Tom Waits

There's no other musician quite like Tom Waits. Much has been written about him and his history, but for the purposes of this website I better just explain why I even like him because the reality is I didn't care much for Tom Waits the first time I heard his music.

Much of the music I enjoy today I was first exposed to when I worked at Record Time in 1990-1992. My co-workers had such a wide variety of taste in music and I was always hearing interesting new stuff. One time I asked my co-worker Pat Pantano to recommend a good used cassette for a long drive I had ahead of me. He gave me Anthology of Tom Waits, which I popped in on the way and hated immediately. It was this gruff-voiced crooner singing piano hall ballads like I Hope That I Don't Fall In Love With You and I thought it was just terrible music. One very drunk night later, I popped the casssette in again and listened to the songs with a completely different mind set. A ballad like (Looking For) The Heart Of Saturday Night and blues number $29.00 sounded perfect with a hangover. When I heard The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me), I was impressed enough by the theatricality, musicianship and humor in the song to decide to keep the cassette for when I was in the right mood.

Over the years, Tom Waits showed up as a character actor in movies such as Bram Stoker's Dracula and Short Cuts. I continued to follow his ecletic career over the years and enjoyed his music enough to purchase a few of his CDs for when the mood struck. He evolved from the piano ballads into a more adventurous musician as the years continued, putting out songs like 16 Shells From a Thirty-Ought-Six which strtched the boundaries. I respected him as a true artist in every sense and was what you would call a casual fan.

In 1999, the movie 'Fight Club' was released. I noticed Tom's distictive growl in the background music of a bar scene and I had to find out the song. It turns out to be Goin' Out West, a song from Bone Machine. He laso had the perfect children's song I Don't Wanna Grow Up.

He got older and later came out with Hold On