As Tom Waits releases Orphans, a triple-disc set of new and uncollected material, songs from the other end of the man's strange and wonderful career - his debut album Closing Time and its follow up The Heart Of Saturday Night - are currently soundtracking TGOE's cold November nights.
What beautiful, bluesy, boozy, late night bar-fly lyricism there is here! What storytelling! How come these albums don't make all those top 50 lists and how come (just imagine!) Sinatra never got to sing a Tom Waits song?
How come I got to forty before I even heard this stuff?
Tom's off the booze now - but meet me at the bar and I'll buy you a bourbon and we'll 'laugh at that old bloodshot moon in a burgundy sky'....
These albums criminally cheap here.
While you're at it, and while we consider laureates of the American lost, Raymond Carver's short story collection Where I'm Calling From here.
Finally, a cracking interview with Tom Waits in this month's edition of The Word magazine.
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