Customer Reviews

Nighthawks at the Diner

5 star:		(41)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I would like to correct a couple of possible misconceptions about this album. A previous reviewer alluded to "manufactured atmosphere". Don't construe this comment in any kind of negative way. I saw Tom Waits perform LIVE in the fall of 1975 at Alex Cooley's Electric Ballroom in Atlanta, GA. Leon Redbone opened for him. I have been to hundreds of live music concerts since, of all types, and this one remains the most memorable. Notice that the album was released in October, 1975. What you hear on this disc is EXACTLY what I saw & heard Tom perform that night. He had some props on stage, including old-fashioned gas pumps during "Burma Shave". The lighting effects were the best I've ever seen, and emphasized his expert use of cigarettes as props - his head & face were often shrouded in a cloud of blue smoke. What I'm getting at is the fact that this recording conveys almost perfectly the sense of being there, regardless of how it was done. Indeed, it is obvious that Tom strove for this live nightclub effect, and achieved it beautifully. The second misconception is the impression given by some reviewers that this is not one of his better ones. I disagree, and would nominate this recording as being the best example of the "essence" of Tom Waits. Others have correctly pointed out that he has inhabited 3 or 4 different personas during his career, with consequently different musical styles. However, I think there is a thread of essential Waits that is present on all the recordings, from the early ones like "Heart of Saturday Night" to "Bone Machine" and "Mule Variations", and I believe that we find that Essential TomWaitsness most perfectly captured on this recording. If you like this, you should like almost any of his old stuff, you would definitely like the "trilogy" "Swordfishtrombones", "Rain Dogs", and "Frank's Wild Years", and you probably would also like the newer Tom, "Bone Machine", "Mule Variations", etc. One of the 2 or 3 best in American Music.

I have seen Tom Waits perform in New Orleans, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, NYC, and San Francisco over many years, and he has always come through with a great show. Even when he showed up in Philadelphia without his band (as a result of a group arrest after the previous night's show), he came through with a great acoustic performance. So. . . here's your chance to experience his show from the Seventies for yourself. Yes - I heard it was a studio recording as well, but that knowledge doesn't detract from the recording's allure, since it was done in front of a live audience in a big studio. The intent was to get get good sound quality, not stack the deck in terms of staged audience reaction.

If you're concerned about authenticity, let me assuage your fears. As someone who has seen Waits perform over 20 times, I can tell you that what you hear on this disc is what you would have heard in 1972 if you had seen him in person.

Great disc - I recommend it highly for both long-time fans as well as Tom Waits novices.

While I couldn't pin down my overall favorite Tom Waits album, I can point to "Nighthawks at the Diner" as my favorite work of Waits in regards to lyrics. Tom Waits gives prose a saucy depth that is all his own, and this album is the piece that brings that prose out in its greatest glory! This is a unique live album since the audience is a small gathering, so the cheers and chuckles sound like Waits is entertaining several dozen people at a party. This initimate setting works well since he does unforgettable spoken introductions for a number of his songs which are almost as poetic as the songs (IE " I was reaching the end of an emotional cul-de-sac"). My personal favorite tunes on this CD (for both lyric and song) are "Putnam County" (spoken to music; describing the lazy social going-ons in a tiny blue collar American town) and "Spare Parts" (awesome upbeat tune describing dawn in a seedy urban setting: "The stew bums showed up like bounced checks/rubbing their necks, and the sky turned the color of Pepto Bismol/ and the parking lots growled") This CD is not just a great Tom Waits CD; this is a great CD for anybody's collection!

When Tom Waits recorded this, my musical taste was largely confined to the American Top 40. I was thrilled when the Spinners hit #1 three weeks in a row with "Games People Play." Makes me wonder how my life might have turned out had I listened to "Nighthawks at the Diner" back then. Possibilities: I might have 1) grown a scraggly goatee, taken up the bongos and abstract painting, and moved to Greenwich Village; 2) ended up slumped over a bar, dead from alcohol poisoning by age 20; or 3) developed an eclectic appreciation for interesting music at an early age. In any event, without a clear idea of a career path, I meandered for a number of years and encountered some "bad" influences, which led me to jazz and blues and various mutations, and eventually to Tom Waits. Better late than never. This recording gets more time on my player per week than any other. Waits' compositions are often poignant, somewhat surreal, and generally hilarious depictions of life in a timeless subterranean Los Angeles. With a gravelly voice backed by some jazzy bass, sax, and drum licks and sweet guitar and piano, he takes the listener on a strange journey that weaves its way along urban boulevards, through sleezy lounges and greasy diners, in and out of people's homes, onto the open highway, and back into "Raphael's Silver Cloud Lounge," lamenting his troubled love life and celebrating his own solitude along the way. Whether a vicarious journey or a revisitation, this is a lot of fun.

