Tom Waits - "Clap Hands"

This live performance was from Big Time, a show and later a film and an album.

Tom Waits (1988):  "What we tried to avoid is having a concert film that felt like a stuffed bird. I tried to film it like a Mexican cockfight instead of air-conditioned concert footage. Some of it felt like it was shot through a safari rifle. You forget about the camera, which is what I was trying to do. But when you see yourself in concert, it rarely looks like the way you feel when you're up there. I thought I was much taller. I thought I looked like Robert Wagner ... if we had more money, we would have done the Rangoon gladiator sequences. And the shot of the audience holding up their matches and all that. We could have gotten the underwater ballet sequences, but it really would have been a different film, I think ... Now that it's completed, I would not have had my underwear coming out of the back of my pants like I did, but there's always something you want to change after it's over.
The idea was, you put the film out there, the film can go on the road, and I can stay home. That was the idea, but then I end up having to go out and do interviews. [Big Time is] getting mixed reviews. I guess that's what they call it - mixed reviews. One reviewer said, 'Piano teachers will be shocked,' which is one of my favourite reviews. Another guy said it looked like it was filmed in the stomach of a very sick animal. Now those were the good reviews. I recommend it."