It's a Saturday night and Tom Waits' birthday was this week so... this album, this concert. Once again I was with my friend John who insisted we go and see Tom Waits again and this time in a small club. We had previously seen him a year earlier open up for Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention at the Civic Center in Philly. Waits only played a few songs and the Zappa crowd was very hostile to him. A disappointing show. So in May 1975 we went to see him at the Bijou Cafe which sat about 220 people including the bar stools. We had a table very close to the stage. He put on a long fabulous show and performed the songs from The Heart of Saturday Night and his first album Closing Time.
He was very much into his hipster jazzbo persona so much so that we could smell his body odor emanating from the stage. Slurred speech too. We laughed about that for years. Later that year he released his Nighthawks at the Diner album which really captured his stage show minus the odorama. The show was opened by John Stewart a former member of The Kingston Trio.
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