>>Listen to Tom Waits and you'll hear what sound to me like great lyrics. And you can pretty much pick your own song.
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>>Check out his old "Heart Attack and Vine" album, and you'll hear (imho) great lyrics galore. Or maybe "Nighthawks at the Diner".
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>When we came here, someone asked our youngest daughter does she have any American authors that she likes a lot. She said "Tom Waits", to the utter amazement of all present Americans... because she was just seven at the time :).
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>We brought all our Waits CDs with us (well, he did say "save the coupon", didn't he?). Even now, my wife has one of them in the kitchen radio/cd, and whenever the NPR goes over the board with their masked advertisements or right-wing propaganda, she just switches to him to balance her nerves.

I have everything he's recorded. Most of it still on vinyl, but I'm replacing them with CDs. Still got a few to pick up. I still can't believe he recorded "My Blue Valentine". In fact that whole album weirds me out a little. But you listen to something like "The Piano Has Been Drinking", "Mr. Seigel", or "Downtown Trains", and you get a real sense of how lyrics should be written.

But for all that, it's still about more than the lyrics. Waits is a brilliant musician. Most of the bands I hear just do the same riffs as each other, and most of the guitar players sound like Hendrix or Vaughan wannabe's who just don't make the grade.

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>>Sorry, but Crash just doesn't make it for me.
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>I've slept over the late seventies. In '74-76, during the disco era, I saw the great r'n'r go deservedly down for selling out and being replaced with the next best-seller. In 1977 I saw punk tearing down the house, deservedly again, but didn't see them building anything. Then in 1981 I saw I was looking in the wrong direction. There were Stranglers, for one, and the great New Wave we had.
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>Incidentally, this morning I removed the Clash and Sex Pistols from my playlist, but select Stranglers are still there :).

The disco era was almost enough to make me stop listening to music. If I ever meet Barry Manilow, I won't be responsible for my actions.