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Singer, songwriter, composer and actor Tom Waits joins the lineup of artists and authors who will pay tribute to the original paperback bohemian Lawrence Ferlinghetti when he and City Lights Booksellers and Publishers receive Litquake’s 2010 Barbary Coast Award for their contribution to Bay Area letters on Saturday October 2 at the Herbst Theater. Others to appear include Patti Smith, Lenny Kaye, Winona Ryder, Michael McLure, New Yorker cartoonist Eric Drooker and others.
The material Waits has produced over the years has a direct connection to the bohemian nature espoused not only by Ferlinghetti himself, but also the literature to be found via City Lights Booksellers and Publishers.
In an era where a show like Mad Men has become so popular all across the board, it is easy to forget that for many, its nostalgic take gilds the era in a way that seems to be not quite complete or accurate. In the shadow of these Madison Avenue Mad Men types, a new kind of American was emerging—one typified by Ferlinghetti—that was looser, that put a paper back book in his or her pocket and mulled the post World War 2 American dream/landscape and said “no thanks.”
Whether it be Frank’s Wild Years, the soundtrack to One From the Heart with an image of an “old broken bicycle out in the rain with playing cards pinned to its spokes,” or even the channeling of a Richard Burton-sounding stevedore type in Singapore from the Swordfish Trombones album, Waits’ songs epitomize the idiosyncratic man or woman who looks at life with the eye of a poet despite what their circumstances seem to dictate. And then for better or worse, acts accordingly.
Litquake 2010 Barbary Coast Awards
Herbst Theater
Saturday October 2 at 8pm
Tickets: $25.00 in advance, $30.00 at door, $100.00 VIP
Tickets can be purchased here. :