The Engine Room presents
SONG NOIR Tom Waits and the Spirit of Los Angeles - Free Entry [book reading/signing]
Sun
August 7, 2022
7:00 pm
BST
(Doors: 6:00 pm )
The Engine Room
,
The Old Maltings Building, North Shields
Ages 18 and Up
GBP0.00
*This Event is FREE ENTRY*
Song Noir examines the formative first decade of Tom Waits’ career, when
he lived, wrote and recorded nine albums in Los Angeles; from his soft, folk-
inflected debut, Closing Time (1973), to the abrasive, surreal Swordfishtrombones
(1983). Starting his song-writing career in the ’70s, Waits absorbed LA’s wealth
of cultural influences. Combining the spoken idioms of writers like Kerouac
and Bukowski with jazz-blues rhythms, he explored the city’s literary and film
noir traditions to create hallucinatory dreamscapes.
Waits mined a rich seam of the city’s low-life locations and characters, letting
the place feed his dark imagination. Mixing the domestic with the mythic, Waits
turned quotidian, autobiographical details into something more disturbing
and emblematic; a vision of la as the warped, narcotic heart of his nocturnal
explorations.
Alex Harvey is a producer and director of programmes including Panorama and
The Late Show for the BBC. His later films include The Lives of Animals (2002)
and Enter the Jungle (2014). Based in Los Angeles, he regularly writes on literature,
film and music for London Review of Books and LA Review of Books.
-----
‘In Song Noir, Alex Harvey brilliantly reconstructs the colorful characters
and grimy street life in Tom Waits’ head. Song Noir guides us through Waits’s
evolution as an artist in parallel with the dark shades of Los Angeles in the
1970s, a world that helped shape his songs and ultimately his very persona.
Harvey manages to craft a glimpse into Waits’ creative process, a swirling
cauldron of sorts where Bukowski, Kerouac, Raymond Chandler and all
the tragic victims from the pages of noir come to life, showing us the arrival
and progression of Tom Waits the artist, with his rich cinematic vision
in full bloom.’ – Tree Adams, composer
Song Noir examines the formative first decade of Tom Waits’ career, when
he lived, wrote and recorded nine albums in Los Angeles; from his soft, folk-
inflected debut, Closing Time (1973), to the abrasive, surreal Swordfishtrombones
(1983). Starting his song-writing career in the ’70s, Waits absorbed LA’s wealth
of cultural influences. Combining the spoken idioms of writers like Kerouac
and Bukowski with jazz-blues rhythms, he explored the city’s literary and film
noir traditions to create hallucinatory dreamscapes.
Waits mined a rich seam of the city’s low-life locations and characters, letting
the place feed his dark imagination. Mixing the domestic with the mythic, Waits
turned quotidian, autobiographical details into something more disturbing
and emblematic; a vision of la as the warped, narcotic heart of his nocturnal
explorations.
Alex Harvey is a producer and director of programmes including Panorama and
The Late Show for the BBC. His later films include The Lives of Animals (2002)
and Enter the Jungle (2014). Based in Los Angeles, he regularly writes on literature,
film and music for London Review of Books and LA Review of Books.
-----
‘In Song Noir, Alex Harvey brilliantly reconstructs the colorful characters
and grimy street life in Tom Waits’ head. Song Noir guides us through Waits’s
evolution as an artist in parallel with the dark shades of Los Angeles in the
1970s, a world that helped shape his songs and ultimately his very persona.
Harvey manages to craft a glimpse into Waits’ creative process, a swirling
cauldron of sorts where Bukowski, Kerouac, Raymond Chandler and all
the tragic victims from the pages of noir come to life, showing us the arrival
and progression of Tom Waits the artist, with his rich cinematic vision
in full bloom.’ – Tree Adams, composer
Alex Harvey