"Depot, Depot"

'The Heart of Saturday Night', 1974

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It’s always exciting doing this project when I come to the next song and say, “Huh??”

That happens usually with some outtake so obscure it wasn’t even included on Orphans, or a short soundtrack instrumental from Night on Earth or One from the Heart. Almost never with a proper song on a proper album.

You know where I’m going with this. I saw the title “Depot, Depot” and said, “Huh??” When I saw it was from a proper album — a rather famous one at that! — I added a few more question marks. “Huh????”

Admittedly, I am not the biggest fan of Tom’s earliest stuff. I like the folkier Closing Time and the Early Years compilations, but The Heart Of Saturday Night and Nighthawks at the Diner are probably my least favorite albums in the Waits catalog. This sort of jazzbo-beatnik style just isn’t my thing. At least until Small Change, by which point he’d started varying his sound enough — and become a strong enough songwriter — that it suddenly starts to click. (Then un-clicks again for much of Foreign Affairs…)

Today’s “Huh??” song was written about the Greyhound Bus Depot at 6th & Los Angeles in downtown LA. This bus station sat at the edge of Skid Row and was the terminus for all interstate Greyhounds in its day. Tom once called it “a great place to take a date.” Here’s what it looked like:

Photo via Tom Waits Library

This midtempo shuffle has some good lines (“This peeping Tom needs a peephole”) and some dumb ones (“I'm on a roll just like a pool ball, baby”). Producer Bones Howe called the track “down and funky,” which seems like a stretch. As sometimes happens during this era, the sax player steals the show. Pete Christlieb is his name, and you probably have heard him on Steely Dan’s “Deacon Blue.” He said, of recording that track, “The next thing I know I’m hearing myself in every airport bathroom in the world."

Needless to say, “Depot, Depot” is not heard in every airport bathroom in the world. Not even in bus station bathrooms, which would be more appropriate given the subject matter. But Tom seemed to think fondly of it, playing it into the early ‘80s. I like this Small Change-era live version quite a bit more than the (sax aside) fairly middling Heart of Saturday Night recording. Now this one is “down and funky.” Tom has rearranged it quite a bit; I particularly like the repeated “shuffle when you walk” bit about 80 seconds in.

The main reason I love those “Huh??” moments I mentioned is because sometimes I discover a killer Tom Waits song I’d overlooked. Frankly, I think I was justified to overlook the Heart of Saturday Night recording. I forgot it because it is forgettable. This Rockpalast ‘77 live version, though—this is the real find here.

PS. Googling around for “depot Tom Waits” also turned up this YouTube oddity: