Tom Waits' playlist of his lyrical ballads (part 2) if you like to drink whiskey and cry

 

Part 2 of my groundbreaking investigation/slash drunken notes on the 40-song play list of Tom Waits' "lyrical ballads" released via his official social media pages comes as Sydney's Covid-related lockdown extend into its 578237th week. And I gotta say, Hollywood has really lied to us about just how exciting an Apocalypse would be.

After all it's not just Covid and the related unleashing of polce and army on Western Sydney, home to large migrant working class communities that are both among the greatest victims of this pandemic and the ones keep society going through their essential work, yet who are blamed for supposed misbhehaviour while their bosses refuse to implement proper safety measures. 

There's no shortage of other horrors, from escalating climate change-related extreme weather to the fact the Taliban are now running both Afghanistan and Texas -- with the Australian government refusing refugees from either. 

The point is, as Tom Waits and his people no doubt know, the world needs this "A Little Rain" 40-song playlist. Now this is part 2 of my in-depth investigation into it (songs 21-40) so you should really read part 1 or you'll be very confused. 

Also, drinking while listening is not mandatory as such (I prefer to focus on community education to get alcohol-while-listening-to-Tom-Waits ballads levels up), it is recommended. If not an actual necessity to get through it all (play list and world alike).

You can get the entire playlist on multiple platforms.

21) Invitation to the Blues

She said 'How you gonna like 'em, over medium or scrambled?'
You say 'anyway's the only way', be careful not to gamble
On a guy with a suitcase and a ticket getting out of here
It's a tired bus station and an old pair of shoes
This ain't nothing but an invitation to the blues...

 

Well, Tom Waits has sure started the second half of this playlist strongly. From his epic 1976 Small Change album, this is his heartfelt storytelling at its best. 

It is quite a skill to make this song not creepy, seeing as it is actually about some guy going into the diner and becoming obsessed with the waitress, but it's the way Waits humanises her that makes the difference:

 

But you can't take your eyes off her, get another cup of java
It's just the way she pours it for you, joking with the customers
Mercy mercy, Mr. Percy, there ain't nothing back in Jersey
But a broken-down jalopy of a man I left behind
And the dream that I was chasing, and a battle with booze
And an open invitation to the blues 

But she used to have a sugar daddy and a candy-apple Caddy
And a bank account and everything, accustomed to the finer things
He probably left her for a socialite and he didn't love her 'cept at night
And then he's drunk and never even told her that her cared
So they took the registration, and the car-keys and her shoes
And left her with an invitation to the blues

It makes the song's open-ended conclusion actually affecting..

 

Cause there's a Continental Trailways leaving local bus tonight, good evening
You can have my seat, I'm sticking round here for a while
Get me a room at the Squire, the filling station's hiring
And I can eat here every night, what the hell have I got to lose?
Got a crazy sensation, go or stay? now I gotta choose
And I'll accept your invitation to the blues

 

22) Barcolle

A cloud lets go of the moon
Her ribbons are all out of tune
She is skating on the ice
In a glass in the hands of a man
That she kissed on the train...

This one isfrom his 2002 album Alice, which mostly features songs for "an avant garde opera" of the same name directed by Robert Wilson. It's centred on the obsession of Lewis Carroll for the young Alice Liddell (immortalised as Alice in Wonderland). 

That Waits manages to write beautiful songs on this unsettling and even disturbing theme says all you need to know about his quality as a songwriter, but then again my whisky glass keeps getting refilled so what would I know?

 

I'm lost in the blond summer grass
And the train whistle blows
And the carnival goes
'Til there's only the tickets and crows here
And the grass will all grow back

23) Lucky Day

The prettiest girl
in all the world
is in a little Spanish town
but I left her for a Bonnie lass
and I told her
I'd see her around...

This is another one based on songs Waits wrote for a play directed by Robert Wilson -- this one 1992's Black Rider. This is filled with nostalgia and longing, which is of course very rare territory for Waits. It's certainly a long way from his usual happy go lucky, cheerful persona the world has come to know and love. 

 

Why there's Miss Kelsey
She taught dance at our school
And old Johnny O 'Toole
I'll still beat you at pool
So don't cry for me
For I'm goin' away
And I'll be back some lucky day

 

24) Whistle Down the Wind

Whistle down the wind
Let your voices carry
Drown out all the rain
Light a patch of darkness
Treacherous and scary...

Tom, for fuck's sake. I've explained VERY CLEARLY how much whiskey I'm consuming right now and before that it was whisky and you throw this one at me? 

This song's tl;dr is shit's bad, it's dark, it's horrible but there's hope in friendship and love. If I'd known he was going to this shit on me I'd have not poured a double measure.

 

So whistle down the wind
For I have always been
Right there

 

25) The House Where Nobody Lives

There's a house on my block that's abandoned and cold
The folks moved out of it a long time ago...

TOM! Come on. You follow up "Whistle Down The Wind" with THIS??? This is more of that fucking "heartbreak, nostaligia but still a light that shines" stuff he loves to do as if he doesn't know the average blood alcohol level of his listeners is already far higher than medically recommended limits.

Anyway, it's about an abandoned house. Of course it is. Why is it abandoned? Waits can only speculate:

 

...and once it held laughter
Once it held dreams, did they throw it away, did they know what it means?
Did someone's heart break
Or did someone do somebody wrong?

Waits doesn't know, but he does know a few other things he's learned the hard way:

 

So if you find someone
Someone to have, someone to hold, don't trade it for silver
Oh, don't trade it for gold
'Cause I have all of life's treasures and they're fine and they're good
They remind me that houses are just made of wood
What makes a house grand, oh, it ain't the roof or the doors
If there's love in a house, it's a palace for sure...

Come on Tom, I don't need this shit right now. 

 

But without love
It ain't nothin' but a house, a house where nobody lives

26) That Feel 

But there's one thing you can't lose
And it's that feel
You can pawn your watch and chain
But not that feel...

Well this is just what we need isn't it. Now that I've switched to back from whiskry from whisky. We need Tom Waits teaming up with Keith Richards.

This one sounds like what you'd expect if Tom Waits teamed up to write and perform a song with Keith Richards. A staggering, bluesey duet about an indescribable feeling that follows you everywhere, that's "harder to get rid of than tattoos".

This one is fron 1992's appropriately Apocalyptic Bone Machine, with Richards previously playing guitar on a bunch of tracks on Waits' 1985 classic Rain Dogs. They teamed up again for 2011's Bad as Me (Waits most recent album! A decade ago!) for "Last Leaf", which sort of continues the theme.

