Because it's been at least a week since I made an overexcited post about Tom Waits.

Setlist from the first night of the tour:

Lucinda
Hoist That Rag
Come On Up To The House
Jesus Gonna Be Here
November
“Black Market Baby” (unsure Of actual title)
Raindogs
Trampled Rose
Goin Out West
Murder In The Red Barn
Anywhere I Lay My Head
Cemetery Polka
Get Behind The Mule
Eyeball Kid
(at piano)
Postcard From Hooker In Min.
Picture In A Frame
Invitation To The Blues
Innocent When You Dream
Lie to Me
Chocolate Jesus
Make It Rain
(encores)
Down in the Hole
God’s Away On Business
Time

That'll do me (Tom if you're reading can I haz Tom Traubert's Blues plz, kthanxbai).

Finally, comfirmed Tom Waits details.

As ever it's Jim with the final scoop.

July 30, 31 August 1st.

"These will be in an all-seated marquee in the Phoenix Park (to be called The Ratcellar). Tickets will be €116.25 and €131.25 and will go on sale on Tuesday next at 9am"

I'm prepared to pay it, if I don't gets tickets I'm prepared to fly elsewhere to see him. I've paid more in total to travel to see worse but he's one of the very few that I'd be willing to go over a ton to see just for the ticket.

According to Hot Press the WAIT is over for details.

HA HA HA, I kill me. Puns are fucking great.

A tent in Phoenix Park, July 30 & 31. An Aiken event.

Tom is coming.

He doesn't say where, and he doesn't say when. But he says he'll be playing here ...

Despite what I'd initally been told it's probably not going to be the NCH. 2 people that work there have been in touch saying that he's not pencilled in on the books.

At this point I just can't help myself

Lots of Tom Waits chatter around the place this morning.

Wait n' see I guess. In the meantime here's a video someone sent me last night. Cheers Tim.

Possible Tom Waits details.

Unconfirmed but I've been told highly likely.

National Concert Hall.

2 nights.

Don't know when.

€150 a ticket.

I'd pay it.

The final episode of The Wire is OUT NOW.

You can go looking for links to it on thumped. Or for a torrent the piratebay. Apparently it's a HBO screener that wound up in the hands of someone that it shouldn't have.

Boy oh boy oh boy. Here's the original version of the show's theme song.

MP3: Tom Waits - Way Down In The Hole from Frank's Wild Years.

More old bastards on tour in the summer?

Though this time it's possibly my greatest musical hero.

From Pitchfork:

Septuplets, full solar eclipses, and Tom Waits tours: some things just don't come around too often. Lucky for us, 2008 is shaping up to be a favorable year, once which will see the elusive Mr. Waits grace stages across the U.S. and Europe.

According to report in "webpaper" The Washington Independent and confirmed by Waits' camp, the gravel-voiced one is in the process of putting together summer tours of the aforementioned locales. No dates just yet, but to be on the safe side, you probably want to start lining up outside your local ticket vendor now.

Waits last toured in August 2006, and people enjoyed it very much.

And hey, that Scarlett Johansson album! Word is it's better than you think.

Fingers crossed for an Irish date. Actually fingers crossed I get tickets to anywhere that Ryanair/Aer Lingus fly to.

Some things that I learned today while out and about dealing with the public.

• Taking a day's holiday from work to deliver flowers on the busiest day of the year for florists is lucrative. Much of May's gig going is now paid for.
• It is not however as spiritually rewarding as doing meals on wheels.
• For all the talk of Valentine's Day being lame and fake and commercial a gesture of love on that day seems to always be appreciated.
• Delivering flowers to a workplace, even somewhere supposedly conservative like a bank, without fail causes girlish squeals and exclamations of "OH MY GOD" from the people there.
• Guys, you should always have the flowers delivered to the workplace. Your gal will get to feel really smug for the rest of the the day.
• There are many, many stay at home women of a certain age who, if the kids have either left home or live close enough to school to walk to it spend half the day in their PJ's.
• I have a new found appreciation for postmen and postwomen. In the countryside with no street or road names and no house numbers you can ask them where someone lives and without even having to pause for thought they'll be able to give you exact directions.
• Sparky Deathcap's album is really rather good and I should blog about it fairly soon.
• No matter long a couple have been together even if it's 20 years or more it seems that a woman's face will instantly brighten if she thinks that her husband/partner has sent her flowers.
• It will then tragically fall if she learns that the flowers are in fact being sent to her teenage daughter.
• This disappointment if only trumped by the look you get if you've gone to the wrong house because you haven't been able to find a postman to give you directions.
• The person driving a JCB with the licence plate 05-KE-9551 earlier today is a dick who should have pulled into the Royal Oak to leave the queue of traffic that had built up behind him pass by but didn't.
• If you are walking on the street with a bouquet of roses someone will jokingly ask you "are those for me" at least every 50 yards you walk. This gets old really quick.
• On this of all days I'm really glad I'm single. €80 for a dozen roses is fucking insane.

MP3: Tom Waits - Blue Valentines from Blue Valentine

Go Fourth - I swear to God by christmas time, there'll be someone else to hold you.

Doherty fans should note that he's only biting Tom with those hats.

If there's a Holy Trinity of songwriters then Bob Dylan is God The Father. It's up for debate who is God The Son but to my mind God The Holy Spirit is Tom Waits. Not least because The Holy Spirit knocked up a young girl then left another man to raise the baby and that's precisely the sort of thing one of the scumbags and lowlifes that populate Waits' songs would do.

Generally I like to separate the Waits discography into 4 sections, the straight singer-songwriter stuff, the jazzy hobo years, the weird years and the really weird years. But Heartattack And Vine defies being categorised in such a fashion. Sandwiched between Blue Valentine and Swordfishtrombones (1 year after the first and 3 before the latter; Waits must have obviously spent a long time formulating the far more complex sounding songs that appeared on Swordfish...".

Even Wait's most insane sounding records have at least one hugely tender love song on them and this one is no exception. "Ruby's Arms" reminds me of old black and white movies, the piano is very loungeish and it features the type of swirling strings that would crop up whenever our star crossed lovers (usually Bogey is the guy) say their last tragic goodbye before sharing a final kiss and the only thing separating it from a Bobby Darren or a Dino tune is Ol' Razorblade Larynx's harsh and pained vocals voicing the lyrics. It's also probably my favourite love song ever.

Oh, and for the record ... my favourite record of each era:

- Closing Time
- Small Change
- Swordfishtrombones
- Alice

MP3: Tom Waits - Ruby's Arms from Heartattack And Vine.