"Blow Wind Blow"
'Franks Wild Years', 1987
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While I haven’t been paying the strictest of attention, I believe “Blow Wind Blow” is the first Tom Waits song we’ve hit that has a music video. That’s it above. When I wrote about his promo clips a while back, I didn’t realize the shots of him with the marionette were excerpted from this.
But keep that YouTube video playing after the music ends. Because the “Blow Wind Blow” video is fine. Some memorably creepy imagery, though it doesn’t really go anywhere. But the real gem is the interview that gets tacked on at the end.
It’s an “interview” in heavy quotes. The reporter says she works for “Big Time Television,” which is your first clue it’s more of a promo piece for his live record Big Time. Though your first clue that something was journalistically amiss might be Tom sitting in a stretch limo holding a poodle. Or her first question: “How was it playing the White House?” (It probably goes without saying, but just to avoid the risk of spreading fake news, I’ll state the obvious: Tom did not play the White House).
It goes on like that for another five minutes, ridiculous questions getting ridiculous answers while in between Tom heckles his limo driver Wayne. A few of my favorites exchanges:
What did your father do?
My father was a bail bondsman. And my mother is a fan dancer. I come from a showbiz family. She used to do hair and make-up in Burge Robert's mortuary there.Where is heaven?
God sits in a boat up on the surface of the water, and we’re all like fish. When you die, you float to the surface like a dead carp. Big guy hauls you in the boat.What are you afraid of?
Cops, fountain pens, sensible shoes, undertakers and turbulence.Did you ever meet Marlene Dietrich?
No. We used to shower together, but we never met.Do you have any global thoughts?
I think the earth is really a living being. I keep waiting for it to rear up and scrape us all off its back.
The clip aired on an MTV show called The Cutting Edge. I’d never heard of it, having missed MTV’s ‘80s heyday, but it apparently a monthly show put together by I.R.S. Records to showcase slightly odder artists who might not appear on regular MTV programming (the concept later evolved into the show 120 Minutes in the ‘90s). So Tom would be a natural fit there. He’d appeared on the show a year before too, doing a real interview — though still one filled with shaggy dogs stories and odd anecdotes — promoting Rain Dogs:
Though I wasn’t able to find either complete Cutting Edge episode where Tom appeared to see these in their original context, there is one full 1985 episode hosted at Archive.org. No Tom, but it’s still a treat to watch, with appearances from Fine Young Cannibals, Lloyd Cold And The Commotions, and many more.