Waits and Richards is a match made in a drunken Hell, and Waits commented on writing with Richards: "You'll always finish SOMETHING. You might finish the bottle, you might not finish the song." Well luckily they finished this one as it's pretty good, especially with whisky.

 

You can fall down in the street
You can leave it in the lurch
Well you say that it's gospel
But I know that it's only church....

27) Fish and Bird

They bought a round for the sailor
And they heard his tale
Of a world that was so far away
And a song that we'd never heard
A song of a little bird
That fell in love with a whale

Jesus fuck this is all I need at this stage. A love story between a fucking little bird and a goddamn whale. It sounds absurd, but this is Tom Waits and this is his thing, taking something seemingly absurd and turning it into a song to destroy fools who listen while drunk.

I mean get this shit:

 

He said, 'You cannot live in the ocean'
And she said to him
'You never can live in the sky'
But the ocean is filled with tears
And the sea turns into a mirror
There's a whale in the moon when it's clear
And a bird on the tide

 It's a fairytale without a happy ending. 

 

So tell me that you will wait for me
Hold me in your arms
I promise we never will part
I'll never sail back to the time
But I'll always pretend you're mine
Though I know that we both must part
You can live in my heart

I mean just fuck off. My whisky's empty again.

 

Please don't cry
Let me dry your eyes

 

28) Bottom of the World

My Daddy told me, lookin back
The best friend you'll have is a railroad track
So when I was 13 I said, I'm rollin' my own,
And I'm leaving Missouri and I'm never coming home

Yeah Ok Tom, but how is this going to work out? Do you think it will go well?  No, of course not. It's a Tom Waits song.

Of course, being a Tom Waits song there is still beauty to be found:

 

Well God's green hair is where I slept last
He balanced a diamond on a blade of grass
Now I woke me up with a cardinal bird
And when I wanna talk he
Hangs on every word

29) San Diego Serenade

I never saw the morning 'til I stayed up all night
I never saw the sunshine 'til you turned out the light
I never saw my hometown until I stayed away too long
I never heard the melody, until I needed a song.

Tom. For god's sake. I'm in lockdown here. I'm not just drunk and a bit sad in some general sense.  I'm drunk in fucking lockdown. I got loved ones I can;t see in Queensland and Western Australia. And you offer up this? Goddamn it.

 

I never saw the white line, 'til I was leaving you behind
I never knew I needed you 'til I was caught up in a bind
I never spoke 'I love you' 'til I cursed you in vain,
I never felt my heartstrings until I nearly went insane

 

30) In The Neighbourhood

Friday's a funeral
And Saturday's a bride...

Yeah alright Tom. Give it a rest.

 

There's a couple Filipino girls
Gigglin' by the church
And the window is busted
And the landlord ain't home
And Butch joined the army
Yea that's where he's been
And the jackhammer's diggin'
Up the sidewalks again
In the neighborhood

 

31) Kentucky Avenue

Eddie Grace's buick
Got four bullet holes in the side
Charley Delisle is sittin' at the top
Of an avocado tree
Mrs Storm will stab you with a steak knife
If you step on her lawn
I got a half a pack of lucky strikes man
So come along with me

Just another Tom Waits song of the dark side of suburbia with strong lashings of surrealism and an overriding sense of bittersweet nostalgia. Bastard is just lucky he knows how to write a song.

 

I'll get a dollar from my mama's purse
Buy that skull and crossbones ring
And you can wear it round your neck
On an old piece of string

32) I Wish I was In New Orleans (In The Ninth Ward)

Well, I wish I was in New Orleans, I can see it in my dreams,
Arm-in-arm down Burgundy, a bottle and my friends and me

Well yeah. I've been to New Orleans, or anywhere in North America for that matter. But I get the point. This is one where Waits referrences his friend, the songwriter Chuck E Weiss who died recently, because of course he did. Everyone decent is dying these days.

 

Hoist up a few tall cool ones, play some pool and listen
To that tenor saxophone calling me home

 

33) Day After Tomorrow

I got your letter today
And I miss you all so much here
I can't wait to see you all
And I'm counting the days here

Waits' whole career is telling stories of society's underdogs and the victims, but he is rarely explicitely political. And this anti-war song about a soldier who misses home, empathises with his supposed "enemy" and has contempt for his superiors, could be set in any war in modern history.

Yet coming out on 2004's album Real Gone, just one year after the Iraq War started and two after the Afghan War got under way (how well they went!), the song is unmistakably pointed. The genius of this song -- about a soldier far from home fighitng a futile war -- is it is both eternal and still a specific protest against the wars of his time.

At the time, Waits commented that writing songs against war was "like throwing penuts at a gorrilla", and it is true no song he or anyone else could write can be stop these bloody wars for oil, profit and geopolitical domination. But we can still admire his aim, so I'll just quote every other fucking line in this song:

 

It is so hard and it's cold here
And I'm tired of taking orders
And I miss old Rockford town
Up by the Wisconsin border
What I miss, you won't believe
Shovelling snow and raking leaves
And my plane will touch down
On the day after tomorrow

 

I close my eyes every night
And I dream that I can hold you
They fill us full of lies, everyone buys
'Bout what it means to be a soldier
I still don't know how I'm supposed to feel
'Bout all the blood that's been spilled
Will God on this throne
Get me back home
On the day after tomorrow

You can't deny, the other side
Don't want to die anymore then we do
What I'm trying to say is don't they pray
To the same God that we do?
Tell me how does God choose?
Whose prayers does He refuse?
Who turns the wheel?
Who throws the dice?
On the day after tomorrow

I am not fighting for justice
I am not fighting for freedom
I am fighting for my life
And another day in the world here
I just do what I've been told
We're just the gravel on the road
And only the lucky ones come home
On the day after tomorrow

And the summer, it too will fade
And with it brings the winter's frost dear
And I know we too are made
Of all the things that we have lost here
I'll be 21 today
I been saving all my pay
And my plane will touch down
On the day after tomorrow...

34) Pony

I've seen it all boys, I've been all over
Been everywhere in the whole wide world

Oh just another melacholic Tom Waits song filled with nostalgia as the song's weary narrator wishes he 
"was home, in Evelyn's kitchen with old Gyp curled around my feet". My whiskey glass (I'm back on whiskey) needs refilling.

 

I hope my pony
I hope my pony
I hope my pony knows the way back home

 

35) A Little Rain

She was fifteen years old
And never seen the ocean
She climbed into a van
With a vagabond
And the last thing she said
was "I love you mom"

Jesus christ Tom. I only just refilled my whiskey glass. What the fuck are you doing to me? This one is aptly the title of the whole playlist.

