"Dirty Old Town"

Live in LA, 1988

Every Tom Waits Song is an email newsletter covering just that, in alphabetical order. Find more info here and sign up to get it sent straight to your inbox:

When I first conceived of this project, I had to define my terms. What was “every Tom Waits song”?

I could stick to the narrowest definition of the term: songs he released on his albums. But then I’d be missing Orphans, which includes a number of my and many other people’s favorites (and quite possibly my all-time favorite, which we are long ways from getting to).

Okay, I could say “studio albums plus Orphans” then. But that still omits a ton of great songs, particularly from his early years (Orphans seemed to pretend Tom’s career began at Swordfishtrombones). Adding the two unauthorized Early Years compilations comes closer, but still misses some essential tracks. I eventually landed on a rough framework of every song Tom officially released, anywhere, anytime—including guest appearances on other people’s records, because that leads to fun discursions into Primus or The Replacements.

That definition seems pretty damn expansive. But apparently not expansive enough, because today I’m cheating.

When I decided on that definition, there were a bunch of loose tracks I needed to scoop up. I found many on fan-assembled compilations of such things (Tales Of The Underground and Forgotten Orphans are particularly essential). One such compilation I found somewhere was titled Oddballs and Cunning Hams. This odds-and-sods collection included Tom’s final original song to date, “Take One Last Look,” which he performed for one of David Letterman’s final shows in 2015. Maybe by the time we get to the T’s, it won’t be his most recent original anymore. Here’s hoping.

The song that most blew my mind on that compilation though came five tracks earlier. It’s a live cover of “Dirty Old Town,” the old Ewan MacColl folk song from 1949. But if you know much about Tom and his influences, you know he’s not really covering Ewan MacColl. He’s covering The Pogues. They performed it on their beloved 1985 album Rum Sodomy & the Lash, which Tom has cited as one of his favorite albums ever. He wrote about the album:

Sometimes when things are real flat, you want to hear something flat, other times you just want to project onto it, something more like.... you might want to hear the Pogues. Because they love the West. They love all those old movies. The thing about Ireland, the idea that you can get into a car and point it towards California and drive it for the next five days is like Euphoria, because in Ireland you just keep going around in circles, those tiny little roads. 'Dirty Old Town', 'The Old Main Drag'. Shane has the gift. I believe him. He knows how to tell a story. They are a roaring, stumbling band. These are the dead end kids for real. Shane's voice conveys so much. They play like soldiers on leave. The songs are epic. It's whimsical and blasphemous, seasick and sacrilegious, wear it out and then get another one.

Tom only performed “Dirty Old Town” this one time, as a special treat on his New Year’s Eve 1988 show (which also featured a great one-time-only cover of The Doors’ “Take It As It Comes”). Tom doesn’t have a thick Irish accent, but other than that he and the band ably channel the drunken lurch of the Pogues and singer Shane MacGowan. Tom never released it on everything, but I’ve listened to it so many times in the past year I had to highlight it in this newsletter anyway.

When MacGowan passed away last year, Tom wrote:

Ah, the blessings of the cursed. 

Shane McGowan’s torrid and mighty voice is mud and roses punched out with swaggering stagger, ancient longing that is blasted all to hell.  A Bard’s bard, may he cast his spell upon us all forevermore.

“Let him go boys, let him go down in the mud where the rivers all run dry…”
Love and condolences to Pogues, Victoria, family and all who loved Shane,
Tom and Kathleen