This is probably my favorite Tom Waits release ever, with "Closing Time" and "The Heart of Saturday Night" and "Small Change" all constantly fighting for first place. "Blue Valentine", if, for nothing else, "Whistling Past the Graveyard" is in there too.

Flashback to when I was 4 or 5 years old. My grandfather's house. Texas. Sitting on the floor as he sat in his rocker, packing his pipe. He would tell me stories by some guy named Red Sovine. "Big Joe and Phantom 309" and "Giddy-up Go." He would also tell me stories about "A Boy Named Sue," "John Henry," "Whispering Pines," and "Springtime in Alaska," but those are for other reviews!

Fast forward to when I was 14 years old or so. California. Listening to college radio. KFJC. Maybe KSJS. "The piano has been drinking." Blows me away. Makes me go swipe my father's bottle of scotch.

Having that exposure may go some distance, at least to closet psychologists, in explaining my appreciation of Tom Waits. Ask many people, and they'll tell you that it sounds as if Mr. Waits has seen nothing but a steady diet of Lucky Strikes and Old Grandad for the last 40 years. Maybe that's true.

However, I can't get over how incredible this stage of Tom Waits' career is. These albums are amazing. And, try as I may, I cannot get into the supposed "wonder" albums of "Frank's Wild Years" or "Swordfishtrombones." Sure his later albums, i.e. those in the last decade, are amazing. However, most of them remind me of the snake in Disney's "The Jungle Book" singing "Trust in me." It just doesn't cut it as much as these releases. Particularly this one.

It is an amazing album. Good for driving incredibly long distances, late at night. Or, for sitting in a completely darkened room, save for one lamp, with no lampshade of course, and a bottle of Jim Bean (with the cap thrown away).

I hope this helped somewhat. If nothing else, maybe it's given you an idea of what to look for in Tom Waits paraphenalia.

Now, though, "I gotta make like a hockey player and get the puck outta here..."

Who has the guts to release a live album that is composed of songs that don't appear on studio release albums by the artist? I can't think of one though I'm sure they exist.

First, it was a double album. That was a feat by itself.
Second, it's so natural to have this smokey piano lounge set committed to vinyl and now cd, Tom's music fit like a glove as a live release. His between song banter is delightful and has been a hallmark of his live shows throughout his career. The guy's a comedian, intelligent and successfully creates and maintains a character that's interesting, fun and ya can't, I can't, tell if it's him or not, though it's quite likely similar to Woody Allen's screen character that is simply not his real life self, maybe just a cousin.

This is another album that's perfect for night, in fact, late night driving.

'Emotional Weather Report' is so perfectly ended. A real coup. This song takes you someplace and leaves you off somewhere else. A pure pleasure. His word ability shining here.
'On A Foggy Night' another journey he takes us on.
'Eggs And Sausage (In A Cadillac With Susan ....)'. It's funny, as great as he is with language and imagrey, with bringing something into sharp focus by a turn of a phrase, each time, at least on his 70's albums, that he talks about waitresses, it just don't swing. I don't know what it is but his clever word work just gets off the track for that bit of life he tries to convey and leaps back on for each and every one of his other image making phrases. Funny. Odd. Surprising.
'Better Off Without A Wife' is such the coolest song. Should this be played at weddings (probably not) or bachelor parties (probably).
'Warm Beer And Cold Women'. Almost howlin' at the moon time.
'Nobody'. Man, is this a classic or what? I still get misty eyed whenever I hear this song. From the heart. Love song man.
'Big Joe And Phantom 309'. Story telling at its peak. Yes, someone else wrote it he tells us but he sings it like it came right outta him. Beautiful, evokative. Trippy man.

Dont' have this album? And yer lookin' at TOM WAITS CD's on Amazon.com? Get it man. You cannot fail. This will please and delight, yourself and others, virtually everyone who hears it 'cept, uh, I dunno. BARRY MANILOW and JOURNEY fans, I'm pretty sure.

