| Tom Waits – Step Right Up Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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C'mon, man! Not everything is written in code! You're obviously too young to remember the Ronco ads of the 70s. More annoying than the godawful Oxyclean, Magic Hose, "Make You POS a Brand New Car crap" ads now. As hysterically funny as the whole song is, the line "The large print giveth & the small print taketh away" says it all! |
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| Tom Waits – Step Right Up Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| And just think, he wrote this song 40 years ago..... | |
| Tom Waits – Step Right Up Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| I just wonder if advertising bugged the hell out of him back in the mid-70s, as it did everyone I knew at the time, his head has probably long since exploded! | |
| Tom Waits – Tom Traubert's Blues (Four Sheets to the Wind in Copenhagen) Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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"Stacy's" is a reference to shoes made by Stacy Adams that were extremely popular in the 70s and early 80s. Everyone who had a pair referred to them as "my Stacy's". I personally thought they were the most uncomfortable damn shoes I ever wore in my life--all form, no function. I paid about$60 for them (almost a week's pay for a 17 year-old on his own in '78), wore them maybe 6 times and gave them to a guy in my building. Haven't given a crap about fashion trends since. "Waltzing Matilda" in this song at least, refers to being on the road, far from home and broke, period. Two of my brothers were successful folk songwriters in the late 60s-early 70s who sold pieces to the likes of Mac Davis, John Denver and Johnny Cash. Both told me all manner of experiences and observations go into song lyrics. Some are specific, others are "hybrids" that come from many different yet similar experiences. Occasionally something totally unrelated just works its way in perfectly. To me, that explains the different "origins" of the song Waits gives in his live prefaces. In one show, he says it's about "throwing up in a foreign country". In another, he mentions the real Tom Traubert. In yet another he talks about something else. I've also read interviews with Waits where he describes going through a period of thinking how "uniquely American" being a drunk is when he was writing many of the songs that appear on this album. We all want to know the true meaning behind such powerful lyrics as these and other songs Waits has written. Unfortunately, without being a close personal friend of his, none of us will ever truly know. My gosh, I remember how many wildly different theories I heard from friends & acquaintances for such songs as "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" & "25 or 6 to 4". Looking back, it's pretty damn funny. |
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| Bob Dylan – Bob Dylan's 115th Dream Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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Given this was recorded in '65 (when I was barely 4 years old) I'm sure the lyrics are full of hidden meaning and references. 90% of songs from that era did. I'm not here to divine any mystical understanding. I'm just stymied by the significance of 1) the bowling ball "that knocked me off my feet" and 2) whose "...foot came through the line". Sounds almost like a reference to Monty Python's Flying Circus. I laughed my butt off when the Captain wound up "stuck on a whale" that was the wife of the jailer! Great tune!! |
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