shesinparties

Yeah...I was pretty bummed about this also. Really wanted to see him again.

I don't think your friend has their facts straight. There were no chairs at the Dallas show, but Tom Waits would never order the air conditioning to be turned off (that's just stupid), and as for closing the bar before the show, well, I don't know but that might be the policy of the venue, or it might have been Tom's rule. There were full bars at the Tulsa show, and I think they closed when the show started, but there were still a whole lot of drunken shitbag yokels hooting and screaming out song titles (like they were ordering him to play their favorite songs). I can totally understand why Tom would want the bars closed when he started playing. If people want to get sloshed, they can go to a honky tonk down the street. If the bars were left open, you'd have a lot of people getting up to go get more beer or take a piss, which would have disturbed the people who were trying to enjoy the show (the seating at the Brady Theater is rather snug), plus by the end of the concert you'd have thousands of drunk people spilling out onto the streets all at once. Guaranteed parking lot mayhem and a field day for the cops. As it was, the only complaints I heard at the show were about the high cost of beer and complaints about the drunken idiots yelling at Tom (who handled it with his usual good natured aplomb).