Great Drinking Songs (40)

I can't believe I hadn't posted this before. Could have sworn I did years ago. Ah well, better late than never.

Here's The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me); Tom Waits letting his hair down with one of his more humorous numbers - although the imagery is as clever as always ("the newspapers were fooling, and the ashtrays have retired"): the greatest lyricist of our times, and also, as he demonstrates here, a comedy genius.

This is a marvellous 1977 performance from Fernwood Tonight, a short-lived spoof of a talk show on a local TV station that starred Fred Willard and Martin Mull as an inept pair of presenters. These are two major comic talents, but Tom more than holds his own with them.

You can also listen to the original version of the song from his 1976 Small Change album here (one of my very favourite albums of his, one that I played incessantly during my last year at university).

And this is an inspired rambling riff on the number from a Dublin concert in about 1981, later released on the Bounced Checks anthology album.

I love Tom!