 

And a little rain
Never hurt noone

36) You Can Never Hold Back Spring

You can never hold back spring
You can be sure that I will never
Stop believing...

Ah, the old Waits trick of hope amid the gloom. The old "you can't break the human spirit" shtick. It won't work on me, Tom. I'm not crying and if I am that's just a well-known side effect of whiskey consumption. 

 

You can never hold back spring
Even though you've lost your way
The world keeps dreaming of spring

37) Yesterday Is Here 

If you want to go
Where rainbows end
You'll have to say goodbye
All our dreams come true, baby up ahead
And it's out where your memories lie...

More bittersweet nostalgia. I'll get another drink then.

 

Well, today's grey skies
Tomorrow's tears
You'll have to wait til yesterday is here

38) Martha

Operator, number, please:
It's been so many years
Will she remember my old voice
While I fight the tears?

Possibly the most amazing thing about this song is it was released when Waits was just 23, on his debut album Closing Time. It's remarkably mature and finished song filled with almost unbreable pathos. Like so many Waits songs, it skirts the edges of OTT, but the quality of the writing and performance keeps it on the right side of absolutely heartbreaking.

 

And those were the days of roses
Poetry and prose and Martha
All I had was you and all you had was me.
There was no tomorrows
We'd packed away our sorrows
And we saved them for a rainy day.
And I remember quiet evenings
Trembling close to you...

 

39) Lullaby

Sun is red, moon is cracked
Daddy's never coming back
Nothing's ever yours to keep

God, this bottle's almost finished.

 

Nothing's ever as it seems
Climb the ladder to your dreams
If I die before you wake
Don't you cry, don't you weep
Nothing's ever yours to keep
Close your eyes, go to sleep

 

40) A Sight For Sore Eyes

A sight for sore eyes it's a long time no see
Workin' hard hardly workin
Hey man, you know me...

 Oh it's a drunk in a bar reminiscing about the old times. I wonder how this one will go? Well...

 

I guess you heard about Nash he was killed in a crash
Oh that must of been two or three years ago now
Yea he spun out and he rolled he hit a telephone pole
And he died with the radio on
Oh she's married and with a kid finally split up with Syd
He's up north for a nickle's worth for armed robbery
Hey I'll play you some pin ball

Hell you ain't got a chance
Well then go on over and ask her to dance
And hey barkeeper what's keepin you keep pourin' drinks...

Yeah sure, Tom. I'll keep pouring drinks. You can really see why the bastard had to quit drinking three decades ago. Listening to this stuff makes you thirsty enough, imagine having to sing it.

Tom Waits has just released a playlist of his lyrical ballads if you like to drink whiskey and cry (part 1)

"I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things." Tom Waits once said, but he really didn't need to. It's pretty much the definition of his 5-decade long songwriting and performing career.

Now this Covid pandemic thing has been a bit stressful, what with all the yelling on social media, and so when Sydney's lockdown was announced 79284 weeks ago on the very same day as Tom Waits social media page released a special 40-song playlist his "most beloved lyrical ballads", I knew the greatest songwriter of his generation had my back.

I do not believe in coincidences. I believe Tom Waits knew what was coming and got his people straight on to it to ensure I'd remain entertained.

It would be an exaggeration to say this latest playlist is what the world needs. What the world needs is obviously some new music from an artist who hasn't released an album in a decade.

But, with sheer scale of the ecological catstrophe enveloping the world faciliated by the same out-of-control system that both helped create  conditions for a global pandemic and is incapable of responding to it except though deadly profiteering, we take what we get.

You can hear the playlist on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Music. Here is part 1 (40 songs is a lot!) of my increasingly whiskey-affected take on each song. 

*** 

1) Time

And the things you can't remember tell the things you can't forget.
That history puts a saint in every dream

The playlist starts with a classic from Waits' 1985 Raindogs. Surrealist vignettes of broken people. There's a lot of broken people in a Tom Waits' song, it's really his thing.

As always, it's the quality of the images make it. When Waits sings... 

Well things are pretty lousy for a calendar girl

The boys just dive right off the cars and splash into the street

...I see a a woman is trying to navigate a street filled with boozy young men who feel they own it. 

Most of all, time exists in this song to break your heart, while holding out the promise that tomorrow might be different. After all, it is time that you love.

So put a candle in the window and a kiss upon his lips
As the dish outside the window fills with rain.

 

2) The Heart of Saturday Night

Then you comb your hair, shave your face
Tryin' to wipe out every trace of all the other days

This is the title track of Waits' second album from 1974. This was just before Waits developed his signature gutteral growl and it shows he could actually sing in a reasonably melodic tenor voice when he wanted to.

But it's not just the voice that sets this apart from almost everything he's released since: it is the optimism. This song looks at a Saturday night in an American city and sees promise. It's even fucking hopeful. 

It's a great song for sure -- as always the vivid imagery places this song above other mid-tempo folk rock songs that were all the rage in one wing of the US music industry of 1974. But rest assured he lost that sweet hopefulness as quickly as he lost the strong notes of sweetness in that voice.

Makes it kind of quiver down in the core
'Cause you're dreamin' of them Saturdays that came before...

3) Hold On

They hung a sign up in our town
"If you live it up, you won't live it down"
So she left Monte Rio, son
Just like a bullet leaves a gun...

If you wanted the perfect lyrical ballad about youthful hope and possibility being dashed by a cold reality that leaves you lonely and far from home, then you'd come up with this song. 

All that hope! All that possibility! All that inevitable heartache and loneliness!

If this song doesn't make you cry then you have no heart or just haven't had enough whiskey yet. Have one more then play it again. There you go. That's what it's like to cry, you'd nearly forgotten! This is why Tom Waits exists.

Down by the Riverside motel
It's ten below and falling
By a ninety-nine cent store
She closed her eyes and started swaying
But it's so hard to dance that way
When it's cold and there's no music...

4) The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me) 

The piano has been drinking, my necktie is asleep
And the combo went back to new york, the jukebox has to take a leak

This song came out on 1976's Small Change, a mere two years after "Heart of Saturday Night". This is not the heart of Saturday night, it's where Saturday nights go to die. The hope and possibility has ended in a surrealist dive bar at 3am where "the telephone's out of cigarettes, and the balcony is on the make" and "the menus are all freezing, and the light man's blind in one eye and he can't see out of the other" and "the box-office is drooling, and the bar stools are on fire". You get the idea.

The piano has been drinking, not me, not me, not me, not me, not me

5) Pay Me

They pay me not to come home
Keeping me stoned
I won't run away
They say it's easy to get
Stuck in this town
Just like Joan

Why is this song so devastatingly sad? I honestly don't know, but the broken voice declaring "the only way down from the gallows is to swing" offers a clue. 

