"The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)" - Tom Waits

"Personification, or personification anthropomorphism is a figure of speech that gives non-humans and objects human traits and qualities. These attributes may include sensations, emotions, desires, physical gestures, expressions, and powers of speech, among others. As a figure of speech it has a very long history; its Greek name is prosopopoeia. Personification is widely used in poetry and in other art forms. Personification can also be used in English to emphasize a conversational point." -Wikipedia

We learned the definition of this literary device back in fifth grade Language Arts (that's what they called it) class. I have yet to figure out how exactly Tom Waits snuck into this class and traveled back in time to 1976 to record this song, but I suppose we should consider ourselves better for having heard it.

"Small Change" as an album seems to alternate between drunken, late-night piano ballads and drunken, late-night white-boy beat raps. This song clearly represents the crop of the cream of the former category. Over a morbidly simple, yet effective and lovely piano (yup!) melody, Mssr. Waits sets a mood, and an image in your mind of a damp bar in the wee small hours of the morning. He's got a way with words, that Waits boy:

The piano has been drinking
my necktie is asleep
and the combo went back to New York
the jukebox has to take a leak
and the carpet needs a haircut
and the spotlight looks like a prison break
cause the telephone's out of cigarettes
and the balcony's on the make
cause the bouncer is a Sumo wrestler
cream puff casper milk toast
and the owner is a mental midget
with the I.Q. of a fencepost
cause the piano has been drinking
the piano has been drinking...

I smell it! Almost... *moves to dark alley at 3:00 AM* *Eastern Standard Time* *stuffs lungs with nicotine*

Anyway, I find that "Small Change" is filled with some majestically clever lyrics that you really gotta listen for. For example, the perverted sex-rap of "Pasties & A G-String": crawlin on her belly shakin like jelly
and I'm getting harder than
Chinese algebraziers and cheers

Or the classic:
I don't have a drinking problem
Except when I can't get a drink

This song describes a lightman "blind in one eye, and he can't see out of the other."

Somehow, in that sort-of twisted, kind of half-conscious, muddy way, it seems to make sense. Maybe the piano really has been drinking. *issues D.W.I.*