Tom Waits Sounds Like The Cookie Monster

It was in the dark days of my illegal downloading career that I first laid ears on the musical marvel that is Tom Waits. I can't even remember what I was meant to be searching for, but I somehow stumbled upon "I Hope That I Don't Fall In Love With You", a cut from his debut album "Closing Time". At the tender age of 14, it was the greatest love song I had ever heard. On the strength of this rather good track, I bought said album. I was horribly underwhelmed. It was too loungey, too Parisian cafe for me. There were a few outstanding tracks on there, but overall, it didn't cut the musical mustard for me.

I later happened upon a copy of Rain Dogs, acquired in one of those 2 for £10 CD deals in which you have to spend 20 minutes skipping past the Rick Astley compilations to find something halfway decent. It's languished in my CD collection, unlistened and unloved. Until this morning.

Waits sounds like bottle of whiskey. He's grizzled, smoked and husky. And genuinely does sound like the Cookie Monster on certain tracks. If he writes a track called "Om Nom Cookies", I'm buying that bitch.

Rain Dogs is simply one of the strangest, most enduring albums you're likely to hear. Waits clearly takes inspiration from gypsy music and sounds like Gogol Bordello's alcoholic uncle.

I'm not going to write a tedious track by track review of the album. Instead, I'm going to leave it up to you to hunt it down and listen for yourself. In the meantime, I'll leave you with a few choice Waits tracks to sample.

Remember to delete these after 24 hours, folks.

Singapore-Opening track on Rain Dogs.

I Hope That I Don't Fall In Love With You- The first Waits track I fell in love with

Why Universal Studios Are Big Thieving Whores.

Before I get sued for defamation, I'd like to explain myself. A couple of years ago, I was watching '21 Grams', the fantastic English language debut by 'Amores Perros' director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. It had a great ensemble cast, but I was pretty blown away by one actor in particular, not for his performance, but for the fact that he looked like a goddamn werewolf. That's right, lovely Benicio Del Toro. At the time, I couldn't have cherry picked a better actor to take up the role of The Wolf Man if they ever re-made it. The dude just exudes werewolf quality. Sharp eyes, a certain animal magnetism. Frankly, were I at present 7 years old and still in the throes of a romantic love affair with anything paranormal, this guy would be the coolest man in the history of the world.

Fast forward a few years. I'm perusing a few of my favourite sites for movie news, and I come across an article that makes me believe I'm being wire tapped by the suits at Universal. A re-make of The Wolf Man is in production. With good ol' Benicio in the titular role. Well, spank me sideways if my calling isn't a Hollywood casting director.

As a huge fan of the original, I was pretty up for this movie. Even after hearing that Joe 'Jurassic Park III' Johnston was at the helm, my excitement couldn't be contained. A modern Wolfman with all the benefits of CGI technology could only be 7 levels of awesome. And my recent sneak peek at some on set pictures has confirmed my belief.


This movie just reached ten levels of awesome.

Expect to geek-gasm on the 3rd April 2009.

A treat for you

The climactic final scene from the original 1941 Wolf Man.