What's it like when you still dig an album 30 years later? A testament to an artist who can create a work that is not crippled by the passing of time, whose work continues to please and amaze and calm and delight, long after the first introduction. Long after baby. chrisbct@hotmail.com

If you buy this, keep it in your car always. Or whenever you are in your car at night, that's the bare minimum. This is early Tom Waits. Defining that would be smokey AM truckstops, cafes, bars with "Last Call" being yelled. Nighthawks at the Diner is the residue people are reduced to on late evenings after a frightful workweek, deprived of all sensibility. It's the humanity left in your system when you're close to empty. It's the quiet 5AM street you walk down after you leave the last affair for the night.

There are many Wait's ramblings and slow quiet tracks to put you in that late night mood, but you're already drunk, so you don't want something loud now, anyway. This is the perfect mood piece for such a situation. I find it's best listened to when I'm alone in these obscure hours. Nighthawks never failed me yet. Hell, I always keep it in my car. Drive a lot at night, I suppose.

Enjoy! Frank's Wild Years and Small Change are also excellent late nighters.

Featuring a solid band, cool hooks, fantastic beat poetry, and the smokiest, gravelliest voice on record, this is probably Waits' finest work. Although not recorded "live" in the traditional sense, the presence of the studio audience generates plenty of ambience and gives Waits somebody to relate to - his spoken word introductions to most of the songs help draw us into his world, get us past his gruff exterior, and present us with that crucial everyman persona. Working on the darker side of the cocktail jazz strip, the ensemble is also one of the best Waits has ever had. The presence of pianist Mike Melvoin gives the band a strength and solidity that is sometimes lacking in Waits' own keyboard playing, and Pete Christlieb on tenor sax adds plenty of urban sensual warmth. Special mention goes to Jim Hughart's upright bass, which is appropriately striding during the "beat" numbers (the pun-filled "Emotional Weather Report" and "Spare Parts 1" in particular), and mournful during the booze ballads, even using the bow during the warmly nostalgic (almost Garrison Keillor-esque) "Putnam County". But of course the real standout is Waits and the provocative beat poetry that makes him the Charles Bukowski of modern music. Waits has an intense sound with a voice that immediately identifies him as an outsider - rough, gritty, not-quite-broken, but almost "more than a good man could bear". His natural milieu is the barroom wherever it can be found - urban nightclubs to rural roadhouses and any establishment in between where a man who's down on his luck can find a few hours of forgetfulness - but he can also sometimes be located in all-night diners, abandoned roads, and late-night cheap hotels. It isn't pretty, and it can get pretty darn depressing at times ("Warm Beer and Cold Women"), but for those who've been there - who've known the desperation that foments it - this is a celebration of the life that doesn't always seem to be worth living. Songs like "Eggs and Sausage", "Better off Without a Wife" and "Nighthawk Postcards" demonstrate that there is as much poetry and emotional depth in a life of dissolution as in any other. Cheers.

Imagine youre in a smoke filled club, drink in hand, and listening to a seedy looking, but somehow charismatic piano player. Hes telling you stories and then those stories transform into songs. Now its over an hour later and you wonder what happened to the time. A master storyteller is at work on this CD and if you are at all intrigued by the idea of listening to tales of an Emotional Weather Report or whether or not a man is Better Off Without A Wife, this CD is for you. Musically the songs are a little too similar to one another, but if you give a good listen to the lyrics youll hear some fine commentary on life, love and the world at large.

... the front door runs from floor to ceiling, and the doorknob is about 3 feet from the ground. The owner tells the story that back in the 1800s, they didn't want horses in the bar, therefore they placed the doorknobs low so the cowboys would have to get off their horses to open the doors. There's a 10-foot mirror that was built from diamond dust in Glasgow, that was shipped around South America and then brought from San Francisco to Genoa, NV by wagon. The bar and the floor are all original 1850's hardwood, and when it snows, sometimes it's so dark in there you can hardly see the folks at the other end of the bar. There's one pool table, a pot-bellied stove, about 13 bar stools, an old safe that always stands just a little bit open, pictures of people and places and the bar through the years, about 6 generations of dust, and a juke box. Ahhh ... the juke box. That magic box introduced me to Tom Waits over a game of pool with some characters that just stepped out of a Big Chill revival. Warm Beer and Cold Women ... that was the song that did it. This is my first Tom Waits album, the man who sounds to me like a white Louis Armstrong doin' bee-bop. It's the perfect kind of music for the mood of that bar, and it's the perfect kind of music for a night with friends, sharing some good merlot or shiraz and baked brie with blackberry-jalapeno sauce. If you can't experience the bar or the brie, at the very least, you should experience the music.