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Tom WaitsTom Waits 

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Tom Waits

Thomas Alan "Tom" Waits (born December 7, 1949) is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz 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." With this trademark growl, his incorporation of pre-rock music styles such as blues, jazz, and vaudeville, and experimental tendencies verging on industrial music, Waits has built up a distinctive musical persona. He has worked as a composer for movies and musical plays and has acted in supporting roles in films including Paradise Alley and Bram Stoker's Dracula; he also starred in the 1986 film Down by Law. He was nominated for an Academy Awa… more »

Year:

1975

11:27

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There's a blur drizzle down the plate glass 
As a neon swizzle stick stirrin' up the sultry night air 
And a yellow biscuit of a buttery cue ball moon 
Rollin' maverick across an obsidian sky 
As the busses go groanin' and wheezin' 
Down on the corner I'm freezin' 
On a restless boulevard at a midnight road 
I'm across town from easy street
 
With the tight knots of moviegoers and out of towners 
On the stroll 
And the buildings towering high above 
Lit like dominoes or black dice 
All the used car salesmen dressed up in 
Purina Checkerboard slacks 
And Foster Grant wrap-around, 
Pacing in front of Earl Schlieb 
$39.95 merchandise 

Like barkers at a shootin' gallery 
They throw out kind of a Texas Guinan routine 
"Hello sucker, we like your money 
Just as well as anybody else's here" 
Or they give you the P.T. Barnum bit 
"There's a sucker born every minute 
You just happened to be comin' along at the right time" 
Come over here now 

You know, all the harlequin sailors are on the stroll 
In a search of "Like new," "new paint," 
Decent factory air and am-fm dreams 
And the piss yellow gypsy cabs 
Stacked up in the taxi zones waitin' like 
Pinball machines 
To be ticking off a joy ride to a magical place 

Waitin' in line like "truckers welcome" diners 
With dirt lots full of 
Peterbilts, Kenworths, Jimmy's and the like, and 
They're highballing' with bankrupt brakes, over driven 
Under paid, over fed, a day late and a dollar short 
But Christ I got my lips around a bottle and 
My foot on the throttle and I'm standin' on the corner 
Standin' on the corner like a "just in town" 
Jasper, on a street corner with a gasper loo

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