"Drunk on the Moon"
'The Heart of Saturday Night', 1974
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Before relistening to it just now, I didn’t remember a single thing about “Drunk on the Moon.” If you’re just joining us—and I know many have since our long hiatus—my most controversial “Tom take” is that I don’t much like The Heart of Saturday Night. Every time I mention that, people get mad. Overall I’d say I like most of the stuff other big Waits fans like, but that’s the one major place me and many others (including probably many of you) part ways.
So imagine my surprise to press play on this and go—wait a second. This is great! I like this far more than the album’s better-known tracks. “I thought I heard a saxophone,” Tom sings, which is a funny line in this context, because you can’t miss the saxophone. Tenor sax player Pete Christlieb is as much the star of the show as Tom.
It has some great lines too. I love the opening verse. It reminds me of Bruce Springsteen’s early days, in awe of the Beat Poets, cramming words and images for the sheer joy of it, whether or not it all makes precise sense.
Tight-slack-clad girls on the graveyard shift
'Neath the cement stroll, catch the midnight drift
Cigar-chewing Charlie in that newspaper nest
Grifting hot horse tips on who's running the best
I also like this solo version, performed live on North Hollywood radio station KPFK in 1975. It features a great intro about the inspirations of the song in divey Denver:
Transcribed:
This is about Denver, Colorado. I always stayed at a place called the Oxford Hotel which is down on 17th & Wazee about a block away from Larimer Street. Larimer being just full of a lot of ghosts…shopping for images in the trash cans. Boy, that's old Kerouac and Cassady stomping grounds.
It's really changed quite a bit. They put up what's called Larimer Square now which is kind of like a contemporary little boutique shopping center. It looks awful ridiculous, ‘cause right across the street is some real bonafide serious winos. Right out in front of a place called the Gin Mill. Another place called the Terminal Bar. Terminal Bar is a block away from the Santa Fe train depot, so they called it the Terminal Bar, but they had no idea that like 20 years later the place’d be filling up with terminal cases.
This is called “Drunk On The Moon.” There's all different kinds of moons—silver slipper moons and there's cueball moons and there's buttery cueball moons and moons that are all melted off to one side. This is about a muscatel moon.
“Muscatel moon” would have been a great title for a Tom Waits song too.
Ranking "D" Songs
When I finish with a letter, I rank all the songs that began with it. So here’s my ranking of all 21 “D” songs, from best to worst-but-still-pretty good:
Drunk on the Moon
Down There By the Train
Dragging a Dead Priest
I don't think I would have mentioned this in these comments yet; apologies if so: I think the title line means the moonlight has altered his state of mind, but for the first ~15 years I listened to this song, I thought he was imagining himself hanging out on the moon, drunk.
Kinda like the Sesame Street song "If Moon Was Cookie" where Cookie Monster imagines himself on the moon, but then starts eating the moon because it's a cookie.
On rankings: I like "Dog Door" and I think it got a raw deal.
Thanks for these comments. I came to Waits late, first with Heartattack and Vine, then Mule Variations, and then worked my way backwards. And so his first two albums in particular seem to be by a different artist, and not nearly as "deep" as his later works. But there is a charm in songs like "Drunk On the Moon" and others that I'm warming up to.
And I agree with Queso: swap #4 "Idi Amin" (funny but slight) with #18 "Dog Door", or at least move "Dog Door" closer to single digits and you've got yourself a list I won't quibble about!