Thread by @SethCotlar

If you need a song to make you feel good about the world and about America, take a listen to this recording from 1929. If it doesn't make you want to do a little jig, then there's not much I can do for ya. open.spotify.com/track/6BH0YEFs…

It's a Cajun tune that's included on Harry Smith's iconic Anthology of American Folk Music. Here's a blog that offers detailed information on each song included in that anthology. oldweirdamerica.wordpress.com/2009/12/14/31-…

In his 1997 book, Invisible Republic, Greil Marcus famously referred to the world captured by Harry Smith's Anthology (and paid homage to in Dylan's 1967 Basement Tapes) as "Old Weird America." popmatters.com/144451-the-old…

What got me thinking about this was Tom Waits' album Swordfishtrombones (1983) which, when I first heard it in the depths of the Reaganite 80s, felt like an homage to that haunting, damaged, and beautiful (but submerged) tradition of American weirdness. open.spotify.com/track/3my6Uz9R…

Remember that the big songs of 1983 were Toto's Africa, Come on Eileen, Mickey by Toni Basil, Mr. Roboto, and Phil Collins' version of "You Can't Hurry Love." Hearing Swordfishtrombones was like having a 200 year old sturgeon break through the ice and flop into your boat.

I'm sure I'm reading far too much into this...but this opening song of Waits's 3-album trilogy (Swordfish, Raindogs, & Frank's Wild Years) struck me as invitation to immerse oneself in this old weird broken and beautiful America. I fell for it hook line and sinker.

But I filtered Waits's album through the prism of the Vietnam War, the rotting American empire for which it stood, and the men who'd been destroyed by it--physically, emotionally, or both.

The narrator of Shore Leave (song #2 on the album) writes a letter home to "his baby" back in Johnsburg, Il...which is the title of this beautiful song that is #4 on the album. But...
open.spotify.com/track/4iyHsFZs…

The song between Shore Leave and Johnsburg, IL...the song that gets between that soldier's longing to return home and the homage to "his baby" is this song...Dave the Butcher, one of the most intentionally ugly songs I've ever heard. open.spotify.com/track/3tAMPO8S…

Who is Dave the Butcher? I've heard some people say Waits modeled it on an actual butcher named Dave who he met in Ireland. Could be. The song sounds like someone hacking away at a carcass.

But in the 80s I read Dave the Butcher (who is invoked in the album's next, ominous song) as a stand in for the lecherous, violent, damaged, PTSD-suffering vet who perhaps lived inside the person singing Johnsburg, IL...or was just a compatriot of his.

The most well-known song on this album is Frank's Wild Years, a deadpan story set to jaunty lounge music about a man who gets drunk one day & burns down his house, killing his wife & her beloved dog in the process. Last line: "Never could stand that dog." open.spotify.com/track/3tAMPO8S…

It's one of the most haunting songs in the American catalog, precisely because of how casually Waits invokes Frank's murderous cruelty. But the song only makes full sense when put in the context of the next song on the album, Swordfishtrombone. open.spotify.com/track/3DFPyKrm…

"Well, he came home from the war with a party in his head
And an idea for a fireworks display
And he knew that he'd be ready with a stainless steel machete
And a half a pint of Ballentine's each day"

I read this entire album as a mournful homage to the damaged, violent, emotionally-stunted white masculinity of post WWII America...the masculinity we saw glitzed up in Gordon Gecko, slicked back in Ronald Raygun, and engaged in racist revenge killings in Bernard Goetz.

Yet, as evidenced by the last song on the album, Waits could still find something of beauty in this history. Perhaps he was eulogizing the passing of this world. open.spotify.com/track/3pJFQtu5…

But I can't listen to these Tom Waits albums from the 1980s in the same way I did then, because a lot has happened since then. That "old weird America" he conjured seemed vaguely ominous, but mostly harmless. Filled with some dangerous dudes, but they were lone wolves.

I grew up in a town like the one depicted here. It was union blue in the 1980s. It's deepest MAGA red now...the small town resentments conjured in this song now feel like the stuff of Gab, 8chan, 2nd Amendment revenge fantasies. open.spotify.com/track/4HQjDdQY…

On this song from Franks' Wild Years Waits establishes what I take to be a key theme of the trilogy--America struggles with its efforts to keep its devils down in the hole. As Marc Ribot's jagged guitar suggests...it's not an easy task. open.spotify.com/track/27MNsCvg…

This live version of the song always struck me as more tortured...more uncertain about who will ultimately prevail in this struggle against America's devils. open.spotify.com/track/16YL10YB…

To bring this to an overly tidy end...it feels like we are currently living in a world where all of these violent, vengeful, imperial, misogynist demons Waits wrote about are very much walking amongst us, not fossilized in an old, sepia-toned, weird, lovable past.

When I listen to this Tom Waits trilogy, this is the book that now comes to mind, not Greil Marcus's loving homage to Old Weird America. amazon.com/Bring-War-Home…

And if this song doesn't capture Donald Trump's desperate, ugly, offkey, and futile attempt to get revenge on those who have long reviled him as a pathetic rube, then I don't know what is. open.spotify.com/track/4EeRzn7N…

I think what I most admire about Waits is his ability to conjure characters like this who are broken and sad on one hand, yet also totally compelling and irresistibly sympathetic on the other. I just never thought one such person would get elected president.