As Waits took to the stage to open last year’s Glitter & Doom tour each night with Lucinda/Ain’t Goin’ Down, the former morphed into the latter with such a bone machine-shaking, you’d be forgiven for thinking it the work of a man 40 years Waits’ junior. Hell, he even manages to funk up Such A Scream with some chicken scratch guitar and industrial percussion.
Waits’ live albums have never qute hit the mark: Nighthawks At The Diner saw his early boho shtick running thin, while the Big Time LP paled in comparison to its conceptual companion film.
G&D offers one disc of a truncated Glitter & Doom set, performing largely post-Bone Machine material recorded at various stops on the tour. Disc Two, however, is a 35-minute wheeze of Waits gags, edited together as some sort of standup gig. As with Nighthawks’ legendary ramblings, it’s worth the entry alone; and you wonder whether Waits now sees himself splitting his characteristics (he’s offered cassette-recorded messages to Dylan’s radio show, while Dylan, in turn, recently pretended that Waits was his stage guest in a truly bizarre Halloween gig gag in Chicago) to make his dichotomies more easily accessible. Mostly, though, you sense he feels a little uncomfortable where to go next. Perhaps that official Big Time DVD could help point the way?
