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:
Will I see you tonight…on a…
No, wait. That’s next week. Today, the similarly-but-shorter-titled “Downtown.” No “Train.”
“Downtown” deserves more than to be a forgotten stepchild of a totally unrelated but much more popular song with a similar name. It’s a great song! It epitomizes what I love about Heartattack and Vine, which feels like the real transitional period from his early jazzbo-Beatnik sound to the weirdo psychotic-blues sound he was soon to adopt. Like several other songs on the album, “Downtown” has tinges of both.
The opening verse, for instance, could have come out straight outta “Singapore”:
Red Pants and the Sugarman in the Temple Street gloom
Drinkin' Chivas Regal in a four dollar room
Just another dead soldier in a powder blue night
Sugarman says baby, everything's alright
It amused me researching to find a karaoke version of this on YouTube. Do you think anyone’s actually tried this? Boy would I love to hear how that went.
He’s only performed it live once, in Detroit in 1982, on a tour ostensibly promoting the One from the Heart soundtrack where he—whoops—didn’t perform many songs off the soundtrack. That version replaces the prominent organ part with saxophone (or maybe clarinet, the audio quality is less than ideal). He should have given it more outings. The extended coda at the end is great too.
You’re back Ray! A Tom Waits Karaoke night sounds like the worst idea ever.
Great observation about this song embodying the transitional period leading up to Swordfishtrombones etc. You really hear it on the 1982 live version, with Waits' voice switching from conspiratorial jazz to threatening to howl.
Also interesting are the lyrics of macho sexuality as well as a Walk on the Wild Side vibe. The former is rare in Waits but does exist (Goin' Out West, for example), but the latter isn't found anywhere else that I can think of in his songs.