Review Summary: You're sitting with your friends outside in the middle of nowhere. Everyone is high and you're staring off into the lights in the distance. You put on this album for your friends, and one by one you're admitted into the jazzy live show.
"Journey" - The act of traveling to one place from another.
"Nighthawks at the Diner" is a truly interesting album. At first glance it doesn't seem like much but some of the recordings from a man only known throughout nightclubs and coffee shops. But this album itself was created in Los Angeles in a studio that was somehow able to fit an entire club scene including a Jazz ensemble, a singer, and a fairly sized group of people to enjoy. You mix all of these ingredients together and what you have for yourself is a magical ticket back to the year 1975, where times were a bit simpler. You get a taste of what music was all about and you get a sense of euphoria when the music truly hits you. You also get to forget about the pains and woes about life just for a while. Along with getting to have a drink with some people who actually matter, and you start to feel as if you're not alone for the night. Your ears are filled with the melodies and beats of the ensemble with your mind filling up with the ramblings of the man on stage who has obviously had a few drinks.
Tom Waits kicks of this album in his traditional style wishing everyone "An inebriated good evening to you all". And right away you know what you're getting into. The whole mood begins to settle, and everyone adjusts to the very laid back style of the man singing to us. He starts moving into a bit of jive introducing himself and welcoming everyone to the club complimenting each song with an introduction beforehand. You get pulled in by the story itself until the song becomes a living and breathing entity. You realize that this is no ordinary show, the man is now reading the classified ads in today's paper, and through the sheer absurdity of it all you cannot help but feel entertained. As Mr. Waits begins to chuckle to himself through all the abnormality we all begin laughing as well. With the song "Eggs and Sausage" he starts by naming foods at NORMS restaurant, claiming to be a connoisseur of the human pallet. He begins talking about his food grew a mind of its own and starting attacking the other items on his plate. But he conducts this silly act in such a professional manner you begin reminiscing of your own experiences at NORMS, and laugh quietly to yourself, nodding softly in agreement. When the intro to the song "Better Off Without a Wife" begins, you realize you are out with all your best boys. You're all able bachelors and you begin to take interest in the song.
Other people in the club begin to applaud and Waits himself plays off their energy with his own wit and charm. He jokes about taking yourself out on a date to get to know yourself and then taking advantage of yourself at the end of the night because you know its all leading up to that in the end. You laugh with your buddies, and clap, and whistle. Waits chuckles and nods to you and your friends and you feel connected on a spiritual level. You begin to lock eyes with your friends and you all sway to the melody of the song, you can relate so well. Not worrying about the women, enjoying the single life. After all you don't have to ask if you can go fishing, you can just do it, whose going to stop us?
Sleep in for a bit, go out to work, stay out all night, rinse and repeat. Nobody is waiting home to worry about you all night, and you begin to realize, it may not be a life of luxury but its a good life. We are at its core, happy people. He finishes the set and all the people in the audience cheer with excitement.
The next part of the show begins off with a slow jazz chorus and you and your friends begin to converse with one another as the background vocals of Tom Waits resonate with you slowly. You shift your focus to Waits as he begins talking about those con artists who know exactly what to say to you. The line "There's a sucker born every minute, you just happened to be coming alone at the right time"sticks out to you and you think about how you've been wronged in your life. You have a few drinks as you grow a little anxious but those constant jazz beats are just there to remind you that everyone in the room has been through the same thing, a few drinks in and you feel better and adjust to the next part of the show, and with such a coincidence he begins to sing about warm beers and cold women. You shudder to yourself, thinking what could be a worse off combination. But you begin to realize, our newfound friend is winding up for a great song that we can surely relate to yet again. We slowly understand that he is talking about sometimes when we are out in the clubs, things don't always work out and we meet those certain kind of women who put a damper on the whole night, but the best part about being at a club with a dud is that there is always room for a stiff drink to help us forget that little incident and move on, and we all just sit back and smile at the jazz band. Mr. Waits takes a step back and asks us how we're all doing, hows the service, we feel like he's asking us each individually as if he really cares.
He finishes with a joke and moves back into the next song. He begins talking about New York, he begins painting us a picture of a some boys out talking about their cars, the small talk about life itself in such a hustling and bustling of such a city. We all feel some sense of attachment to this song itself yet cannot requite why. Its about the boys being boys, automobile talk, city life, and who out of the group is having the most sex. We all look at each other around the table and laugh to ourselves. All of us our so happy to be around each other but we would never tell each other that, we don't have to. You can see it on each of our faces. The next act starts to pick up and we all begin clapping and snapping into the beat with the catchy tunes, and our host begins to increase his speed and we just watch in awe. He begins replicating the sounds of the traffic with his voice, we are all entertained at the absurdity. The show itself has began picking up the pace and the melodies themselves cause us all to tap along to it. The music itself infects us and we're all moving around and loving life. The show itself changes once again to our surprise, into a lovey type of piano ballad about love itself and what it means to love someone. We all take a step back in our lives and dwell on it for a second. Through all the fun, through all the nonsense, bull***, and ridiculousness of it all, we all knew deep down what love was. We felt a sense of understanding from the show itself, as he concluded the song and began with another story to get our minds off of that concept of love. We all scoot in the chairs closer to the table and listen in from a tale borrowed from Red Sovine himself. Everyone in the club is silent, listening in as closely as we can about the legend of Big Joe. He talks of how this man saved him, and they drove off swapping stories about their lives. Just talking, man to man, and how beautiful of a thing that it was.
Tom Waits went on for what seemed like an hour, we were so engrossed in with this story we didn't even realize that all but ten minutes had passed, and the story itself concluded with Waits entering another diner and enjoying a cup of coffee. The story ended exactly where it began, and a feeling of satisfaction and disdain stretched across us. The show was phenomenal but we knew in fact that all good things must come to an end as he begin to introduce the men in his jazz ensemble. We all cheered with everything we had, this man had managed to take us away from the injustices of our lives. He began droning off in such a modest tone just making small jokes, we went off smiling as other people began to leave. We all remained seated at the table as we all knew we would stay to the very end. Our hero had made a few more jokes and comments shortly before walking off stage and we all applauded as we left the club itself and found ourselves out of Los Angeles and back in our own town. We looked at each other puzzled and wondered where exactly we had been amidst the silence. But deep down we all knew, we smiled at one another, got up off of the ground and headed back home.
I know perfection is a rare commodity amongst music, each song has to be carefully crafted and fine tuned, but this is what the definition of perfection is. What it is at its bare bones is an album that has the ability to transport you back into that same club with every listen. An album in that sense deserves a five for its euphoric potential and experience alone. I cannot recommend this anymore, but recount from my experience listening to it and urging others to check this one out.
