Rather than a memorial post when someone dies, today let's have a post on a living musician's birthday. I know many people don't like Tom Waits. Maybe it's the voice like Louis Armstrong on a five-day bender. Maybe it's the oh-so-caustic wit. But in dismissing him they miss out on gems like Step Right Up.
The song is a compilation of the sorts of pitches with which people have been targeted for centuries, many of them modern, infomercial tag lines but some you can picture an eighteenth-century barker calling out to passing long-skirted ladies and their top-hatted beaus. Well, not in Tom Wait's voice, perhaps. I don't think he'd draw a lot of takers, somehow.
Whatever the case, I'm posting Step Right Up in honor of his birthday. Here's hoping he's enjoying some cake or a slug of whisky...or both...right now.
Categories:
alternative,
blues,
rants,
rock
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