Saturday

If Closing Time, Tom Waits' debut album, consisted of love songs set in a late-night world of bars and neon signs, its follow-up, The Heart of Saturday Night, largely dispenses with the romance in favor of poetic depictions of the same setting. On "Diamonds on My Windshield" and "The Ghosts of Saturday Night," Waits doesn't even sing, instead reciting his verse rhythmically against bass and drums like a Beat hipster. Musically, the album contains the same mixture of folk, blues, and jazz as its predecessor, with producer Bones Howe occasionally bringing in an orchestra to underscore the loping melodies. Waits' songs are sometimes sketchier in addition to being more impersonal, but "(Looking For) The Heart of Saturday Night" and "Semi Suite" are the equal of anything on Closing Time…

If Closing Time, Tom Waits' debut album, consisted of love songs set in a late-night world of bars and neon signs, its follow-up, The Heart of Saturday Night, largely dispenses with the romance in favor of poetic depictions of the same setting. On "Diamonds on My Windshield" and "The Ghosts of Saturday Night," Waits doesn't even sing, instead reciting his verse rhythmically against bass and drums like a Beat hipster. Musically, the album contains the same mixture of folk, blues, and jazz as its predecessor, with producer Bones Howe occasionally bringing in an orchestra to underscore the loping melodies. Waits' songs are sometimes sketchier in addition to being more impersonal, but "(Looking For) The Heart of Saturday Night" and "Semi Suite" are the equal of anything on Closing Time…

Issued by Collectors Dream, the Saturday Night Special (Ready for Rock 'n' Roll Part II) disc pulls together a cash-in collection of classic rock covers. In the late 1980s, they had their greatest hits with like Rock Me, Once Bitten, Twice Shy or Save Your Love. Over the same period, the songs from seventies heavy weights Aerosmith ("Same Old Song and Dance"), Lynyrd Skynyrd ("Saturday Night Special"), Led Zeppelin ("Dazed & Confused"), Thin Lizzy ("Sarah") and Van Halen ("Unchained") carry the sharpest teeth from the recording. Saturday Night Special is the follow-up album to the Collector's Dream Series Ready For Rock N Roll.