Music Arcades: Tom Waits: Asylum Years

I see from the likes of MusicBrainz and Amazon that the CD issue of this album has only 14 tracks. Of course my copy is the 20-track double vinyl album that I got in 1984 (and I think you got it around the same time, too?). One of the things about the vinyl is that the track sequence is pretty much a straight chronological one, which is useful in this case as it shows the distinct phases that Waits went through. I remember you saying that you could spot the exact moment — Small Change, I think — when he discovered the particular grain of his voice that became his trademark.

Already by 1984 we were viewing these Asylum years through the bottom of a glass of hindsight, since Swordfishtrombones was being trumpeted throughout the NME world. But now Sft is itself the age of a mature whisky (a quarter of a century), and some of the older, sweeter material is coming back into its own. People I respect, from Gideon Coe to Tim, rate The Heart Of Saturday Night very highly — I might have to see if I can help Lucy dig out her vinyl copy of that. Me, I love Martha. So much so that (this happens very rarely, for good reasons) I sang along with the chorus. The Boy was feeding in my arms at the time. He rolled his eyes.

That was on Saturday evening, I think. Yesterday he looked a little unsettled when the needle dropped on Potter's Field. The aforementioned Gideon has been hosting a discussion on scary songs in the course of which that song was mentioned just a few days ago.

Then came a song I'd completely forgotten about (and it's not on the CD), On the Nickel.

So here's to all the little boys,
The sandman takes you where,
You'll be sleepin' with a pillowman,
On the nickel over there.

We had a slow dance, holding him over my shoulder to help express any excess wind, to Ruby's Arms, and then I tucked him in, turned out the light and wished him — perhaps against the odds — sweet dreams.