Tom Waits – Le Grand Rex, Paris, 25/07/08

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There have been 90 murders so far this year in London. Only this weekend someone was shot down using a machine gun in a British city. Oil prices are skyrocketing, and big business is taking the money while we tighten our belts. The credit crunch is leading to depression, and the newspapers and general press are pulling us down with them. Iran may or not be building Nuclear weapons. The President of the United States of America authorised the execution of a US Soldier. Israel and Palestine are no closer to bring peace to the Middle East. God’s away on business.

It is in this light Tom Waits brings in his “Glitter and Doom” tour to Europe. On a sweltering day in the middle of Paris, there is a sense of nervous expectation surrounding ‘Le Grand Rex’, the cities oldest cinema. Smoke swirls around the outsides of the building, as 1,000 Gauloise mark the time before we are allowed in to the building, to join with Waits in his exquisite Vaudeville world. The fact that the venue are running well over an hour late only adds to the sense of expectation. By the time the lights dip and the lights in the roof of the art deco cinema begin to twinkle, and the figures of Waits and his band shuffle on to the darkened stage, the crowd are on the verge of exploding. Suddenly a light goes up…

”BAH-BHUM, BAH-BHUM, BAH-BHUM”

It’s Waits, centre stage, mounted upon a circular podium like a circus ring. He is surrounded by his band and about 20 Gramophone horns and loudspeakers. His rasping ‘mouth percussion’ spits out the opening to Orphans’ ‘Lucinda’, which in turn merges into the junk shop boogie of ‘Ain’t Goin Down To The Well’. As he prowls his self imposed circus ring, the sharply dressed Waits stomps his feet on the wooden boards, creating yet more percussion and getting sawdust to billow from the floor beneath him. After this two track intro he thanks the crowd in French before breaking into a sublime version of ‘Rain Dogs’, which seems a little throw away- a reminder that Waits was there way before Zach Condon and Beirut hit the scene with their appropriation of Gypsy folk. The set continues on, skipping backwards and forwards though out Waits 35 year career. A little ‘Rain Dogs’ here, a little ‘Bone Machine’ there, skipping on to ‘Mule Varations’ in a minute. While he can play it mean and brooding, as he does late in the set with a spine tingling ‘Dirt in the Ground’, Waits is every bit the showman.

The grand surrounds of Le Grand Rex are a perfect compliment to Tom Waits’ fairground persona, allowing him to invite people into his world on the extended version of ‘Eyeball Kid’. At this point in the set he addresses the audience and tells them about his glass eye, and that he never takes it out on stage, but tonight he is going to do so for the first time. Then he drops it. The band play a hit. The eye bounces back up. ‘Oh, by the way it bounces’ he says, a smile gracing his face. He then mimes throwing the bouncing eyeball around the venue, each time the band striking when he ‘catches’ it. Then the band continue to play the song. Halfway through Waits pirouettes to the back of his ring, and changes out of his trademark trilby into a mirrored hat. The lights drop and 5 beams of white light hit the hat and turn Waits into a giant human mirrorball. A few seconds of magic lighten the doom. Two songs later Waits the ringmaster steps up to the piano, and tells a story of how last time he was in Paris he went swimming in a pond and ingested lots of water. Three months later he had stomach pains and he found out he ingested frogspawn that had turned into frogs, and he couldn’t bare to abort them so they live happily inside him to this day. Even this groan worthy joke has the crowd in raptures. The fact that he can follow it with the beautifully tender trilogy of‘You Can Never Hold Back Spring’, ‘Johnsburg, Illinois’ (dedicated to his wife) and ‘Tom Traubert’s Blues’ wins the crowd over even more (if that is possible at this stage) and to cap things off leads the entire audience in a sing-a-long version of ‘Innocent When You Dream’. The set closes with Waits back in his show-ring, belowing out the gruff refrain of ‘Make it Rain’ as a shower of glitter falls all around him, illuminating the dark.

By bringing a showmans tricks, humour, and a vast back catalogue to his show, Tom Waits was able to bring light to the darkest of spirits this evening, and one suspects he does so on every evening of this tour. But it isn’t just a one man show, and his band (including his son, Casey, who the proud father takes time to introduce to the crowd, and the phenomenal Vincent Henry, who at times succeeds in stealing the limelight from Waits with his virtuoso displays on both saxaphone and harmonica). As the crowd spill out of the venue the air once again fills with the sweet, sticky smell of Gauloise, a collective sigh of relief and contentment is palpable. For these two hours Tom Waits has succeeded in lifting us out of the gloom.

Set list
Lucinda / Ain’t Going Down To The Well No More
Rain Dogs
Falling Down
The Other Side Of The World
Lucky Day
God’s Away On Business
Hold On
Eyeball Kid
Jesus Gonna Be Here
You Can Never Hold Back Spring
Johnsburg, Illinois
Tom Traubert’s Blues
Innocent When You Dream
Lie To Me
Hoist That Rag
Heigh Ho
Lost At The Bottom Of The World
Hang Down Your Head
Poor Edward
Black Market Baby
Dirt In The Ground
Make It Rain
Way Down In The Hole
Jockey Full Of Bourbon
Anywhere I Lay My Head

http://youtube.com/watch?v=I_yEX3d98t8

More photographs here.