01	(Opening Intro)						02:58
	02	Emotional Weather Report						03:47
	03	(Intro)						02:16
	04	On a Foggy Night						03:48
	05	(Intro)						01:53
	06	Eggs and Sausage (In A Cadillac With Susan Michelson)						04:19
	07	(Intro)						03:02
	08	Better Off Without a Wife						03:59
	09	Nighthawk Postcards (From Easy Street)						11:30
	10	(Intro)						00:55
	11	Warm Beer and Cold Women						05:21
	12	(Intro)						00:48
	13	Putnam County						07:35
	14	Spare Parts I (A Nocturnal Emission)						06:25
	15	Nobody						02:51
	16	(Intro)						00:40
	17	Big Joe and Phantom 309						06:29
	18	Spare Parts II and Closing						05:15

Nighthawks At The Diner, 1975
(P) & c 1975 Elektra/ Asylum Records Asylum 7E-2008 (a division of Warner Communications Inc. ).
c 1975 Fifth Floor Music, Inc. (ASCAP)
Asylum K63002.
Tom Waits: vocals; piano on "Warm Beer And Cold Women", "Eggs And Sausage", "Better Off Without A Wife", "Putnam County" and "Nobody"; guitar on "On A Foggy Night" and "Big Joe And Phantom 309" (all selections written by Tom Waits, except "Big Joe And Phantom 309")
Mike Melvoin: Piano on "Emotional Weather Report", "On A Foggy Night", "Nighthawk Postcards" and "Spare Parts I & II", electric piano on 'Eggs And Sausage", "Putnam County", "Better Off Without A Wife" and "Warm Beer And Cold Women"
Pete Christlieb: Tenor sax
Jim Hughart: Upright bass
Bill Goodwin: Drums
Bones Howe: Engineer
Rick Smith, Ron Marks, Kelly Kotera, Steve Smith and 'Big Norm' Dlugatch
Chuck E. Weiss: co-author of "Spare Parts I"
Cal Schenkel: Design
Norman Seeff: Cover and liner photography
Matt Kramer: Back cover photography
Herb Cohen: Management



Artist: TOM WAITS
Title: NIGHTHAWKS AT THE DINER
Date: 1975
Release: ASYLUM #2-2008

MUSTHEAR REVIEW:

A timeless live-in-studio performance by one of the most original artists of the past 30 years. This album has the distinctly bohemian feel of a smoky Greenwich village cafe transplanted onto the blooming desert wasteland of the Los Angeles metropolitan region. His lyrics are random and poetic, sketching out shifty characters and strange misadventures straight out of Waits' "narcotic American night." Jazz backed and swaggering, Waits lures you into his lurid underworld of all-night diners and forgotten truck stops. Nighthawks resounds with the intimacy of a small night club caught in the midst of an inspired after-hours session. Waits swings and rhymes over walking bass lines, lightly brushed cymbals, and breathy saxophones, creating an atmosphere heavy with smoke and the clang of empty bottles. Opening the album with a comically bleak "Emotional Weather Report," Waits sets the tone of what is to follow, singing with self-effacing candor about his alcohol drenched loneliness and desperation. "Eggs & Sausage" aches beautifully with a hunger that can't be satisfied by the greasy fare and heartburn of late-night dives. He sings about obsessive love in "Nobody." Despite his reluctant vulnerability, Waits is no sap, and his schtick is always that of the tough guy loner. He proclaims the virtues of his go-it-alone philosophy in "Better Off Without a Wife." He tells epic tales of the bazaar, such as the engrossing "Ballad of Big Joe and Phantom 309." Having packed the studio audience with sympathizers, Waits knows he is singing to the choir, as he launches into comic spoken-word interludes between songs that tear the house down. This is a great album for playing poker, shooting dice, or going on a lost-weekend tour through the underbelly of America. Waits' genius and theatrical charm are in strong evidence, and at 70 minutes in length, the fun goes on and on. Throw away your books on tape and pop this into your deck!
---John Ballon (email)


Players:
Tom Waits: Guitar, Piano, Vocals
Pete Christlieb: Saxophone, Tenor Sax
Lew Tabackin: Saxophone
Jack Sheldon: Trumbet
Jim Hugart: Bass
Shelly Manne: Drums




NIGHTHAWKS AT THE DINER

Year Of Release: 1975
Record rating = 7
Overall rating = 10

Urban panoramas make way for beatnik rants. This is real class, though.
Best song: err... the intros, I guess.

Track listing: 1) Opening Inro; 2) Emotional Weather Report; 3) On A Foggy Night; 4) Eggs And Sausage; 5) Better Off Without A Wife; 6) Nighthawk Postcards (From Easy Street); 7) Warm Beer And Cold Women; 8) Putnam County; 9) Spare Parts I (A Nocturnal Emission); 10) Nobody; 11) Big Joe And Phantom 309; 12) Spare Parts II And Closing.

