nights in minor skylines

Best Western Hotel and condo towers, Fairmount section, Philadelphia, PA, manipulated

This image sort of makes me think about Tom Waits' "Rain Dogs". Not really a particular song, as much as the whole album. And the album - what can you say that hasn't already been said? It's a masterpiece. Probably one of the 20 greatest albums ever recorded.

I was reading a few reviews online of Scarlett Johansson's new cover album of Tom Waits songs the other day and my biggest beef w/ the reviews I read is they sort of treated Tom Waits as an afterthought. The producers of the covers album seemed to get more ink than the guy who made the whole thing possible.

I'd like to see more reviews that come out and overtly acknowledge his undeniable brilliance. He's an American treasure and he should be celebrated. If some Hollywood actress puts out a covers CD of some of his songs, then I say why not use it as an opportunity to celebrate him, reacknowledge his status as a master songwriter, praise his amazingly beautiful body of work, etc., etc., etc. Is there some kind of line in the "code of cool rock critics" that says you can only do something like that when somebody dies?

How about a line like...
"Waits, along with Dylan and Cohen, long ago cemented his status in the Holy Triumvirate of late-20th Century American songwriting (if of course, Leonard Cohen was American and not Canadian)..."