This one is off his most recently released album... from 2011. For fuck's sake Tom Waits.

And though all roads will not lead you home my girl
All roads lead to the end of the world

 

6) The Fall of Troy 

It's the same with men as with horses and dogs
nothing wants to die

This song is like an especially drunken Irish folk ballad, only instead of being about the English scum killing your family and sending you half way around the world from the girl you love with the auburn hair and those green hills you dream of every night after you drink yourself to sleep after a day's backbreaking labour on some capitalist-owned railway, it is about a bunch of working class kids caught up in a tragic spiral of violent crime.

So it's a drunken Irish ballad.

why cook dinner
why make my bed
why come home at all
out the door and through the woods
there's a world where nothing grow

 

7) Ruby's Arms

I will leave behind all of my clothes
I wore when I was with you.
All I needs are my railroad boots
And my leather jacket....

Good god Tom Waits wrings every last bit of sentimentality out of this one about a soldier leaving behind the women he loves. All put to a strings section whose attitude to restraint is remarkably similar to mine to whiskey tonight.

          No one has the right to pack so much pathos into one song. Nobody! Jesus Christ I'm crying!                  You're crying! We're all drinking whiskey! WAR IS TERRIBLE!

As I say goodbye to Ruby's arms
You'll find another soldier.
And I swear to God by Christmas time
There'll be someone else to hold you...

8) Tom Traubert's Blues (Four Sheets to the Wind In Copenhagen)

Wasted and wounded, it ain't what the moon did
Got what I paid for now....

This song is a masterclass in evocative lyric writing. It may be about, as Waits once said, "throwing up on yourself in a foreign country" but not a word is wasted in this tale of being far from home, drunk, heartbroken and very alone.

And it's a battered old suitcase to a hotel someplace
And a wound that will never heal...

9) Georgia Lee

Cold was the night, hard was the ground
They found her in a small grove of trees

This one from 1999's Grammy award winning Mule Variations album is an especially heartbreaking song even by Tom Waits lofty standards. That's because this is a real story about a real tragedy.

The 12-year-old Georgie Lee Moses disappeared from a place in northern California not far from where Waits lives with his family. She was eventually found murdered. What got Waits was the sense that the fate of Georgie Lee, as an African American kid, was not a priority for the authorities or the media. Wondering what the response would have been if she'd been white, he wrote the song because he felt no one else seemed to care.

The irony is, Waits wasn't even going to include the song on the record, until his own kid commented how much sadder it would be if someone actually wrote a song for Georgia Lee Moses and then didn't even bother to release it.

Why wasn't God watching?
Why wasn't God listening?
Why wasn't God there for
Georgia Lee?

 

10) New Year's Eve

It felt like four in the morning
What sounded like fire works
Turned out to be just what it was
The stars looked like diamonds
Then came the sirens
And everyone started to cuss

In a decent world, this song from Waits most recent album (2011!) would do for Christmas what The Pogues "Fairytale of New York" did for Christmas Eve (tho hopefully without the overbearing over-playing, weird insertion into modern culture wars and an endless host of terrible covers). It's about a New Year's Eve party populated by broken people who once had hope and possibility. New territory for the master, but he pulls it off. Almost like he's been writing this stuff for decades.

The contrast between optimism of "Auld Lang Sang" and these characters' dire reality is not especially subtle, but as ever it's how Waits writes them and sings them that make them make you want to drink more whiskey.

I ran out on Sheila
Everything's in storage
Calvin's right I should go back to driving truck
Should auld acquaintance be forgot...

 

11) Lost in the Harbour

Over here the ladies all want sweet perfume
But there's never a rose
And over there the roses are frightened to bloom
So they never can grow

Oh fuck off Tom Waits. What sort of song is this to subject a man who has drunk too much whiskey to? Really? Fuck off.

And then I will fill the ocean back up with my tears
I still have a couple more years
And then I can come back to the harbor
Down to the harbor

 

12) Foreign Affair

Without fear of contradiction bon voyage is always hollered
in conjunction with a handkerchief from shore
by a girl that drives a rambler and furthermore
is overly concerned that she won't see him anymore

This song is off Waits' 1977 album Foreign Affairs, which for whatever reason has never been a favourite of mine (tho "Burma Shave" is classic Waits narrative storytelling and "I Never Talk To Strangers" is a charming duet with Bette Middler). Like a lot of the album, this song is very cinematic and kinda overblown; but most strikingly it is nostaligic but not actually sad. Which feels weird given every song around it.

Anyway, time to refill my glass, and this time I'll get whisky not whiskey.

planes and trains and boats and buses
characteristically evoke a common attitude of blue
unless you have a suitcase and a ticket and a passport
and the cargo that they're carrying is you

13) Fannin Street

Once I held you in my arms, I was sure
But I took that silent stare through the guilded door
The desire to have much more, all the glitter and the roar
I know this is where the sidewalk ends

Now this is more like it! A broken, stumbling and very sad song about an old man expressing his regret about a notorious street in Housten, Texas, where the old man's chasing of debauchery lost him the woman he loved. This is why we listen to Tom Waits while drinking whisky.

You'll be lost and never found
You can never turn around
Don't go down to Fannin Street

14) Picture in a Frame

The sun come up, it was blue and gold
Ever since I put your picture in a frame

Not all Waits' songs have to be sad to be brilliant. Waits' broken-in-the-gutter voice is crucial to making his tales of heartfelt love like this one from Mule Variations, but this song is so strong that not even Rod Stewart can destroy it. 

The lyrical hook, his love's picture in a frame as a metaphor for commitment, is so understated it works perfectly to offset the song's deeply felt pathos. If this isn't about his wife and long-tme collaboarator Kathleen Breenan (for whom Waits wrote "Jersey Girl") then it damn well should be and Tom Waits has some explaining to do. 

I'm gonna love you
Till the wheels come off...

15) Novemeber

No shadow
No stars
No moon
No care
November
It only believes
In a pile of dead leaves
And a moon
That's the color of bone

Fucking hell Tom I already warned you already about this shit! Some of us are drinking whisky, have some basic fucking human decency. Putting words like this to this Kurt Weill-esque drunken cabaret would test the tear ducts of even the whisky-less listener. Of which I am not!

November has tied me
To an old dead tree
Get word to April
To rescue me
November's cold chain

 

16) Widow's Grove

Near the breath of a swallow, petals dropped as you fell
And you grabbed then shyly held me, against the stone cold well 

Look fuck off. I've had too much whisky for any more of your shit. You even made this one sound bittersweet but actually it is a tragic murder ballad. Just fuck off.

