Visitas domiciliarias

Spare Parts 2

I wanna thank you all very much for comin‘ this evening. It really made my night. It would have been real strange here if nobody would have showed up.

I‘d like to introduce my group this evening and... it‘s been a real pressure and... A pressure and a pliviledge to work with these gentlemen.

I‘d like to introduce...

Please give a warm round of applause for Michael Melvoin(1) on piano!

On saxophone, Pete Christlieb!(2) On bass, Jim Hughart!(3)

And on drums, Bill Goodwin!(4)

Yeah... They all come from good families, but... over the years they just kinda individually developed some ways about them that just aren‘t right, you know.

I was real pleased... I noticed everybody coming in this evening, you‘re all decked out in full regalia and everything and... appreciate you gettin‘

dressed up for an affair such as this. You know, I think it‘s something that I‘ve always tried to be as concerned about as possible and... Somebody said

to me one day, ‗Christ, Waits! You look so goddam raggedy, why don‘t you get

yourself something to wear, you know?‘

I said, ‗Yeah well, not a bad idea‘. Maybe a serious seersucker Saturday

evening cranberry accoutrement ensemble would be nice. So I went down to

Seider & Seider(?) and I said, 'I want something sharp!' I said, 'I‘m kinda in the

market, in the neighborhood of something like... maybe some green gabardines

with boneroo britches. And a leviticously duteronomous sort of catastrophic

lunch-box Stetson, you know. I‘d like to get some Danger High Voltage slacks, with high top, mid noon, brushed suede penny loafers, so I can be passing out wolf tickets(5) regardless of where I go.' Walk into the 20 Grand

Club... And the Soul & Inspirations are playin‘. Yeah, and you‘re cuttin‘ a rug and pullin‘ on a coat and emotin‘. Band is kickin‘ into some long

version of ‗Harlem Nocturne‘ or somethin‘. You get designs on a girl in the corner. You say, ‗Say baby... live around here?‘

Yeah... I think I‘m gonna plant(6) you now and I‘m gonna dig you later.

Make

like a bakery truck and haul buns. Make like a(7) hockey player and get the

puck out of here. I gotta go see a man about a dog(8), I‘ll see you later.

Thank you very much for comin‘ this evening!

Written by: Tom Waits and Chuck E. Weiss

Published by: Fifth Floor Music Inc. (ASCAP), ©1975

Official release: Nighthawks At The Diner, Elektra/ Asylum Records, 1975 (Transcribed by Ulf Berggren as sent to: Tom Waits eGroups discussionlist, 2000)

(1) Michael Melvoin. Born: Oshkosh/Wisc. May 10 1937. Orchestral arrangement and direction on: The heart of Saturday night. Piano on:

Nighthawks at the diner. He is based in Los Angeles and has worked extensively in the studios. Has not yet gained the fame that he deserves for his impressive technique and strong jazz improvising talents. He began playing piano when he was three but graduated from Dartmouth in 1959 with a degree in English. However, Melvoin soon chose to become a professional musician. He moved to Los Angeles in 1961 and worked with many top West Coast players and performers including Frank Rosolino, Leroy Vinnegar, Gerald Wilson, Paul Horn, Terry Gibbs, Joe Williams, Peggy Lee, Gabor Szabo and off course Jim Hughart. Played for Phil Spector's "Wrecking Crew ". Although busy in the studios, he recorded for Concord in the mid-'70s. Has worked occasionally in L.A.

area clubs and often teams up with singer Bill Henderson. He led two albums for Liberty in 1966 and one for Discwasher in 1979

Michael Melvoin on studio recordings with Waits in 1974: "I knew that I was dealing with an extraordinary, different kind of talent. There were a

couple of things about it. First of all, the lyrics ... I would describe them as top-rank American poetry. I thought then, and I still believe, that I was dealing with a world-class poet. My degree from school was in English literature, so I felt that I was in the presence of one of the great Beat poets. Tom's work was "a counterpoint to that experience. I was amazed by the richness of it. The musical settings that he was using reminded me of certain roots jazz experiences that I thought were very, very

appropriate for that." (Source: "Wild Years, The Music and Myth of Tom Waits". Jay S. Jacobs, ECW Press 2000. Telephone conversation. June 25, 1999)

(2) Pete Christlieb: Born: Los Angeles, CA, 16-02-1945. American jazz-clarinetist, flutist and saxophonist. He also played on the 1976

"Mainstreet" album

(3) Jim Hughart: James David Hughart. Born: Minneapolis, MI, July 28 1936. American jazz bass player. Played together with Waits from 1975 till 1980. Also played with Ella Fitzgerald amongst others

(4)B ill Goodwin: William Richard Goodwin. Born: Los Angeles, Ca., January 8 1942. American percussionist. Played on the "Mainstreet"

album of 1976. In 1995 he played on the Bellingham Festival of Music (5) Wolf tickets:

