Tom and Jeff and Dagger made three
So Jeff Abarta, A & R head for Epitaph Records (which owns Anti, Tom Waits' label, http://www.anti.com/home.php) sent me a message on Youtube yesterday about some live Tom Waits video clips I posted for public viewing [see: http://youtube.com/profile?user=DaggerMoon] a while back. Apparently, it has come to Tom's attention that some of the numerous videos of his performances made available on YouTube by fans are not (yet) in his personal collection, and he'd like to check them out, or have copies of them - something that's quite understandable, I think, so he asked Jeff to download whatever rare clips he could find there. Since Youtube has its own built-in player and it's not possible to download files, Jeff wrote to ask if it would be possible for me to direct-send him the videos somehow. My first response was to wonder whether I was being seduced into a copyright-violation trap, but I checked out Jeff's employee page on Epitaph's site [http://www.epitaph.com/about/employee/28] and realized that the label's punk rock roots, and the anti-corporate/-authoritarian sentiments so vehemently espoused by its initial "patron" band, Bad Religion, made Jeff a highly unlikely seducer in that sense. I cordially replied to Jeff from my Dagger Moonlight e-mail account, under whose name my Youtube videos are registered, asking him if he would be able to receive the files from me via Skype. My enthusiasm about the honor of entering into even second-hand contact with the Eyeball Kid, whose music I nonetheless called "a kind of musical seance" was of course impossible to repress. "If you get a chance," I wrote, "pass my respects on to Tom." Jeff replied that he doesn't have Skype, and asked if I would I mind just burning the files onto a cd and mailing them to him? He added that he was sure Tom had never heard the term "musical seance" and couldn't wait to pass this complement along to the man himself, who is "quite a character" and would surely appreciate the imagery. He gave me his address at the record label and promised to forward my remarks to Mr. Waits. The fact that I go by the name of "Dagger" will stand me well, I imagine, and I'm already thinking about ways to initiate closer contact when I mail the video. Maybe I'll slip in a blue valentine, or a couple of gold-plated shark dentures. If he writes back, I'll scrape the DNA from the envelope and clone a little Tom, then train him to play soccer and see what happens. If Tom 2 plays soccer the way Tom 1 writes songs, I might even start watching sports, but. . .let's not jump to conclusions. Second-hand or no, I'm delighted just to have gotten the chance to pet Tom's monkey. And it's reassuring that he isn't out to punish fans for sharing snippets of his genius.