He started his career in the early 1970s as a singer in spit 'n' sawdust bars. Initially, he was deeply influenced by the beat generation, novelists like Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, and poets like Allen Ginsberg and Charles Bukowski. Waits is often compared to Charles Bukowski, being similar both in content and lifestyle
Waits was unable to make a living from his music in the 70s because his classical bar music, based in pre-rock, and Americana, blues, and Vaudeville styles were not popular. Waits's voice back then was soft, warm and clear.
Waits subsequently developed a devoted cult following and has influenced subsequent songwriters, despite having little radio or music video support. In fact, his songs are perhaps best known to the general public in the form of cover versions of more visible artists, such as the Eagles, Bruce Springsteen and Rod Stewart.
Although Waits’s albums have met with mixed commercial success in his native United States, they have occasionally achieved gold album sales status in other countries.
Lyrically, Waits's songs are known for atmospheric portrayals of seedy characters and places; he sings about the losers on the streets: alcoholics, junkies, prostitutes and social outcasts, although he also includes more conventional and touching ballads in his repertoire.
While opening for Frank Zappa, the audience catcalled and refused to listen to him; he was an unsuitable match with Zappa's avantgarde style.
Countless cigarettes, gallons of alcohol and many all night parties eventually left their trace in his face and voice.
His more recent gravelly voice can be first heard on Small Change. This distinctive voice turned out to be his trademark. It is described by the Music Hound Rock Album Guide as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months and then taken outside and run over with a car". Small Change with its sentimental ballads, its bar-jazz attitude and Film Noir-oriented stories turned out to be his biggest commercial success in the 1970s.
Waits subsequently developed a more unique style. His songs have grown more abrasive since then, and the arrangements have turned more surreal and experimental with every new record. His life brings him to new visions, as indicated by the direction taken in his "Alice" release.
While composing the soundtrack for Francis Ford Coppola's One From The Heart Waits met Kathleen Brennan, his bride-to-be. They married in 1980 and she helped him quit drinking and smoking. Since their marriage they have been working together on his albums as co-producers and co-writers. It is hard to say which part belongs to her and which to him, but it's easy to see that they make a perfect team. Additionally, his eldest son Casey can be heard on turntables and percussion on Waits's album "Real Gone".
One of Waits's greatest successes was the album "Swordfishtrombones", released in 1983. It struck with his critics and fans alike. He achieved a new level of song writing and left former conventions (and his earlier career) behind. All songs, whether ballads, jive or jazz are played in a completely different way. It seems that Waits had taken the musical archetypes of these styles and made them his own. All tracks are in the quintessential Waits style. They have a striking rawness and listenability and they set the stage for his success and his future career.
The Bad As Me Songfacts reports that 36 years after the release of Waits' first album, Closing Time in 1973, Bad As Me became Waits's first ever top 10 album in the US when it debuted at #6 with 63,000 sales.
In the late 1980s Waits discovered an outlet for his creativity in composing musicals. His first Musical was named "The Black Rider", and is based on "Der Freischütz" by Carl Maria von Weber. It was co-produced by Robert Wilson and the lyrics come from William S. Burroughs. The story is slightly reminiscent of Kurt Weil's and Berthold Brecht's "Three Penny Opera" and the 1930s. The debut performance of the play was in 1990 at the Thalia Theater, Hamburg and has been played by various theatre groups since then.
Waits was also responsible for two other musicals, which later became albums released simultaneously in 2002. One was the musical "Blood Money," which covers the "Woyczek" theme of Georg Büchner. This one is one of the darkest works from Waits. The other musical is based on Lewis Carroll's classic children's novel, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland". "Alice" is very romantic, dreamy and soft, and contains one of Waits most romantic songs. Even though they were released at the same time, the bootlegs of the "Alice" musical were long before traded between fans and were just rearranged and re-mastered for the official release.
Besides many film contributions as composer – the Internet Movie Database imdb.com lists 47 appearances of Waits as composer and 38 soundtracks containing songs by Waits - he also is an actor with a total of 25 appearances, ranging from some mini-roles as a trumpeter in "Heart of Saturday Night" and the R. M. Renfield in "Bram Stoker's Dracula" to the major role of Zack in Jim Jarmusch's "Down by Law". He recently appeared in Roberto Benigni's "The Tiger and the Snow", playing You Can Never Hold Back Spring at Benigni's wedding dream. Even more recently, Waits played Mr.Nick (the Devil) in Terry Gilliam's "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus".
In addition to a number of concert videos, he also appeared in the critically-acclaimed concert feature film "Big Time" (1990).
Waits has always refused to allow the use of his songs in commercials. He has filed several lawsuits against advertisers for using his material without permission. Waits also successfully sued an advertiser for using a work that was stylistically similar to his work, after he had declined to sell them the rights to his song. He has been quoted as saying, "Apparently the highest compliment our culture grants artists nowadays is to be in an ad — ideally naked and purring on the hood of a new car. I have adamantly and repeatedly refused this dubious honor."
Army Ants
Tom Waits Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
The Arachnid Moths lay their eggs inside other insects along the borders of fields
Or roads in clusters of white cocoons
The Ribbed Pine Borer is a longhorn beetle
Their antennas are half the length of their body and they feed on dead red pine
Robber Flies, with their immobile heads, inject a paralyzing fluid into their prey
That they snatch from life in mid-air
The Snow Flea's mode of locomotion, strange and odd
To enable moisture absorption
The female Praying Mantis devours the male while they are mating.
