[.ca] Heart of Saturday Night

From Amazon.co.uk:
The Eagles might have covered his song "Ol' 55" but Tom Waits was cut from a different cloth than California's other singer-songwriters--he suggested a scruffy beat poet who'd walked out of a forgotten scene of Jack Kerouac's On the Road. Waits's beatnik schtick could get old and he developed into a much more musically adventurous songwriter in later years, but his second album contains some of his best early work, including the sweet romantic blues of "New Coat of Paint" ("You wear a dress baby, I'll wear a tie"), and his best hipster recitation, "Diamonds on My Windshield". Two songs are enduring classics: the doleful, dirge-like "San Diego Serenade" ("Never saw the morning till I stayed up all night") and the touchingly sweet "(Looking for) The Heart of Saturday Night" ("Stoppin' on the red, goin' on the green, 'cause tonight'll be like nothin' that you've ever seen"). --John Milward

Looking for the heart:
Still singing in the bluesy-jazzy serenade that he abandoned by his next album, this is Tom Waits the Barstool Philosopher at his best. The instrumentation is mostly his jazzy piano with occasional backing from strings, and a cabaret rhythm section. Some of his best early songs are on here, including New Coat of Paint, San Diego Serande, the incredible title track, and the winning semi-spoken-word piece, Diamonds On My Windshield (seemingly a blueprint for many of his later songs.) He never quite returned to songs of this particular type again (certainly not with this voice), and it is good to go back and see that he wrote great songs of this type. Moving away from the ballads and "midnight lullabies" on his first album, this collection houses a very poignant set of lyrics that set the scenes omnipresent on his first album (indeed, on all of them up to Swordfishtrombones) to poetry. There are quite a few good lines on this album, and his vocals are some of his most affecting. Although it's not as interesting or sprawling as some of his later, better albums, The Heart of Saturday Night is nonetheless a fine Tom Waits album, and is very good at what it does. Any fan will want to pick it up, and it truly is a soundtrack for when you are looking for the heart of Saturday night.

Legendary !:
This is some of the saddest music I've ever heard. Tom's second disc still holds up magnificantly. Back in his early years he was the bourbon/blues piano playing sad sack who could put into words what few others could. Yeah, we all know how he's changed his style over the years, but for me, this lounge lizard's first few disc's are what I consider some of the best music ever written. A timeless classic!

It's the Tom formula:
Great backup! Tom, of course careens through every tune skillfully. One might even think this guy is for real, but alas, it's an act. He's "in character" (i.e.acting out the part of leering wino/poet) and he's REALLY believable, but it's an illusion. A talented illusionist. Did somebody call me liar? I remember when Tom was a folksinger...seriously, I even saw him a few times in and around L.A., he switched routines and this one brought in the coin, so he stuck with it. His backup band is pure gold...and Tom's dusky, whiskey and tobacco vocals would cut through any mud. These were great LP's (remember those) to drink beer to on those long cold Alaskan nights...long ago.

Are you alone?:
If so, get a jug of wine, sit on the floor and let this cd slip into your soul. A suffocating, stately meditation on missed connections. Why this isn't a staple on the jukebox of every crummy dive bar in America, I have no idea. Its about going out or away because thats what you know best-and feeling the emptiness that it invites. Piano, sax, crooning, the West Side Highway,your beat up car, 4am at the bodega, its all here. Waits has got to be the most eloquent articulator of loss Ive ever heard.

A MASTERPIECE!!!:
This album is his best for me. Two songs are enough to say it a masterpiece "San Diego Serenade" and "drunk on the moon"

• New Coat of Paint
• San Diego Serenade
• Semi Suite
• Shiver Me Timbers
• Diamonds on My Windshield
• (Looking For) The Heart of Saturday Night
• Fumblin' With the Blues
• Please Call Me, Baby
• Depot, Depot
• Drunk on the Moon
• Ghosts of Saturday Night (After Hours at Napoleone's Pizza House)