Through the wind, through the rain of a cold dark night
That's where I'll be

 

17) Another Man's Vine

Bougainvillea's bloom and wind
Be careful mind the strangle vines

GOD DAMN IT TOM!

Now I see a red rose
I smell a red rose
A red rose
Blooming on another man's vine

18) Chocolate Jesus

Well, I don't go to church on Sunday
Don't get on my knees to pray
Don't memorize the books of the bible
I got my own special way

Alright finally, a bit of absurdism to lighten the mood. The narrator in this song wants to praise Jesus and eat choclate and, well, he's got the solution.

Well, it's the only thing that can pick me up
It's better than a cup of gold
See, only a chocolate Jesus
Can satisfy my soul

19) Bend Down the Branches

The sky's as deep as it can be
Bend down the branches

Oh good. Back to bleakness. I wouldn't want the last of this whisky to be put to waste. Like the best of Waits, it's more than just bleak of course. There's a rich vein of humanism in this short track about getting old. Not that it isn't bleak. Just humanely bleak.

Close your eyes and go to sleep
Bend down the branches

20) How's It Gonna End?

They found a map of Missouri
Lipstick on the glass
They must of left in the middle of the night
And I want to know the same thing
Everyone wants to know
How's it going to end?

I think we all want to know the answer to this one. And much like in Waits' atmospherically fearful song, the sense in the real world is "not good". Thank god for whisky then (for now).

This is a great narrative song filled with foreboding, danger and fatal misteps. Like a few tracks from 2004's Real Gone, it's pretty much a mini film noir.

But as this just part one of my posts on this playlist, I am sure the real qusstion you are all wondering is "how will Tom Waits 'A Little Rain' playlist end?" Well, stay tuned, I just need to restock on booze.

And down in the first row,
Of an old picture show
The old man is asleep, as the credits start to roll...

The 7 Tom Waits Songs To Wash Your Hands To So We Don't All Die In An Apocalypse Like In Song Number 6

This COVID-19 thing is serious. The stakes are so high, if major sporting events keep getting cancelled, the world's men are going to be left with nothing to talk about but their feelings.

No one is safe, not even leading politicians. Australia's home affairs minister and renowned Dath Vader enthusiast Peter Dutton has tested positive. This has prompted widespread mocking and uncontrollable laughter, so I want to make it absolutely clear that, personally, I would NEVER say anything about Peter Dutton that I wouldn't ALSO say about Adolf Hitler.

Some people have suggested this shows Dutton doesn't wash his hands, which is true is extra unhygenic given all that blood on them from innocent refugees. In his defence, there is just isn't the hand sanitser in the world required to get them clean.

To make things worse, and I hope I am wrong but the signs are worrying, it appears, and this might be alarmist... but it appears that the president of the wealtiest nation on Earth where the virus is spreading rapidly and whose action will help determine the fate of the world ...  and look I could be biased as he isn't in the top 10 of my favourite politicians or even supervillains... but it appears... he might be a bit of a dickhead.

(That at least doesn't appear to be the case with Australia's prime minister, as we already know without a doubt from painful experience that he's a dickhead you'd not want anywhere near anything vaguely resembling power during a crisis.)

Unlike climate change, where you can recycle forever and turn off lights in your overpriced apartment and catch public transport on the rare days it runs properly but we'd still be in the midst of a rapidly evolving ecoholocaust, at least with a virus there is something everyone can do to... if not help at least not actively make things worse.

You can wash your hands.

Now many children and men aren't known for being the best hand cleaners. Many men right now are  just waiting impatiently for the crisis to pass so they can go back to vaguely flicking their hands at a basin after spraying them with urine in the toilets of an unsanitary pub.

That's why there is a great educational poster that offers a guide to washing your hands that comes with suggested song lyrics to sing to yourself to make sure you take 30 seconds.

And if there is a man for apocalyptic times, it's Tom Waits. The greatest living songwriter has been about this shit since forever PLUS he has the best lyrics so it is appropriate to take that "put the song of your choice in and a handwashing poster will be automatically generated with its opening lines" site and some Tom Waits lyrics to it.

Here are 7 great Tom Waits songs to sing while washing your hands, with links to the song so if you don't know the tune. If we all wash our hands we might avoid the total Apocalypse that wipes out humanity depicted in Song 6 until the next bushfire season at least!

The list starts with a happy, upbeat track about new love and features a super catchy melody and running all the way through to "forget it, we are all going to die" at the end. Happy washing!

YouTube / Spotify

YouTube / Spotify

Youtube / Spotify

Youtube / Spotify

YouTube / Spotify

YouTube / Spotify

YouTube / Spotify

Thought for the day: 7/2/19

IMPORTANT PSA: if you are in a murder mystery please do not call up the murderer and say "It's me, I need to see you!"  Please. There has been enough blood spilled by that time of the show. Think of your loved ones.

Here is a sort of related Tom Waits song,

'...and I want to know the same thing. We all want to know... how's it going to end?'

Thought for the day 2/2/19

I saw an 'inspirational quote' meme on Facebook that said 'Be the person you needed when you were younger'. So I became a drug dealer.

Not related but cool clip of a Tom Waits performance below.



'I'm gonna drive all night, get some speed...'

This Is Life In One Poem

A Life In One Poem

YouTube
Is
Buffering
And so
I pause
To watch
The grass
Grow slowly
For

Maybe
Fifteen
Seconds
Or So
And then
I Hit
Play
Again

OH IT IS SO TRUE!!! Also, here is a Tom Waits song.

Marie you are the wild blue sky
Men do foolish things
You turn kings into beggars
Beggars into kings...

The face forgives the mirror
The worm forgives the plow
The questions begs the answer
Can you forgive me somehow?
Maybe when our story's over
We'll go where it's always spring
The band is playing our song again ...

Moon is yellow silver
Oh, the things that summer brings
It's a love you'd kill for
And all the world is green...

He's balancing a diamond
On a blade of grass
The dew will settle on our graves
When all the world is green...

Pretend that you owe me nothing
And all the world is green
We can bring back the old days again
When all the world is green...

CONFIRMED! YES! TRUMP COLLUDED WITH A FOREIGN GOVERNMENT!!!

RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA I KNEW IT RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA  rUSSIA Russia Russia... Russia Russia RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA  RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA  Russia Russia Putin Russia Moscow PUTIN PUTIN PUTIN PUTIN PUTIN PUTIN PUTIN PUTIN PUTIN PUTIN Russia Russia Russia RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA ....

RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA  Putin ... I knew it...

PUTIN...

