can't plunge from the heights if you've never scaled them. Waits is no superstar; he's a craftsman and an artist. He fabricates good, functional, sturdy, eclectic art and then dares his audience to try it out. Some people can't get beyond his raspy vocals, and that is a pity. They are missing something vital, something elemental, something that is at once both sexual and pure, violent and benign, profane and strangely spiritual. Tom Waits is a man with a highly original artistic vision that he has never allowed to become corrupted. Bones Howe recalls Waits saying to him, “The reason I got into music is so that I wouldn't have to conform. And if I have to conform with my music, then I shouldn't be in music anymore.”
Howe concludes, “I just think that [Tom Waits] has a lot of scope. He has a very wide vista to look from. I think that he's an immense talent. He's always looking. He's always experimenting. He's always trying to move from where he is. He doesn't sit still. He doesn't stay in one place. He wants to keep moving.”
As 1999 drew to a close,
Rolling Stone
asked a host of celebrities from different niches of the entertainment industry to articulate their thoughts about the new millennium. Waits was asked what he would say to the students of the class of 2000. “Run away and join the circus,” he told them. “Get a tattoo, hop a train. Plant a garden and save the seeds. Get married, have kids, wear a hat. Get good with a bullwhip. Don't lie, don't cheat, don't steal. Everyone must put beans on the table. Be devoted to the unification of the diverse aspects of yourself. Remember, most of what is essential is invisible to the eye. The quality of time you spend with someone far outweighs the quantity. And, there's a lot you can do with a wah-wah pedal and a bullet mike.”
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Elektra 5061 (1973)
1. Ol' 55
2. I Hope That I Don't Fall in Love with You
3. Virginia Avenue
4. Old Shoes (And Picture Postcards)
5. Midnight Lullaby
6. Martha
7. Rosie
8. Lonely
9. Ice Cream Man
10. Little Trip to Heaven (On the Wings of Your Love)
11. Grapefruit Moon
12. Closing Time
All songs written by Tom Waits.
Produced by Jerry Yester for Third Story Productions.
Asylum 1015 (1974)
1. New Coat of Paint
2. San Diego Serenade
3. Semi Suite
4. Shiver Me Timbers
5. Diamonds on My Windshield
6. (Looking For) The Heart of Saturday Night
7. Fumblin' with the Blues
8. Please Call Me, Baby
9. Depot, Depot
10. Drunk on the Moon
11. The Ghosts of Saturday Night (After Hours at Napoleone's Pizza House)
All songs written by Tom Waits.
Production and sound by Bones Howe for Mr. Bones Productions.
Asylum 2008 (1975)
1. Opening Intro
2. Emotional Weather Report
3. Intro
4. On a Foggy Night
5. Intro
6. Eggs and Sausage (In a Cadillac with Susan Michelson)
7. Intro
8. Better Off Without a Wife
9. Nighthawk Postcards (From Easy Street)
10. Intro
11. Warm Beer and Cold Women
12. Intro
13. Putnam County
14. Spare Parts I (A Nocturnal Emission)
(Tom Waits and Chuck E. Weiss)
15. Nobody Intro
16. Big Joe and Phantom 309
(Tommy Faile)
17. Spare Parts II and Closing
All songs written by Tom Waits except where noted.
Production and sound by Bones Howe for Mr. Bones Productions.
Asylum 1078 (1976)
1. Tom Traubert's Blues (Four Sheets to the Wind in Copenhagen)
2. Step Right Up
3. Jitterbug Boy (Sharing a Curbstone with Chuck E. Weiss, Robert Marchese, Paul Body and the Mug and Artie)
4. I Wish I Was in New Orleans (In the Ninth Ward)
5. The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me) (An Evening with Pete King)
6. Invitation to the Blues
7. Pasties and a G-String (At the Two O'Clock Club)
8. Bad Liver and a Broken Heart (In Lowell)
9. The One That Got Away
10. Small Change (Got Rained on with His Own .38)
11. I Can't Wait to Get off Work (And See My Baby on Montgomery Avenue)
All songs written by Tom Waits.
Production and sound by Bones Howe for Mr. Bones Productions.
Elektra 1117 (1977)
1. Cinny's Waltz
2. Muriel
3. I Never Talk to Strangers
(duet with Bette Midler)
4. Medley: Jack and Neal/California, Here I Come
(Tom Waits/Joseph Meyer, Al Jolson, and Buddy G. De Sylva)
5. A Sight for Sore Eyes
6. Potter's Field
(Tom Waits and Bob Alcivar)
7. Burma Shave
8. Barber Shop
9. Foreign Affair
All songs written by Tom Waits except where noted.
