Diamonds On My Windshield, The Heart of Saturday Night, Tom Waits [017]

New guest-host Alice Sanders joins to talk through her feelings for both Tom Waits and Jack Kerouac as we venture into a Beat Poetry-influenced tale of the Southern Californian roads. Please note that, despite Sam's insistence, Diamonds On My Windshield does not appear on Nighthawks At The Diner - he's very sorry and will be more precise in future! Song by Song is Martin Zaltz Austwick and Sam Pay; two musicians listening to and discussing every single Tom Waits track in chronological order. website: www.songbysongpodcast.com twitter: @songbysongpod e-mail: [email protected] Music extracts used for illustrative/review purposes include: Diamonds on my Windshield, The Heart of Saturday Night, Tom Waits (1974) October in the Railroad Earth, Poetry For The Beat Generation, Jack Kerouac and Steve Allen (1959) (available on "American Haikus: Letters from the Road" via Spotify/iTunes/other) We think your Song by Song experience will be enhanced by hearing, in full, the songs featured in the show, which you can get hold of from your favourite record shop or online platform. Please support artists by buying their music, or using services which guarantee artists a revenue - listen responsibly. Lyrics - Diamonds On My Windshield: Well, these diamonds on my windshield And these tears from heaven Well, I'm pulling into town on the Interstate I got a steel train in the rain And the wind bites my cheek through the wing And it's these late nights and this freeway flying It always makes me sing There's a Duster trying to change my tune He's pulling up fast on the right Rolling restlessly by a twenty-four hour moon And a Wisconsin hiker with a cue-ball head He's wishing he was home in a Wisconsin bed But there's fifteen feet of snow in the east Colder than a welldigger's ass And it's colder than a welldigger's ass Oceanside, it ends the ride with San Clemente coming up Those Sunday desperados slip by and cruise with a dry back And the orange drive-in, the neon billing And the theatre's filling to the brim With slave girls and a hot spurn bucket full of sin Metropolitan area with interchange and connections Fly-by-nights from Riverside And out of state plates running a little late But the sailors jockey for the fast lane So 101 don't miss it There's rolling hills and concrete fields And the broken line's on your mind The eights go east and the fives go north And the merging nexus back and forth You see your sign, cross the line, signaling with a blink And the radio's gone off the air Gives you time to think And you hear the rumble As you fumble for a cigarette And blazing through this midnight jungle Remember someone that you met And one more block, the engine talks Whispers 'home at last' It whispers 'home at last' Whispers 'home at last' Whispers 'home at last' Whispers 'home at last' And the diamonds on my windshield And these tears from heaven Well I'm pulling into town on the Interstate I got me a steel train in the rain And the wind bites my cheek through the wing Late nights and freeway flying Always makes me sing It always makes me sing Hey, look here, Jack Okay