I learned several years ago that when my friend Michael
Tonder recommends something, it’s probably not going to be “just good,” it’s
probably going to be “freaking awesome.” Such was the case on Sunday when I
finally got around to listening to “The Heart of Saturday Night” from start to
finish.
This bucket list-worthy experience goes backs to the day
several years ago when Michael recommended that I check out the old HBO crime
drama, “The Wire.” I was totally unfamiliar with this show, and I got hooked on
it from the start and ended up watching the complete series, a project that
took me several months to complete. It was worth every minute of it because “The
Wire” is, hands down, one of the greatest TV shows ever. If you’ve never
watched “The Wire,” you’re life is not complete.
While watching “The Wire,” Michael informed me that the
show’s theme song, “Way Down in the Hole,” was originally written by Tom Waits.
“The Wire” aired for five seasons, and Waits sang the theme song for the intro
to Season 2 episodes, while other artists sang the same song during the
openings for the other seasons.
Waits’ voice has been described as sounding "like it
was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few
months, and then taken outside and run over with a car." To say
that there’s something about it that’s unique, appealing and entertaining would
be an understatement.
To be perfectly honest, at the time Michael mentioned Tom
Waits to me, I didn’t know much about him aside from the fact that he was the
guy who played the lunatic Renfield in the 1992 movie, “Bram Stoker’s Dracula.”
Because Michael recommended him, I wanted to add one of Waits’ albums to my
“bucket list” for this year and noticed that three of Waits’ albums were listed
on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.” Of
the three, “The Heart of Saturday Night” was the highest rated at No. 339.
I added that album to my “bucket list” at the end of last
year and finally took the time to listen to it from start to finish yesterday.
Released in October 1974, this album includes 11 songs, all of which were
written and composed by Waits. My personal favorites were “Diamonds on My
Windshield” and “Drunk on the Moon.”
As always, Michael is batting a thousand on his
recommendations because I thought this album was one of the finest pieces of
music I’ve ever listened to. I highly recommend it to anyone out there with a taste
for jazzy, folksy blues music. I enjoyed “The Heart of Saturday Night” so much
that I plan to listen to some of Waits’ other albums sometime very soon.
In the end, how many of you have ever listened to “The Heart
of Saturday Night” from start to finish? What did you think about it? Which of
Waits’ albums is your all-time favorite? Let us know in the comments section
below.
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