Tag Tom Waits

Entries 6 Total

…the quality of our suffering

Sep 1, ’12 9:42 PM

Tom Waits

“The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.”
—Tom Waits

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Step Right Up

Apr 18, ’11 9:42 PM

Step right up, step right up, step right up,
Everyone’s a winner, bargains galore
That’s right, you too can be the proud owner
Of the quality goes in before the name goes on…

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The Smuggler’s Waltz

Mar 5, ’11 9:42 PM


Tom Waits performing “The Smuggler’s Waltz/Bronx Lullaby” (Poetry in Motion, 1982). TV documentary directed by Ron Mann. Released on video by Miramax in 1982, released on LD/ CD-ROM by Voyager Press (the Criterion company) in 1992 (VP1020L)

The Smuggler’s Waltz/Bronx Lullaby by Tom Waits

Daggers of moonlight
Murder the sheets
And the stink of a four dollar room
And Daddy’s gone a-hunting
For a dime bag schoolboy
Tied up with a yellow balloon

So hush little baby, Daddy must go
I cover you up with a blanket of snow
By the time I make Jersey
You’ll be in heaven
In a pretty blue shoe box I know

So sing a song of ten grand
With a pocket full of dough
And I can’t take you to Baltimore
Wake God up in Heaven
Have him look down below
There’s a little lost angel
Blooming in the snow

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The Laughing Heart

Feb 16, ’11 9:42 PM

The gods wait to delight in you…

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Nirvana

Jan 5, ’11 9:42 PM

“…and they hadn’t noticed the magic.”

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West Coast WordFests

Oct 1, ’10 9:42 AM

The West Coast roars into October with two of the hippest gatherings of wordsmiths and their readers: Litquake and Wordstock.

Litquake 2010Litquake runs from October 1st through October 9th in San Francisco. The festival kicks off with cocktails at the 111 Minna Gallery. Marcus Books celebrates its 50th Anniversary with a reading and book-signing by Terry McMillan.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti and City Lights Booksellers are being fêted with
Litquake’s Barbary Coast Award. Tom Waits is the special guest. Patti Smith and guitarist Lenny Kaye pay tribute along with Winona Ryder; Michael McClure; New Yorker cartoonist Eric Drooker; Ishmael Reed; former San Francisco Poet Laureates Jack Hirschman and devorah major; Beth Lisick; Michelle Tea; the Marcus Shelby Quartet and many others.

Other highlights include: Litflicks: Litquake’s Literary Film Festival, the Literary North Beach Walking Tour, a reception for the Center for Literary Arts All-Stars, and Kidquake. There will also be a number of readings and panels throughout the week.

The festival concludes with the infamous, indefatigable Lit Crawl on Saturday, October 9th. It’s so big they had to break it up into three phases:

Lit Crawl – Phase 1
Lit Crawl – Phase 2
Lit Crawl – Phase 3

Wordstock 2010Wordstock is Portland’s Book & Literary Festival. It runs from October 4th through October 10th.

Panels and readings galore. Indie presses such as: Chin Music Press, Copper Canyon Press, McSweeney’s, and Tin House Books. And writers – lots of writers: Aimee Bender, Lan Samantha Chang, Timothy Egan, Stephen Elliott, David Rakoff, Mona Simpson, Joanna Smith Rakoff, Floyd Skloot, and lots more.

From their website:

Wordstock is an annual festival of books, writers, and storytelling in Portland, Oregon. To date it has hosted over 550 writers, who have read and performed for nearly 55,000 people at past festivals. Wordstock features ten author stages, a book fair with over 150 exhibitors, a special children’s area and children’s literature stage, a series of workshops for writers and for K-12 teachers, a special broadcast of Live Wire!, the popular public radio variety show, featuring writers from the festival, and more. Although it only began in 2005, Wordstock is already the largest celebration of literature and literacy in the Pacific Northwest, and is one of the largest festivals of its kind in the nation.

You’ll want to get there early…

By the time we got to Wordstock we were half a [thousand] strong
And everywhere was a song and a celebration…

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