>>>>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.
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>>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.
>
>Man, the lyrics to "Whistle past the Graveyard", when you realize who he's talking to, at the end ... "We'll take the spokes out of your wheelchair..." shiver my spine.

Ah! Another discerning listener. If I had my way, Tom Waits would be part of the English lit course in high school.

Waits is an interesting guy. I've seen him interviewed a few times and his vocabulary is really something. Huge grasp of the language, odd way of looking at life, and funny as hell.