glynnisjohns wrote:good.

Tom Waits

benadrian wrote:

glynnisjohns wrote:good.

Tom Waits

Tom Waits was born in Pomona and now lives in Petaluma or Bodega Bay or something. When'd he live in SD?

Cheers!

Ben Adrian

Thomas Alan Waits was born on the eighth anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He was born on December 7, 1949 in Pomona, California. He and his two sisters grew up moving around from city to city in California. His parents who are both school teachers divorced when he was 10. They then moved to National City. Tom's grandfather was christened Jesse Frank Waits and his father Frank Waits. Tom is Scottish and Irish from his father's side of the family and Norwegian from his mother's side.

Tom became interested in music early and began tacking up sheets of Bob Dylan's lyrics in his room and even framed some in the rest of his house. He would keep a pad of paper and pencil by his bed so that he could remember the lyrics that he would think up in the middle of the night. He taught himself how to play the piano at a neighbor's house and then learned the guitar on a Gibson.

As well as creating music at an early age, the persona that Tom is famous for soon appeared. He enjoyed entertaining his classmates and his teachers as soon as his secondary schooling. An art class teacher would let him play his harmonica for the class and sometimes he would be asked to get up on the tables and do his version of a "soft shoe". He also tried as soon as possible to grow a mustache and a goatee. Sal, Tom's employer at "Napoleone's Pizza House", used to joke that he had more hair growing wild on his ass than Tom could cultivate on his face.

During his adolescence, Tom spent quite some time keeping his cars running. He first had problems with his '54 Ford station wagon that he called a "bato wagon". He then worked on his '55 Buick which was to be inspiration for the song "Ole '55" which the Eagles covered. He then progressed to the '61 white volkswagen where he finally learned how to drive a stick shift.

Waits got into the music business at an early age. In the summer of 1972 he was working as a doorman at The Heritage in San Diego. He would get up between acts and perform on a small stage (I don't know if this was part of the job or just something management let get away with). These performances caught someone's eye, because Herb Cohen had signed him on to Asylum records at the age of 22.

chairman_hall wrote:It's okay for you Chicago lot you have got a good coherent scene with a long prestigious history. Just wanting to know how everyone else feels about their local scene.

We have a very poor history musically in the NE of England - Status Quo, Sting, Lindisfarne, Chris Rea - all shite. Nowadays the local scene is stifled by bands jumping on the angular punk bandwagon after maximo Park and Futureheads - it stinks.