Production and sound by Bones Howe. A Mr. Bones Production.
Elektra 162 (1978)
1. Somewhere (from
West Side Story
)
(Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim)
2. Red Shoes by the Drugstore
3. Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis
4. Romeo Is Bleeding
5. $29.00
6. Wrong Side of the Road
7. Whistlin' Past the Graveyard
8. Kentucky Avenue
9. A Sweet Little Bullet from a Pretty Blue Gun
10. Blue Valentines
All songs written by Tom Waits except where noted.
Production and sound by Bones Howe. A Mr. Bones Production.
Elektra 295 (1980)
1. Heartattack and Vine
2. In Shades
3. Saving All My Love for You
4. Downtown
5. Jersey Girl
6. 'Til the Money Runs Out
7. On the Nickel
8. Mr. Siegal
9. Ruby's Arms
All songs written by Tom Waits.
Production and sound by Bones Howe. A B.H. Production.
Asylum 7200 (1981)
1. Heartattack and Vine
2. Jersey Girl
(alternate take)
3. Eggs and Sausage (In a Cadillac with Susan Michelson)
4. I Never Talk to Strangers
(duet with Bette Midler)
5. The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)
(live version)
6. Whistlin' Past the Graveyard
(alternate take)
7. Mr. Henry
8. Diamonds on My Windshield
9. Burma Shave
10. Tom Traubert's Blues (Four Sheets to the Wind in Copenhagen)
All songs written by Tom Waits.
Production and sound by Bones Howe.
Columbia CK37703 (1982)
1. Opening Montage
a) Tom's Piano Intro
b) Once Upon a Town
(duet with Crystal Gayle)
c) The Wages of Love
(duet with Crystal Gayle)
2. Is There Any Way Out of This Dream?
(vocal by Crystal Gayle)
3. Picking Up After You
(duet with Crystal Gayle)
4. Old Boyfriends
(vocal by Crystal Gayle)
5. Broken Bicycles
6. I Beg Your Pardon
7. Little Boy Blue
8. Instrumental Montage
a) The Tango
b) Circus Girl
9. You Can't Unring a Bell
10. This One's from the Heart
(duet with Crystal Gayle)
11. Take Me Home
(vocal by Crystal Gayle)
12. Presents
13. Candy Apple Red
*
14. Once Upon a Town/Empty Pockets
*
*
CD
bonus tracks on 2004 reissue.
All songs written by Tom Waits.
Production and sound by Bones Howe.
Island 422-842 469-2 (1983)
1. Underground
2. Shore Leave
3. Dave the Butcher
(instrumental)
4. Johnsburg, Illinois
5. 16 Shells From a Thirty-Ought-Six
6. Town with No Cheer
7. In the Neighborhood
8. Just Another Sucker on the Vine
(instrumental)
9. Frank's Wild Years
10. Swordfishtrombone
11. Down, Down, Down
12. Soldier's Things
13. Gin Soaked Boy
14. Trouble's Braids
15. Rainbirds
(instrumental)
All songs written by Tom Waits.
Produced by Tom Waits.
Island 7 90299-2 (1985)
1. Singapore
2. Clap Hands
3. Cemetery Polka
4. Jockey Full of Bourbon
5. Tango 'Til They're Sore
6. Big Black Mariah
7. Diamonds and Gold
8. Hang Down Your Head
(Kathleen Brennan and Tom Waits)
9. Time
10. Rain Dogs
11. Midtown
(instrumental)
12. 9th & Hennepin
13. Gun Street Girl
14. Union Square
15. Blind Love
16. Walking Spanish
17. Downtown Train
18. Bride of Rain Dog
(instrumental)
19. Anywhere I Lay My Head
All songs written by Tom Waits except where noted.
Produced by Tom Waits.
Asylum 9 60416-4-E (1985)
1. Ol' 55
2. Diamonds on My Windshield
3. (Looking For) The Heart of Saturday Night
4. I Hope That I Don't Fall in Love with You
5. Martha
6. Tom Traubert's Blues (Waltzing Matilda)
7. The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)
8. I Never Talk to Strangers
(duet with Bette Midler)
9. Somewhere (from
West Side Story)
(Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein)
10. Burma Shave
11. Jersey Girl
12. San Diego Serenade
13. A Sight For Sore Eyes
All songs written by Tom Waits except where noted.
Production and sound by Bones Howe for Mr. Bones Productions, Inc.
Produced by Jerry Yester for Third Story Productions