MOSCOW...

PUTIN...

RUSSIA I KNEW IT Russia Russia Russia I kne...

Oh shit, it's not Russia!

Holy fuck!

It's Israel.


The Guardian reports:

Revealed: Trump team hired Israeli spy firm for ‘dirty ops’ on Iran arms deal

Aides to Donald Trump, the US president, hired an Israeli private intelligence agency to orchestrate a “dirty ops” campaign against key individuals from the Obama administration who helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal, the Observer can reveal... 

Jack Straw, who as foreign secretary was involved in earlier efforts to restrict Iranian weapons, said: “These are extraordinary and appalling allegations but which also illustrate a high level of desperation by Trump and [the Israeli prime minister] Benjamin Netanyahu, not so much to discredit the deal but to undermine those around it.”

... [It is not]  known if the black ops constituted only a strand of a wider Trump-Netanyahu collaboration to undermine the deal ...

Yes, collaboration with Israel towards destroying a deal to defuse dangerous tensions with Iran, so as to avoid a dangerous war with unpredictable consequences against a nation with a far bigger population that neighbouring Iraq. COZ WHICH SORT OF SICK BASTARD DOES NOT WANT A POTENTIALLY NUCLEAR WAR AGAINST IRAN???

Not that is the first evidence of Trump collusion with Israel. His team did that before  he was even inaugurated president, which is what they are accused of doing with Russia. Such collusion is not legal.

The Intercept wrote:

Trump’s Transition Team Colluded With Israel. Why Isn’t That News? 

...Thanks to Mueller’s ongoing investigation, we now know that prior to President Donald Trump’s inauguration, members of his inner circle went to bat on behalf of Israel, and specifically on behalf of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, behind the scenes and in opposition to official U.S. foreign policy. That’s the kind of collusion with a foreign state that has gotten a lot of attention with respect to the Kremlin – but colluding with Israel seems to be of far less interest, strangely.

Hmmmm. Oh well... I mean if it is the recipient of the largest quantity of US military assistance in the world.... so as to scuttle a deal so as to make war more likely and to back illegal settlements based on ethic cleansing... well... sure it may be collusion with a foreign power, but that kinda thing is about as American as you can get.

As you were.

RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA rUSSIA rUSSIA Russia Russia Russia Putin Putin PUTIN PUTIN PUTIN PUTIN MOSCOW PUTIN RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA ETCETC

RUSSIA.

Here is an irrelevant Tom Waits song coz it is awesome and I haven't posted one in ages.

...And I wondered how the same moon outside over this Chinatown fair
Could look down on Illinois
And find you there
And you know I love you baby
And I'm so far away from home
I'm so far away from home
And I miss my baby so
I can't make it by myself
I love you so...

Happy birthday Tom Waits!

On December 7, 1949, the man who was to become best story-telling songwriter ever was born "in the back seat of a Yellow Cab in a hospital loading zone and with the meter still running. I emerged needing a shave and shouted 'Time Square, and step on it!'", according to an early record company press release, which is about as likely true as anything else Tom Waits has ever told the world about his life.

To celebrate, here are six relatively randomly chosen songs!


'Hey Charlie, I'm pregnant...'




'Sane, sane, they're all insane...'



'Well with buck shot eyes and a purple heart, I rolled down the national stroll...'



Well she's up against the register with an apron and a spatula...



'Got no time for the corner boys...'



'It's dreamy weather...'



'You're the head on the spear, you're the nail on the cross...'

DON'T LOSE YOUR SHIT BUT TOM WAITS' NEW REMIX OF HIS 2004 CLASSIC REAL GONE IS OUT AND OK LOSE IT A BIT COZ IT'S AWESOME!

There are definitely some bad things in this Godforsaken world, but there are some good things too.

On one hand, Donald Trump (probably inspired by Australia) is fucking over refugees, seeking to abolish Internet freedom and escalating actions causing runaway climate change. On the other, there is a reasonable chance his administration could provoke a nuclear war with North Korea and thus end our suffering.

On one hand, the Western Sydney Wanderers have scored in every single first half of their games this A-League season. On the other, they have conceded in every single second half, condemning us a seemingly endless stream of infuriating draws.

On one hand, Tom Waits has not released a new album since 2011, on the other his brilliantly remastered version of 2004's Real Gone has just been made public!

This is very exciting news from the greatest living songwriter and innovative performer. I have a soft spot for Real Gone. Coming out a year or two after I fell in love with Waits' music, it was his first album I bought when it actually came out. Original and innovative (his only album without piano and featuring beatboxing at points) it remains one of his more underrated offerings.

It is also his most political -- and sadly the brilliant anti-war tracks "The Day After Tomorrow" and the the savage "Hoist That Rag" have not got less relevant. In fact, with a landscape of permanent war  (and with the US occupation of Afghanistan now its longest overseas military conflict ever), the sheer timelessness of "The Day After Tomorrow" (written so it could be about any war in history) feels even more poignant.

And let's not even get started on the 10 minute epic of "Sins of the Father", in part a take down of the corruption, venality and incompetence of the then-Bush administration. That is a situation that has only, somehow, degenerated even further.

Announcing the release, Waits' website says of the remastered product: "Some of the new mixes are radical transformations from the original versions and the whole album crackles and steams with fuller intensity and more vivid intimacy."

JamBase says:

Utilizing the original master tapes, Waits and his longtime collaborator and wife Kathleen Brennan prepared the updated version of Real Gone. The new edition is said to be, “a rare look into the creative process of the influential artist taking an opportunity to re-investigate a pivotal work …"

You can hear it at Spotify or stream or buy it here.

And ... well... it sounds fucking amazing. The sound is universally richer, often it feels like more space s have been created the mix or in some places a bit of a jazz vibe created. Other times, entire different sections are either brought out in the mix or seemingly added in. 

The remixing varies in its impact from turning "Shake It" into significantly different (and improved) track, to adding whole new elements at crucial points to expand the sound of already strong tracks (like "Hoist That Rag", the album's stand-out song that now features a horn section that creates a great interplay with Marc Ribot's awesome guitar playing, or "The Day After Tomorrow"), through to songs that sound only lightly touched, like "How's It Gonna End" or "Dead and Lovely".

Overall, it sounds fantastic and there isn't a song made weaker by the process. An already good album has been improved.

Best of all... THIS IS JUST THE START! His 2002 albums Alice and Blood Money have also been remastered and are ready to be released. Next month, a remastered version of Mule Variations is set to come out. So keep an eye on www.tomwaits.com.

And OK sure, an album of all-new music would be even better. But you can't have everything BECAUSE THAT'S JUST HOW THE WORLD WORKS, KIDS.