A) TW: "Another one I like is wolf tickets, which means bad news, as in someone who is bad news or generally insubordinate. In a sentence, you'd say, "Don't fuck with me, I'm passing out wolf tickets." Think it's either Baltimore Negro or turn-of-the-century railroad use." (Tom Waits 20 questions. Playboy magazine: Steve Oney. -- March 1988)

B) Sell a woof/ wolf ticket, to: phr. [1960s+] (US Black) 2a. To boast, to brag. 2b. to talk nonsense, to lie [trash talk] 2c. to threaten, to intimidate (buy a woof ticket) ("Cassell's Dictionary Of Slang". Jonathon Green. Cassel &

Co., 1998. ISBN: 0-304-35167-9)

C) "As early as 1985, Clarence Page of The Chicago Tribune defined selling woof tickets as "an invitation to fight." In 1996, Jane Kennedy of The San Francisco Examiner called it "telling lies." In The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Betty Parham and Gerrie Ferris wrote in 1992,

"Although its origin is uncertain, 'woof ticket' is a somewhat dated phrase that refers to an outrageous or exaggerated boast meant to intimidate or impress the listener." Woof is a Black English pronunciation of "wolf."

According to Geneva Smitherman's 1994 "Black Talk," a woof ticket is "a verbal threat, which one sells to somebody; may or may not be real. Often used as a strategy to make another person back down and surrender to what that person perceives as a superior power." Tom McIntyre,

professor of special education at Hunter College in New York, noted nearly a decade ago: "Woofing is especially effective against those who are unfamiliar with it and don't realize that it is most often 'all show and no go.' . . . The menacing behavior can usually be defused and eliminated by informed, tactful action." He advised teachers to "look secure and self-assured while you withdraw." In the context of the basketball star

Howard's remarks, woof tickets are not to be bought; on the contrary, he uses the phrase to show that performance, and not intimidating attitude, is needed to "get it together." ( "On Language by William Safire, Crying Woof!". Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company. Submitted by Monika Kottenhahn, eGroups Tom Waits discussionlist. October, 2000)

D) Also mentioned in Trouble's Braids, 1983: "Passin‟ out wolf tickets, downwind from the bloodhounds."

(6) Plant, to: v. [early 19C] to abandon, to leave ("Cassell's Dictionary Of Slang". Jonathon Green. Cassel & Co., 1998. ISBN: 0-304-35167-9)

(7) Make like a...: v. [1950s+] (US) as part of a number of phrs. all of which mean 'go away', 'get lost', e.g. make like a fart and blow away, ...

dragster and lay rubber, ... drum and beat it, ... banana and splitt, ... cow pat and hit the trail, ... paper doll and cut out, ... tree and leave, ... rubber and roll on. ("Cassell's Dictionary Of Slang". Jonathon Green. Cassel & Co., 1998. ISBN: 0-304-35167-9)

(8) See a man about a dog, have to:

A) The traditional and jocular excuse to leave a person, group, or room.

Thus = excuse me, I have to leave, c1920 usu. used to excuse oneself to go out and buy bootleg liquor. c1940 usu. used as an excuse to go to the bathroom (Dictionary Of American Slang, Wentworth/ Flexner)

B1) phr. [mid-19C+] a euph. used to disguise one's need or desire to visit the lavatory.

B2) [mid-19C+] an excuse to absent oneself from home in order to visit one's mistress or to go out for a drink ("Cassell's Dictionary Of Slang".

Jonathon Green. Cassel & Co., 1998. ISBN: 0-304-35167-9)

C) "This has been a useful (and usefully vague) excuse for absenting oneself from company for about 150 years, though the real reason for slipping away has not always been the same. Like a lot of such colloquial sayings, it is very badly recorded. However, an example turned up in 1940 in a book called America‘s Lost Plays, which proved that it was already in use in the US in 1866, in a work by a prolific Irish-born playwright of the period named Dion Boucicault, The Flying Scud or a Four-legged Fortune. This play, about an eccentric and superannuated

old jockey, may have been, as a snooty reviewer of the period remarked,

―a drama which in motive and story has nothing to commend it‖, but it does include our first known appearance of the phrase: ―Excuse me Mr.

Quail, I can‘t stop; I‘ve got to see a man about a dog‖. I don‘t have access to the text of the play itself, so can‘t say why the speaker had to absent himself. From other references at the time there were three possibilities:

1) he needed to visit the loo (read WC, toilet, or bathroom if you prefer);

2) he was in urgent need of a restorative drink, presumed alcoholic; or 3) he had a similarly urgent need to visit his mistress. Of these reasons—

which, you may feel, encompass a significant part of what it meant to be male in nineteenth-century America—the second became the most common sense during the Prohibition period. Now that society‘s

conventions have shifted to the point where none of these reasons need cause much remark, the utility of the phrase is greatly diminished and it is most often used in a facetious sense, if at all." (Source: World Wide Words is copyright © Michael Quinion, 1996–2004. All rights reserved)