Pig Sty Avenue

Here's what wikipedia has to say about it. I like the quote from Tom. "Antiseptic" is how The Eagles sound, generally. (You can get a snatch of that particular bottle of TCP here ). Here are the lyrics to the chorus: Now the sun's coming up, I'm riding with Lady Luck, Freeway cars and trucks, Stars beginning to fade, And I lead the parade Just a-wishing I'd stayed a little longer, Oh, Lord, let me tell you that the feeling's getting stronger. There's a kind of hook in there: the line "Oh, Lord, let me tell you that the feeling's getting stronger"; it doesn't scan, so the singer has to take it at a rush. Fourteen syllables. The Eagles' version had " Lord, don't you know the feelin's gettin' stronger": eleven syllables: they didn't get it, did they? Probably thought they were improving on the original. Driving home from your lover's bed in the dawn, on a freeway, in a 1955 Chevy. This is the...

I've been a fan of Tom Waits since I saw him on a chat show in the early 80s. He caught my attention by saying from the outset that the only reason he was there was to plug his new album Raindogs . He drawled rather than muttered, but another guest (I seem to remember it was Ian Hislop) suggesting he plug it a little more loudly, whereupon Tom said "I'll plug it any way I goddam want." He went on to play a song from Raindogs , (I can't remember which one now), and then sort of beckoned the audience to come closer and said, "Come on, come on, let's have some old songs..." And then he played The Piano Has Been Drinking . Brilliant. I bought Raindogs the next day, Asylum Years a week or so later, and subsequently Swordfishtrombones and (as soon as it came out) Frank's Wild Years . My own wild years started soon after that, and I stopped buying any records, though someone gave me a home-recorded tape of Bone Machine . In 1998 I went abroad ...

...about a notion I had sometime back to restore my collection of Tom Waits albums , (on CD). So I'm going right back to the beginning with Closing Time . Amazon have produced a discography , too. Something more significant had also been forgotten. In conversation this morning, Herself and I realised that it's our third wedding anniversary tomorrow, and that neither of us has so much as bought the other a card. Oh dear! It could have been closing time for me, with weeks in the marital freezer. Luckily, the lapse being mutual, there were no tears or recriminations.