Track of the day: October 21st

There's a whole wealth of music that it just doesn't feel appropriate to review on CB/OB or cover in a traditional way (mainly because so much of it has already been written about to death). With this in mind, and with the aim of avoiding an overload of writing without enough of its subject, this is the first of a daily 'Track Of The Day' segment, which will hopefully cover songs both old and new that just don't quite fit in anywhere else. Today...

Tom Waits - Jockey Full Of Bourbon



Rain Dogs has to rank as unequivocally my favourite Tom Waits record - unfortunate in some ways as it was the first I bought, and none of his (uniformly excellent) others have yet topped its blend of feral atmosphere, tongue-in-cheek bravado and gruff lunacy. It's an album to lose oneself in, next to impossible to stop listening once the sharpened chords and swung sax of 'Singapore' announce its arrival, and even harder to pick a single track from. 'Jockey Full Of Bourbon' is less a highlight then, and more a song appropriate for today's transition to full autumn - a dusty bar-room drawl that transports the listener straight to a hot, smokey basement somewhere, anywhere but here.