Shiver Me Timbers - The Heart of Saturday Night [016]

Song by Song hits the high seas... or maybe just a dark metaphor as Anna Turrell makes bids us farewell for this fourth track from The Heart of Saturday Night. Is it a dark sea-shanty? A ballad of fatalistic doom? Or just a nice song about the seaside? Mark your choice on a postcard and send it along to Song by Song, c/o The Internet.

Music extracts used for illustrative/review purposes include:
Shiver Me Timbers, The Heart of Saturday Night, Tom Waits (1974)

Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas, Read by Richard Burton (1954)

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Semi Suite - The Heart of Saturday Night [015]

Song by Song hits the road as Tom Waits chronicles the trials of a man driving the American freeways... and the women he leaves in his wake. A condemnation, a romanticism, intimate or dismissive? Anna Turrell returns for this third track, still searching for Saturday Night's Heart. 

Music extracts used for illustrative/review purposes include:
Semi Suite, The Heart of Saturday Night, Tom Waits (1974)

Working for the Man, More of Roy Orbison's Greatest Hits, Roy Orbison (1964)

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San Diego Serenade - The Heart of Saturday Night [014]

Season two continues! We press on into The Heart of Saturday Night, joined for another episode by Anna Turrell, and there's a certain amount of disagreement over the value of this track, in terms of content, style and arrangement. The universality of the love song, the formulaic nature of lyrics and the unavoidable truth that this is all just Space and Time man - they're all raised, discussed and ultimately forgotten.

As always, comment and input are gratefully received, either through twitter, email, soundcloud or as a comment right here on the blog - especially relating to tracks 5-8 (Diamonds On My Windshield; The Heart of Saturday Night; Fumblin' With The Blues; Please Call Me, Baby) - we're recording this weekend, tell us what we should be listening out for.

Music extracts used for illustrative/review purposes include:
San Diego Serenade, The Heart of Saturday Night, Tom Waits (1974)

November Rain, Use Your Illusion I, Guns and Roses (1991)

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SEASON TWO BEGINS! New Coat Of Paint - The Heart of Saturday Night [013]

Season two begins here! Guest Anna Turrell joins Sam and Martin for the first track of Tom Waits's second album, The Heart of Saturday Night.

Everything you could ever think of this track, from Homeric allusions, through the totally unacceptable presence of upbeat tempos and culminating in the height of sartorial elegance, the neck-tie; this episode has it all.

We'll be getting new episodes out to you each week, so keep an eye on the website, soundcloud, iTunes or your preferred podcast aggregator, and we'll see you back here next wednesday.

Music extracts used for illustrative/review purposes include:
New Coat Of Paint, The Heart of Saturday Night, Tom Waits (1974)

Log into the Spotify web player to hear these tracks.

Season Two - The Heart of Saturday Night... any minute now

Hey folks! Thanks to everyone who came along to our listening parties for Closing Time and The Heart of Saturday Night - we had a lovely time pretending to be radio DJs and talking over the best bits, hope everyone listening along appreciated how intrusive we were.

A brief note to let you know that we spent this afternoon recording for Season two, The Heart of Saturday Night, so will be releasing episodes into the wild on a weekly basis very very soon - later this week if all goes well.

For this season we'll be joined by some guests, giving us some different perspectives and extra insight, as well as putting us in our place when we lose all sense of perspective.  For the first few tracks, our friend Anna Turrell will be adding her two cents, with other guests lined up for the rest of the season.

Get in touch, let us know whether more listening parties (or viewing parties... anyone up for Down By Law?) would be interesting to people, give us your insights and bugbears on upcoming tracks, and as ever point out to us how wrong we are about everything on twitter or email.

There's a lot of Tom Waits material out there, and we'd like to offer some of our favourite bite-sized chunks - so for your viewing pleasure, have a look at Blank on Blank's animated interview from 1988 which has been doing the rounds, "Tom Waits on Everything and Nothing".  We'll see you soon.