You can have great remastered versions of entire Tom Waits' albums, but then again the world will also keep being destroyed by corporate parasites and also there is still no new Tom Waits album since 2011. So just take what you can while you can because you'll soon be dead, and by "you" I mean the entire planet.

EXTRA BONUS!

While Australian singer Nick Cave ignores the pleas of Palestinians and plays Israel, Tom Waits has taken a different path.

Waits has re-recorded the piano to his hauntingly melancholic classic "Innocent When You Dream" for British artist Banksy to use at his art installation in the West Bank -- the "Walled Off Hotel", which has the "world's worst views" as it looks out straight onto Israel's Apartheid wall.

Consequence of Sound explains:

Waits re-recorded “Innocent When You Dream”, from his 1987’s Franks Wild Years, to be played aloud at the piano bar at Banksy’s West Bank hotel. He explained in a statement, writing, “The Irish are no strangers to strife and division, and Waits selected this Irish tinged waltz because of its lyrical and wistful mix of regret and dreams for a world without walls.” 

Watch a video of the song being played aloud here.

'This world's been shaved by a drunken barber's hand' -- a playlist for my stand up show 'Inspired?'

Slaid Cleaves.

Now, I've been pretty quiet about it, I know, but I actually do have a solo stand up show at the Sydney Fringe Comedy festival next week, in fact on Wednesday and Friday at 7pm and Sunday at 6pm. Just in case if you are interested at all.

I don't care. I don't care if you attend any of the shows at are at the Container room at The Factory theatre, to which you can book tickets here for the cheap, affordable price of $15/$10, which frankly is a fucking bargin. 

It is also a fundraiser for Green Left Weekly, so I guess it depends, like, if you want the planet to survive or not. I mean I'm not saying it literally hinges on this show, I'm just saying you'd have to be some sort of Donald Trump-loving prick to consciously not come. That's all. The choice is yours. Fascism or humanity. Choose wisely. I mean, I don't care myself...

The point is, faced with a show next week, some performers might try to focus on last minute building, or even working on refining the material by going to various comedy rooms to test things or just agonising in front of their laptop over exact wording, pacing and structure.

That is because they are hacks. The key question is to spend your time developing a musical playlist to accompany the show.

And by "accompany", I don't mean literally. I don't mean the songs have any role in the show. Don't worry, you can turn up to the show without country music ruining your night. Or the Hobart-originated Nation Blue screaming about corporate destruction of a small town in rural Australia with lines like "THESE STREETS ARE SCREAMING HELP ME!!!"

They are just songs that I like and happen to relate loosely to the theme. The type of songs I think about when I think about the shit I talk about in my show.

They describe the sort of topics that get discussed, but as is self-evident, they don't as a rule contain jokes and let me tell you... that's one thing my show has! Jokes! Oh yeah! It is sort of the point!

(Of course, the Hayes Carll and John Prine tracks have a couple of witty lines, as they are witty chaps, but still not the same as trying to come up with a 50-minute stand-up show.)

So, my show is called "Inspired?" and it is about the hilarious topic, which is the fact it is fucking hard to be inspired about the world and the prospects for positive change when everything is SO FUCKING SHIT and seemingly getting worse.

This is dealt with by these songs in various ways. It runs through the shit we deal with, the fact life is hard, the fact our politicians are pricks, the fact climate change is terrifying, the fact this is hard to deal with, and then runs through to the crucial question of hope in the face of darkness.

To be honest, with that in mind, the two key songs are the first, Texas folk/country/Americana singer songwriter Slaid Cleaves' "Drunken Barber's Hand", and the last, South Carolina folk/country/Americana husband-and-wife duo Shovels and Rope's glorious rendition of Nick Lowe's "What's So Funny About Peace Love and Understanding".

I feel those two tracks form a great start and end point, and the rest fills the gaps, from Celtic punk band Flogging Molly's self-explanatory "The Worst Day Since Yesterday" to Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit's "Hope The High Road" about combatting despair with hope.

The list includes incredible acts like Tom Waits, Lucinda Williams, John Prine, Jason Isbell ... and more! Some aren't even country/folk/Americana!

Well you can hear it below and my show will be like this, only with jokes. So like if you like these songs... come along! And if you hate them... then fear not, they play no role in my show at all, and forget this post ever existed!

Just... come along if you are in Sydney. You will not regret it. Here's the fucking playlist:





Yar:




I don't need to read the papers
Or the tea leaves to understand
This world's been shaved
By a drunken barber's hand




Well, I know, I miss more than hit
With a face that was launched to sink
And I seldom feel, the bright relief
It's been the worst day since yesterday

Everybody knows it's a hard time
Livin' on the minimum wage
Ah, some people just gonna sneak on through
Others gotta rattle that cage
One of these days, I'm gonna find my way
Or else just disappear
I'm out here in the filth and squalor
And all I wanna do is stomp and holler

Well over the sea, and far away,
Our kids die in deserts, they been sent that way...

Well Hell doesn't want you
And Heaven is full...

Some humans ain't human
Though they walk like we do
They live and they breathe
Just to turn the old screw
They screw you when you're sleeping
They try to screw you blind
Some humans ain't human
Some people ain't kind

From the cradle to the grave
You will always be a slave
To the quiet darkness of your memories
And that's the truth, my friend
The ugly truth, my friend
I've got proof, my friend
And that's the truth

These streets are screaming help me
Burn the town down
Burn the fucking thing down!!!

There can't be more of them than us
There can't be more

I know you're tired
And you ain't sleeping well
Uninspired
And likely mad as hell
But wherever you are
I hope the high road leads you home again
To a world you want to live in

As I walk through
This wicked world
Searchin' for light in the darkness of insanity.
I ask myself
Is all hope lost?
Is there only pain and hatred, and misery?
And each time I feel like this inside,
There's one thing I want to know:
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?

You can never hold back spring... Tom Waits on Jeremy Corbyn. Sort of.

You can never hold back spring
You can be sure that I will never
Stop believing
The blushing rose will climb
Spring ahead or fall behind
Winter dreams the same dream
Every time

You can never hold back spring
Even though you've lost your way
The world keeps dreaming of spring

So close your eyes
Open you heart
To one who's dreaming of you
You can never hold back spring
Baby

Remember everything that spring
Can bring
You can never hold back spring

We could fucking use some spring in Australia, and not just coz it is really fucking cold right now.

Five covers of Tom Waits you need in your life right now! It will blow your mind in the most amazing way possible!!!

Number four actually gave me chills!!!

Yes that is click bait. I mean, yeah, listening number four on this list gives me fucking chills. Listening to a Tom Waits song always give me chills.

