Tom Waits

Please I don't wish to offend you ..........But, Your favourite music of Tom waits is by somebody else?She sucked all the fun out of his music.She turned 1940's German avant garde circus into Disneyland,Burroughs and Bukowski into john grisham and the upright bass,the calliope and an old barroom piano into a Yamaha home organ.Maybe if she turns to prostitution,drinks straight whisky,smokes Gitanes or Gaullioses and works out near the airport for a couple of years then maybe she'll come close,oh and a false limb would help.

Waits is Waits is Waits. Why an ersatz when you can have the real thing? Quite surreal, I admit, but at the top of the list of, for want of a better expression, singer/songwriters. Not the easiest music or lyrics, dark, stark, troubling but never gratuitous, he spits at us all the violence, the absurdity and the pathetic chronic insanity of the "American Way of Life". Seems obvious most Americans can't recognize themselves in his work: his mirror is so close that some people only see the distortion.

Actually, even Tom Waits isn't Tom Waits any more. Check out Mule Variations, too much time spent at the Beverly Hills Hotel, not enough at that deadbeat bar on Hollywood Boulevard.

"I'll take it, with me when I go" Mule Variations.

Garfish, good choice. I too like Tom Waits and have many of his CDs. That doesn't mean Holly Cole's covers are not the "genuine" item. She does an excellent interpretation, and they stand on their own. I also like them. I also like Bob Dylan, but love Joan Baez's covers of Dylan on "Any Day Now". If the only person legit to sing a song is the original singer, music would be a lot poorer.