Song 250: The playlist track for this week is Step Right Up by Tom Waits, who also wrote the song. In writing about TW's 2nd LP Heart of Saturday Night, the Rolling Stone reviewer suggested that Tom might be losing the heart of Saturday night, and his musical soul, behind the mask of the stage persona that he had crafted, and when I saw him perform a set on a TV show not long after reading that review, I thought the writer might have been correct. However, a couple of years later, along came Small Change, where TW took the updated '50s beat poet persona and his music to a whole other level, breathing more heart and soul into that artistic vision than I could ever have imagined. On this, the second track of the album, he shape shifts into the ultimate fast-talking salesman, making an endless stream of claims about the product which he knows (and we know) cannot possibly be true. He even adds in get away from me, kid, you bother me near the end of the cut, which is a line comedian W. C. Fields used, and which was a phrase commonly uttered by carnival barkers when they felt the need to try to keep children from causing a distraction that could potentially interfere with the fast talk. Even though batteries (are) not included, and I'm not quite sure of the nature of the terms available, I'm quite willing to step right up and buy what's Tom's selling here, especially when it sounds this good, and this funny.
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