But if just one person is conned into listening to a single Waits song, then the end most certainly justifies even the most irritating means.

And we do need more of the sheer glory that is Tom Waits in our lives. For fuck's sake, Donald Trump is running rampant, the latest climate science is terrifying and the Western Sydney Wanderers are struggling to hold on sixth in the fucking A-League (and don't even mention what allegedly passes for the Wanderers' Asian Champions League campaign).

These, of course, are not simply "Tom Waits songs". They are five great covers I stumbled across while trawling YouTube.

It seems to me that ii is a basic, self-evident truth that Tom Waits is an incredible songwriter. I mean some things are just a fucking given, even in this strange age of alternative facts.

However, I am forced to accept, though I do not pretend to understand, that Tom Waits famed ultra-gravelly voice is something of an "acquired taste" and the voice can put-off for some from enjoying the remarkable storytelling and song-writing craftsmanship of which Waits is one of the greatest practitioners.

Waits voice is actually a tool to express emotion and serve the story telling. There is a sense that Waits just sounds like a Cookie Monster impersonator (or vice versa) , and, yeah, he sometimes does. But his voice is actually quite versatile and used in range of ways, including a sort of falsetto.

A recent New York Times article described Waits' voice, in a somewhat breathlessly OTT way, as:

An instrument of subtle melodic grace and brutal rhythmic power, his voice breeds metaphors as much as it delivers unmistakable sounds. It’s a worn leather bag, a broken chair, a lost dog that has just found his owner, a day without rain, a children’s choir with strep throat and the purest producer of deep feeling I’ve encountered. The last one isn’t a metaphor, I realize. 

More prosaically, Waits has a falsetto and a basso, a holler and a croon. It’s a voice that can take in the full breadth of human experience, on songs like “A Little Rain” or “Last Leaf,” managing, in its gentleness, to find new ways, through story and through image, to put the listener elsewhere, to put them deep inside a song.

Personally, I think as good an example as any as to the value of Waits' voice is his beautifully sweet song to the love of his life, who he was soon married -- 1980's "Jersey Girl". It is a song whose sweetness threatens to  overpower but for the way Waits' voice grounds it, brings the soaring sentiment of love down to Earth.

The beauty of its sentiment is contrasted with the harshness his voice, making it even more moving -- a man whose voice suggests suffering losing himself in the joy of finding true love, itself a love grounded in the very real urban landscape of New Jersey.

(Bruce Springsteen famously made the song a concert standard, and he also knows how to deliver a song like this with just enough dirt to carry it. An example of what happens when you fail to moderate its sweet core is Bon Jovi's horrific cover, which you can check out for purposes of scientific research.)

But... regardless... there are plenty of ways to skin a tale of a broken heart, and these covers all present Waits songs with vocals that serve the stories without grating any poor sensitive eardrums.

On his 2007 Orphans triple album of previously unrecorded tracks, Tom Waits divided his music into the broad categories of "brawlers", "bawlers" and "bastards". Three of these five tracks fall clearly into the "bawlers" category ("Alice", "Hold On" and "New Year's Eve"), which is probably the one on which Waits has most built his songwriting reputation. These are tales of heartache as people ground down by society struggle to find a way to keep on going.

One of the tracks fits pretty clearly into the "brawlers" basket -- "Bad As Me", a raucous tale of joyful sinners from his 2011 album of the same name.

And the other doesn't really fit exactly into these categories. "Clap Hands" is from Waits classic 1985 album Rain Dogs, his album inspired by living in New York, in which he presents the city's streets are overflowing with drunks and weirdos in a surreal dream-scape. The song, and the rendition below (second on the list), captures that pretty well.

Full playlist




Alice


'And so a secret kiss brings madness with the bliss...' 

That line has always struck me. This is beautiful rendition of a song filled with a bittersweet melancholy.

At the start, Evan Ivey, who I know nothing else about, says the song "saved my life". I don't know what prompted her claim, but she is not alone. You can read a moving account by blogger William Henry Prince in which he explains in detail how a Tom Waits song did, in fact, save his life.

There is also a Reddit discussion of people discussing how listening to Waits saved their lives, and I can believe it. Waits certainly makes me want to save this world from the rapidly developing eco-holocaust coz what is the point of achieving something as glorious as Tom Waits' output only for it to be destroyed along with the rest of human civilisation? You can hear Waits' equally spine-tingling original.


Clap Hands


'Said steam, steam, a hundred bad dreams, going up to Harlem with a pistol in his jeans...'

The Dirty Diary's YouTube account has some similarly great versions of other Tom Waits songs, as well as some other impressive dirty blues all recorded in his home. This is not a million miles from the original, but still a stunning effort and, like all five tracks, probably more immediately accessible to someone not already a Waits fan. Hear the original.


Hold On

Down by the Riverside motel
It's ten below and falling
By a ninety-nine cent store
She closed her eyes and started swaying
But it's so hard to dance that way
When it's cold and there's no music...

I have to admit, I did not expect to like to like this as much as I do. The three acts combining for the cover -- Burroughs,  Hi Ho Silver and The Native Siblings -- all seem the kinda middle-class indie kid music that brings out a savage allergic reaction in me that often comes close to requiring hospitalisation.

But... and I don't know anything else about these acts... this is an affecting take on one of Waits' best  heart-wrenching "story" songs. Hear Waits' original.


New Year's Eve

'The stars looked like diamonds, then came the sirens. And everyone started to cuss...'

I had never heard of Madison Ward and the Mama Bear -- a son-and-mother folk duo -- before this very solid cover of a track from Tom Waits 2011 Bad as Me album. It is a story song in a similar vein to  "Hold On" and, in a just world, would be to New Year's Eve what The Pogue's "Fairy Tale of New York" is to Christmas.

It is great cover by an act that, listening to some more from them, definitely seem worth following. And, as I said at the start, their cover gives me chills. Hear the original.


Bad As Me

I'm the one with the gun
Most likely to run
I'm the car in the weeds
If you cut me I'll bleed
You're the same kind of bad as me

FUCK I LOVE SHOVELS AND ROPE! My love of Shovels and Rope rivals my love of Tom Waits, and if you've made it this far into this post you'll grasp how big that praise is for me. I could rant a lot about Shovels and Rope, but that is a topic for another blog post (like this one).

I'll just note their combination of deeply affecting harmonies with the dirt and sweat of rock'n'roll, served up as a raw, dirt stained duo is second to none, performance wise. And here... they dedicate themselves to Tom Waits and produce an energetic, electric cover worthy of The Great Man himself. You can hear the original here.