I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time as well. I was listening to the album Guero by Beck a while back (read: months ago), and I found myself marveling at the lyrics. Yeah, I know, Jon, I just said the other day that lyrics are pretty low on my list of things I pay attention to while listening to music. This time I was listening, however.<\/p>\n
Anyway the point is that when you just grab snippets of lyrics from Guero they’re remarkably Waitsian. I decided to make a little quiz and have you choose which was which, and then I never got around to it. However, having just completed The Chronological Waits Challenge I figured it was an appropriate time to do this.<\/p>\n
I just looked up the lyrics online and snagged some from:
\nA.) Guero by Beck
\nB.) Swordfishtrombones by Tom Waits<\/p>\n
Now see I’m assuming that to anyone who is not immediately familiar with both artists that these will be pretty much indistinguishable, and for anyone that is just low-level familiar with both it’ll be the same. And of course for anyone that knows one from the other it should be easy. Or, you know, this is what I think, but my perception is tainted as this is my idea and I culled the lyrics myself.<\/p>\n
So here you go. Feel free to comment on which you think is which. I changed the spacing to cut up the flows and make you concentrate on the words themselves.<\/p>\n
I’ll give the answers tomorrow if I remember.<\/p>\n
1.) See me kickin the door with my boots, broke down out in a ditch of old rubbish. Snakes and bones in the back of your room handing out a confection of venom. Heaven’s drunk from the poison you use. Charm the wolves with the eyes of a gambler. Now I see it’s a comfort to you.<\/p>\n
2.) I rolled down the national stroll and with a big fat paycheck strapped to my hip sack and a shore leave wristwatch underneath my sleeve.<\/p>\n
3.) With her hands tied back her rags are burnin’, calling out from a landfilled life. Scrawling her name up on the ceiling, throw a coin in the fountain of dust.<\/p>\n
4.) I’d drag all that I owned down the dirt road to find you. And my shoes, worn-out and used, they can’t take me much farther.<\/p>\n
5.) There’s a rumblin’ groan down below: It’s a place I’ve found. There’s a world going on underground.<\/p>\n
6.) Walking to the other side with the devil trying to take my mind and my soul’s just a silhouette on the ashes of a cigarette.<\/p>\n
7.) And the window is busted and the landlord ain’t home and Butch joined the army. Yeah that’s where he’s been and the jackhammer’s diggin’ up the sidewalks again.<\/p>\n
8.) Sometimes the jail can’t chain the cell and the rain’s too plain to tell all alone by a barren well. Scarecrow’s only scaring himself.<\/p>\n
9.) Well I slept in the holler of a dry creek bed and I tore out the buckets from a red Corvette.<\/p>\n
10.) I’m coming over. See me down at the station by the lane with my hands in my pocket, jingling a wish coin that I stole from a fountain that was drownin’ all the cares in the world.<\/p>\n
11.) I hung my rain-soaked jacket on some old barbed wire, poured cold rusty water on a miserable fire.<\/p>\n
12.) Some need diamonds, some need love. Some need cards, some need luck. Some need dollar bills lining their clothes. All I need is two white horses in a line.<\/p>\n
13.) Fourteen miles away from a landfill grave, never pawned my watch and chain to the landlord living inside my head. Never paid my rent ’til the lights went dead.<\/p>\n
No cheating. Tell me what you think or how you did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time as well. I was listening to the album Guero by Beck a while back (read: months ago), and I found myself marveling at the lyrics. Yeah, I know, Jon, I just said the other day that lyrics are pretty low on my list of things […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tidbit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kevinomara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kevinomara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kevinomara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kevinomara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kevinomara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kevinomara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kevinomara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kevinomara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kevinomara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}