"Apartment for Rent"
Live, 1975
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If "Apartment for Rent" isn't precisely a Nighthawks at the Diner outtake - I can't find any evidence he actually recorded it at those sessions - the song is clearly of a spiritual piece with the album. The only known recording of this deeply obscure original comes from a June 1975 live show in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, that aired on the radio one month before the Nighthawks sessions took place.
"Apartment for Rent" is so loose and shaggy that it almost seems made up on the spot, a collage of ‘70s-beatnik motifs to paint a picture of a sadsack who got deservedly dumped, over jazz-guitar-by-the-numbers. Here's how it opens:
Well, it ain't no use, it ain't no good
And there's too many ghosts in this neighborhood
A quaint little walk up is bringing me down
I have to find another crib on the other side of town
"Apartment for rent" is a line in the Nighthawks song "Spare Parts I (A Nocturnal Emission)," so perhaps this song spun out of that. I'm not sure Nighthawks at the Diner missed anything by not including this song…though I'll admit that I find Nighthawks a little rambly and meandering too, so maybe it would fit right in!
A rambling made up on the hoof sort of feel, I always thought...
It was! You’re correct but it was the times too. Just all over the place