Tom Waits is one of my all-time favorite songwriters (my other favorites being Joni and Andy Partridge). Almost everything he's written is suburb, and even the occasional clunkers are better than the vast majority of what gets passed off as a 'song' nowadays. God, I sound like a grumpy old man! Bob wrote: NP: Tom Waits, "Muriel" I had to chuckle when I remembered reading that the song was written about a cigar. (Remember Edie Adams doing their TV COMMERCIALS?) It's from my favorite Tom Waits album, "Foreign Affairs" which was recorded directly to 2-track with a full symphony orchestra. You can hear on a few tracks where the horn section is a little aggressive on the attack and blasts the sound engineers out (no level remixes allowed). Joe Jackson tried a similar trick a few years later with "Body and Soul." The Waits record also has probably MY FAVORITE SONG OF ALL TIME (to date), BY ANY WRITER: "Burma Shave." The first line: "Licorice tattoo turned a gunmetal blue, scrawled across the shoulders of a dying town." and later, "With her knees up on the glove compartment, she took out her barrettes, and her hair spilled out like root beer and she popped her gum and arched her back. JUST PHENOMENAL. Seek it out, folks it's worth it. CC Make international calls for as low as $.04/minute with Yahoo! Messenger http://phonecard.yahoo.com/
