Pouring champagne stars
January 16, 2008
Tom Waits was a big part of my musical adolescence. He was there during my various boarding school experiences, he was there when I graduated from NYU’s College of Arts & Science, he was there when I started the Non-Profit section of a Spanish local paper… I have always been a great fan of Jim Jarmusch and of course, he was there with him all the way.
Some of my favourite songs are Tom Traubert’s Blues from the 1976 album Small Change (also in the 1987 collection The Asylum Years); the somewhat novel You Can Never Hold Back Spring from the 2006 tr-anthology Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards. (Yes, Brawlers twice ;-); and Please Call Me Baby from The Heart of Saturday Night album (1974).
I want to share the lyrics of a great Tom Waits song I just recovered form the trunk of remembrance, Drunk on The Moon, from The Heart of Saturday Night. Hope you may enjoy this 1976 soundstage video and the lyrics as much as I.
Tight-slacked clad girls on the graveyard shift
‘Neath the cement stroll
Catch the midnight drift
Cigar chewing charlie
In that newspaper nest
grifting hot horse tips
On who’s running the bestAnd I’m blinded by the neon
Don’t try and change my tune
‘Cause I thought I heard a saxophone
I’m drunk on the moonAnd the moon’s a silver slipper
It’s pouring champagne stars
Broadway’s like a serpent
Pulling shiny top-down cars
Laramer is teeming
With that undulating beat
And some Bonneville is screaming
It’s way wilder down the streetHearts flutter and race
The moon’s on the wane
Tarts mutter their dream hopes
The night will ordain
Come schemers and dancers
Cherry delight
As a Cleveland-bound Greyhound
And it cuts through the nightAnd I’ve hawked all my yesterdays
Don’t try and change my tune
‘Cause I thought I heard a saxophone
I’m drunk on the moon
In the image Tom Waits as Zack (with John Lurie) in Jim Jarmusch’s 1986 Down by Law
Tags: Brawlers & Bastards, Drunk on the Moon, Jim Jarmusch, John Lurie, NYU, Orphans: Brawlers, The Asylum Years, The Heart of Saturday Night, Tom Waits
January 16, 2008 at 10:26 pm
he is such a freaky guy…
i think his best album ever is a live jazzistic concert in a small place. this album is “Nighthawks at the dinner”. He seems to be full of alcohol when signing, a broken voice, but very poetic lyrics. then he made other more experiemtnal records, but not so attractive in my opinion…
this album needs to be listened from beginning to end as a whole thing, due to speeches between songs he is doing, some of them really hilarious for the audience there.
btw, in down by law there was roberto benigni in a main role, right?
nice post!
January 17, 2008 at 12:49 am
Yes. He’s also called Roberto and is the most lucid albeit dramatic and hilarious character in the whole movie. The 3 of them are convicted for crimes they have not commited (or at least not intentionally as is Benini’s case). I think the broken voice and “I-just-downed-the-liquor-cabinet” it’s his identity mark ;-) And I do think he’s genial, even acting!
That album has a great song called Eggs and Sausage (In a Cadillac with Susan Michelson) !! Good choice ;-)