Your all time fave Tom Waits song: pick only one

Schiffer broke a bottle on Morgan's head
And I'm stepping on the devil's tail
Across the stripes of a full moon's head
And through the bars of a Cuban jail
Bloody fingers on a purple knife
Flamingo drinking from a cocktail glass
I'm on the lawn with someone else's wife
Admire the view from up on top of the mast

"I'm shinin' like a new dime..."

What does it matter, a dream of love
Or a dream of lies
We're all gonna be in the same place
When we die
Your spirit don't leave knowing
Your face or your name
And the wind through your bones
Is all that remains
And we're all gonna be
We're all gonna be
Just dirt in the ground

The quill from a buzzard
The blood writes the word
I want to know am I the sky
Or a bird
'Cause hell is boiling over
And heaven is full
We're chained to the world
And we all gotta pull
And we're all gonna be
Just dirt in the ground

Now the killer was smiling
With nerves made of stone
He climbed the stairs
And the gallows groaned
And the people's hearts were pounding
They were throbbing, they were red
As he swung out over the crowd
I heard the hangman said
We're all gonna be
Just dirt in the ground

Now Cain slew Abel
He killed him with a stone
The sky cracked open
And the thunder groaned
Along a river of flesh
Can these dry bones live?
Ask a king or a beggar
And the answer they'll give
Is we're all gonna be
Yea yeah
We're all gonna be just
Dirt in the ground

Can't argue with it.

All crooked lines
Her fireplace
A milktrain so clean
Machine gun haste
You'll ride the only wall of shame
And drag that chain across the state
Her lips are red
She is the queen
She's such a scream

don't really agree. in fact the mark of a good songwriter is in just how adaptable the material is. a good song is a good song.

now will someone cover 'blind love' and put a few more dinaros in mr W's bank account?

(or "Martha")

David also otm with "Dirt In The Ground", and right now I feel compelled to add "Johnsburg Illinois" and "In The Neighborhood" from Swordfishtrombones and "Temptation" from Franks Wild Years. Even though this is turning into a straight-up Waits love fest, and I've picked more than one.

-- Jazzbo (jmcga...), August 23rd, 2004. (later)

completely otm,don't know how i forgot about this...

The gorgeous "Hang Down Your Head" is up there too. For nearly 20 yrs I've wondered where he stole the melody from.

The Ramones' cover of "I Don't Wanna Grow Up" is top notch, and it's a song that seriously sounds like it was meant for them to play.

"16 Shells from a Thirty Ought Six"

Even I will admit it's not his greatest or most touching song. In fact, his practice of more or less rewriting two or three times for most of his subsequent albums devalues it somewhat. But the lyrics are great, as is the groove (izzat a rail or an anvil or what that he's hitting?) and the singing, and I love that primal Doppler-style horn line in the background. And then there's the rythmic whap-a-dang of the chorus hook. When I think of Waits these days, that's what I hear in my head.

All that said, Frank's Wild Years contains most of my other all-time faves: "More Than Rain," "Yesterday Is Here," "Way Down in the Hole," "Temptation," et al.

Well you play that tarantella all the hounds'll start to roar
The boys all go to hell and then the cubans hit the floor
They ride along a pipeline, they tango till they're sore
They take apart their nightmares and they leave them by the door

Let me fall out of the window with confetti in my hair
Deal out jacks and bet on a blanket by the stairs
I'll tell you all my secrets but I lie about my past
So send me off to bed forever more

It is a hard boiled Jim Thompson crime novel refined down into a song. The the images in the lyric about blowing a hole in the hood of a yellow Corvette with a shotgun and dying hair in a Texaco bathroom are great.

OTM. I especially like the live version with the horn section on Big Time.

Anymore love for the "Town With No Cheer"/"In The Neighbourhood" coupling? These songs complement each other really well. I also like "I'll Be Gone" - it sounds like the rantings of a drunken scarecrow who somehow slipped his pole and ran away (like the inlay to Mule Variations).

Also, some more covers that don't suck:

Lucinda Williams - Hang Down Your Head
Anne Sofie Von Otter - Take It With Me

I was listening to Heart of Saturday Night a few months back and my wife told me that Bette Midler or Streisand covered Shiver Me Timbers a long time ago. WTF?

pretty simple, really

Been listening to this repeatedly lately. <3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXeQ_3oPidU

Torn between Green Grass, Clap Hands & Alice.

I'll go with Alice.

It's dreamy weather we're on
You waved your crooked wand
Along an icy pond with a frozen moon
A murder of silhouette crows I saw
And the tears on my face
And the skates on the pond
They spell Alice

I disappear in your name
But you must wait for me
Somewhere across the sea
There's a wreck of a ship
Your hair is like meadow grass on the tide
And the raindrops on my window
And the ice in my drink
Baby all I can think of is Alice

Arithmetic arithmetock
Turn the hands back on the clock
How does the ocean rock the boat?
How did the razor find my throat?
The only strings that hold me here
Are tangled up around the pier

And so a secret kiss
Brings madness with the bliss
And I will think of this
When I'm dead in my grave
Set me adrift and I'm lost over there
And I must be insane
To go skating on your name
And by tracing it twice
I fell through the ice
Of Alice

And so a secret kiss
Brings madness with the bliss
And I will think of this
When I'm dead in my grave
Set me adrift and I'm lost over there
And I must be insane
To go skating on your name
And by tracing it twice
I fell through the ice
Of Alice
There's only Alice

this is in fact impossible, but if it were possible, i suppose train song is probably the song

A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND

San Diego Serenade

― Jack Battery-Pack (Jack Battery-Pack), Monday, August 23, 2004 10:57 AM (4 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Yeah. Probably this.

"Alice". Major love for "Alice" actually makes this easier than i thought it would be considering how much i love the guy's catalog.

Maybe 'Clap Hands'. Maybe 'Take it With Me'.

I'm tempted to say "Dirt in the Ground," but fear that I'd be seen as too depressive to have a valid opinion.

"Hoist That Rag" pretty much kicks my ass, too.

Jeezus. If I were gonna pick only one album I'd go with The Black Rider, but um...shit.

Closing Time is my fav album, the first one that comes to mind from that one is "operator number please don't worry 'bout the costs"

(heck i forgot it's been so many years)

i think that's "martha", although out of all of them it's Closing Time and Heartattack and Vine that I've had trouble with. The former's a bit too singer-songwriter ballady, and the other's a bit slapdash for me.

"Come On Up to the House" or "Grapefruit Moon."

"Cold Cold Ground" always triggered a powerful mix of melancholy and nostalgia for some reason.

Yes, for me too. I'm not sure exactly why though. I don't actually know that it's my all time favorite song of his but it's always really struck a powerful chord for me.

two geek notes: the version of cold cold ground with the kronos quartet is great, and the demo version of alice is just as sweet (in different ways) as the syrupy LP version.

i'm kinda tempted to go for something loud and recent and clanky like hoist that rag, but will pick never let go, which was on one of the dimestore bootlegs as 'i'll never let go of your hand' before it came out on orphans. it's all blustery and windswept.

Hang Down Your Head

"Anywhere I Lay My Head"

Telephone Call from Istanbul, the live version from Big Time.

Never drive a car when you're DEAD.

"What's He Building In There?" from 1999's Mule Variations

earth died screaming

Think I'm gonna go with "Anywhere I Lay My Head"