Instrumentally, the tracks pay heavy tribute to ‘50s’ beatnik jazz and early ‘70s’ folk with swinging horns, hopping bass, weeping strings, and tinny piano-all of which could easily come from the back corner of a scuzzy bar on Tin Pan Alley. The album goes forward full of Kerouac-inspired headiness, with spurts of bravado in songs like “Fumblin’ with the Blues” ( Fallin’ in love is such a breeze) and “Depot, Depot,” ( This peeping-Tom needs a peephole) alternating with depressive yearnings in “Shiver me Timbers,” “Please call me Baby,” and “Drunk on the Moon.” But it’s in the more sentimental moments, like “San Diego Serenade” and the titular “Heart of Saturday Night” that tears can flow, particularly if it’s late at night and you’re all alone. “New Coat of Paint,” starts off the album with a call to arms, or at least cheap bourbon: Let's put a new coat of paint on this lonesome old town/ Set 'em up, we'll be knockin' em down. Indeed, the cover of Waits coolly smoking outside a late night bar is pulled directly from the cover of Sinatra’s In the Wee Small Hours, and topped up with garish neon signs and the salacious looks of a prostitute. Heart of Saturday Night (released 1974)įrank Sinatra looms large in this late-night, booze-soaked collection of ballads and jazz scats, the follow up to his debut album Closing Time. That said, these five albums form the main pillars of my undying devotion to the artist that is Tom Waits. Whichever you choose, it’s still fucking great. Through his songs, I learned such truths as “There ain't no devil, that’s just God when he's drunk,” “There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap,” and “You’re innocent when you dream.”įor those new to Waits, asking where to begin is akin to debating the best position for sex. Tom Waits’ lyrics offered as deep a pool of genius as his melodies-biting, funny, raw, and outright bizarre-as if the poetry of Charles Bukowski was dumped in a blender with broken whiskey bottles and used automobile parts. While the Billboard charts saw Wham!’s “Careless Whisper,” Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,” and Foreigner’s “I Want to Know What Love Is” reach to the top, Waits put out growling back-alley dirges like “Singapore,” “Clap Hands,” and “Jockey Full of Bourbon.” And yet, whatever artifice was layered on top of the tracks, at the root were often the sweetest and purest of melodies seemingly pulled from generations of collective yearning. Perhaps no greater example of this can be seen than in his 1985 album, Rain Dogs. So we stuck that in the front.However, the white hot hatred of the moment burned equally strong with love not long after, as the independence of the Waits’ sound and vision overcame me (drunk or sober). It sounded like some guy alone in a room, which it was, trying his hardest to sound like a big, loud band. I had it on a cassette, and used to listen to it and laugh. I turned it on, and I started screaming and banging on this chest of drawers really hard, till it was kindling, trying to make a full sound like a band. I was in Mexico in a hotel, and I only had this little tape recorder. The beginning of “Big In Japan” is one of the more startling sounds you’ve ever put on record. And over there, they’re hawking cigarettes, underwear, sushi, whiskey, sunglasses, used cars, beach blankets. And then there are all those people that don’t do any commercials, they have this classy image. You can go over there and find people you haven’t heard of in 20 years, that have moved over there, and they’re like gods. It’s also kind of a junkyard for entertainment. There are people that are big in Japan, and are big nowhere else. I see myself in the harbor, ripping up the electrical towers, picking up cars, going in like Godzilla and levelling Tokyo. Are you really, as the opening track declares, “Big in Japan?” How do you know this? Ever been there?
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