MAN! This is weird. Unfortunately, it's also very hard to appreciate for somebody who's not deeply engulfed in American culture... in fact, for anybody who's not deeply engulfed in the late night ramblin' beatnik aspects of American culture. What happened is this: Tom assembled a small backing band (drum'n'bass, sax, piano - Tom himself occasionally plays some acoustic and some piano), booked a studio, invited a small bunch of interested persons and recorded the entire album live in the process of an hour and a half long "performance" designed to look like just a regular performance in a night club. In fact, judging by Tom's jokes he lets out at the audience from time to time ("how's the service here? It's alright? I mean I give you beer and everything, don't have to pay or nothing. Well they hit you up at the door on the way out..."), the atmosphere was really suitable for a late night performance.
This ain't just a late night bar performance tho'. It's Tom Waits assuming his rough gravely voice (granted, it's not as gravely as it would become in about six or seven years, but hey, give it time and room to grow) and performing a bunch of 'jazzy rants'. I.e., the piano or the bass'n'drums rhythm section plays some slight rudimentary melody whilst Tom is reciting his beatnik stuff against this background. Now one thing I know, beatnik poetry has never really fascinated me that much, and I ain't never had particularly warm feelings towards Kerouac either - but we might as well leave that aside, because the entire atmosphere of Nighthawks At The Diner certainly goes over basic readings of beatnik poetry.
First, it's Tom's voice, of course. His impersonation of that rambunctious drunken dirty - but soulful - "street rebel" is one of the best in the business, rendered all the more amazing by the fact that he was still in his early Twenties at the time. The gruff 'har har' alone that he emits from the depths of his pharynx are worth a fortune alone. And then there's the sense of humor. All of his poetic rants are regularly interrupted by 'intros' where he narrates a silly story, pulls a couple punches, just talks ridiculous nonsense at times, all of it possessing an undeniable magic aura as if you were sitting beside a wise old guru or something. In fact, the introductions are at times even more attractive and involving than the "songs" themselves. How can you concentrate on the friggin' songs if the guy keeps pouring out stuff like "well you know I've been playing night clubs and staying out all night long, come a home late, gone for three months, come back and everything in the refrigerator turns into a science project"? Or: "My veal cutlet come down, tried to beat the shit out of my cup of coffee. Coffee just wasn't strong enough to defend itself." Or: I'd like to thank you all very much for coming this evening. It's really made my night, it would have been real strange here if nobody would have showed up". And so on, and so on. All interrupted by obligatory "har hars" and similar growls.
The songs themselves... I don't know what to discuss, actually. There's not a single true ballad on here; the closest thing to a ballad, I guess, is 'Nobody', but it's certainly sung with a tongue-in-cheek attitude in the same gruff voice as everything else, and in general, it's more of a formulaic bluesy thingie than a truly heartfelt love ballad like anything on Closing Time. ('Formulaic' not necessarily in the bad sense). Everything else, okay, well, I guess on certain tracks Tom sings more and on other tracks he doesn't sing at all, but it's hard to tell, really. He gets in one "cover" - when he definitely reads a piece of poetry by Red Sovine ('Big Joe And Phantom 309'); all the rest are originals, but trust me, Tom never spent much time trying to get these originals to some musical background. The lyrics, for the most part, are priceless, though.
Right after the first song ('Emotional Weather Report' - as if Tom were 'forecasting' the rest of the show), he states: 'well I think it's about time I took you on an improvisational adventure into the bowels of the metropolitan region', and from then on, it's just that. As was promised by 'Diamonds On My Windshield' off the last album. So we just ramble through the city ('On A Foggy Night'), visit seedy eating places ('Eggs And Sausage'), revel in misogyny and even misanthropy ('Better Off Without A Wife', predicted by the album's funniest intro in which Waits quotes Mendelsohn on the piano), analyze all the facilities in town (the epic eleven minutes long 'Nighthawk Posters'), and so on and so on. The moods are all similar; the only way I could possibly be expanding on this description would be to start quoting the lyrics, but that would sure be a more endless process than vote recounting, so I'll pass.
I'll pass and I'll say that as much as I like the vibe of the album, I'm still only ready to give it an overall 10 because it is very much an acquired taste and would be all but inaccessible to the average listener who's not well versed in that aspect of American culture (hey, I'm not that versed in it either, but dammit, I don't pretend that I did this stuff, I really do! I'm serious!). The music is pretty much inexistent; it's only there to provide the atmosphere. But the atmosphere is invaluable, and if anything, Nighthawks are an extremely important release in that it showed Waits would never start moving in the grand'n'pompous near-phoney direction of Mr Springsteen, nor would he sell out and overblow his sappiness, like the Eagles. As monotonous as these seventy minutes are, Nighthawks is still an essential step forward, preparing Tom for future chef-d'oeuvres.