The male sometimes continues copulating even after the female has bitten off his head
And part of his upper torso
Every night wasps bite into the stem of a plant, lock their mandibles into position
Stretch out at right angles to the stem and, with legs dangling, they fall asleep
If one places a minute amount of liquor on a scorpion
It will instantly go mad and sting itself to death
The Bombardier Beetle, when disturbed
Defends itself by emitting a series of explosions
Sometimes setting off four or five reports in succession
The noises sound like miniature popgun blasts
And are accompanied by a cloud of reddish-coloured, vile-smelling fluid
It is commonly known that ants keep slaves
Certain species, the so-called Sanguinary Ants in particular
Will raid the nests of other ant tribes and kill the queen and then kidnap many of the workers
The workers are brought back to the captor's hive where they are coerced into performing menial tasks
And as we discussed last semester, the Army Ants will leave nothing but your bones
Perhaps you've encountered some of these insects in your communities
Displaying both their predatory and defense characteristics
While imbedded within the walls of flesh and passing for
What is most commonly recognized
As human
The lyrics to Tom Waits's "Army Ants" is a collection of facts about various insects and their behaviors. Through describing the physical characteristics and behaviors of the different insects, Waits provides a commentary on the brutal and predatory aspects of nature, which can be seen as a metaphor for human existence. The opening lines about the Whirligig Beetles and their ability to sense ripples in water suggest a heightened awareness and sensitivity to the world around them. The Arachnid Moths laying their eggs inside other insects is an act of parasitic behavior, which is echoed in the description of the Snow Flea's unique mode of locomotion that allows it to absorb moisture from other sources.
Line by Line Meaning
The Whirligig Beetles are wary and fast with an organ to detect the ripples
Whirligig Beetles are observant and agile, using their unique sensory organ to detect disturbances in the water and react quickly
The Arachnid Moths lay their eggs inside other insects along the borders of fields
Arachnid Moths deposit their eggs inside other insects at the edges of cultivated land or meadows
Or roads in clusters of white cocoons
Alternatively, they may lay their eggs in clusters of white cocoons along roadsides
The Ribbed Pine Borer is a longhorn beetle
Ribbed Pine Borers are species of longhorn beetles
Their antennas are half the length of their body and they feed on dead red pine
Their antennas are proportionately long, and they consume decaying red pine wood as their primary food source
Robber Flies, with their immobile heads, inject a paralyzing fluid into their prey
Robber Flies use immobile heads to inject paralyzing fluid into their prey
That they snatch from life in mid-air
They capture their prey while in flight
The Snow Flea's mode of locomotion, strange and odd
Snow Fleas have an unusual and distinctive mode of movement
With a spiny tail mechanism with hooks and a protracted tube from the abdomen
The Snow Flea moves using a spiny tail with hooks and an extended tube from their abdomen for absorbing moisture
To enable moisture absorption
This mechanism helps them absorb moisture
The female Praying Mantis devours the male while they are mating.
The female Praying Mantis typically consumes the male while copulating
The male sometimes continues copulating even after the female has bitten off his head
In some cases, the male may continue mating despite losing his head to the female's bite
And part of his upper torso
The female may only consume part of the male's upper torso in some instances
Every night wasps bite into the stem of a plant, lock their mandibles into position
Wasps bite into plant stems and secure their mandibles to hold onto the plants while they sleep through the night
Stretch out at right angles to the stem and, with legs dangling, they fall asleep
They extend their bodies out perpendicular to the stem with their legs hanging and rest in this manner
If one places a minute amount of liquor on a scorpion
When a small amount of alcohol is applied to a scorpion
It will instantly go mad and sting itself to death
It will react abnormally and may attempt to sting itself to death
The Bombardier Beetle, when disturbed
When agitated,
Defends itself by emitting a series of explosions
the Bombardier Beetle defends itself by discharging a sequence of explosive reactions
Sometimes setting off four or five reports in succession
This can happen multiple times in a row, with four or five explosions occurring one after the other
The noises sound like miniature popgun blasts
The explosions produce sounds that resemble small gunshots
And are accompanied by a cloud of reddish-coloured, vile-smelling fluid
These explosions result in a cloud of disgusting reddish fluid exiting the beetle's body
It is commonly known that ants keep slaves
Ants are known to keep other ants captive as slaves
Certain species, the so-called Sanguinary Ants in particular
Sanguinary Ants, a specific type of ant species,
Will raid the nests of other ant tribes and kill the queen and then kidnap many of the workers
will attack other ant colonies, kill the queen, and take many of the worker ants as prisoners
The workers are brought back to the captor's hive where they are coerced into performing menial tasks
These captive workers are taken back to the attacking ant colony, where they are forced to perform unwanted and laborious duties
And as we discussed last semester, the Army Ants will leave nothing but your bones
As we previously learned, Army Ants are extremely destructive and leave nothing but skeletal remains in their path
Perhaps you've encountered some of these insects in your communities
It's possible that you have had past experiences with some of these insects in your local environment
Displaying both their predatory and defense characteristics
These insects exhibit qualities related to both their attack methods and defensive tactics
While imbedded within the walls of flesh and passing for
While these insects are often obscured, hidden within the flesh,
What is most commonly recognized
they are still identifiable by their most noticeable features
As human
as being part of the human biological ecosystem
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, JALMA MUSIC
Written by: KATHLEEN BRENNAN, THOMAS ALAN WAITS
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
@ARTHUR-fl1fc
Look up the "death spiral" or "circle of death" that is characteristic of army ants, specifically. They are actually blind and follow each other. We, as this intelligent creature, can see where it gets them, yet many of us follow ppl going nowhere.
@zetetick395
But
they seem so decisive! > > > >
@wadesternator4787
If anyone has a test in high school take notes
@nonconformist9991
Is he talking about ants or the history of humanity?