‘Way down in a Hole’ - Tom Waits, 1987
Man oh man believe the hype about the tv series The Wire. These past few weeks I have read in loads of places about how good this show is. Driven by the hype I hunted down a copy of the first series to see what all the fuss was about and it lived up to all expectations - strong writing, great characters and a theme that is universally interesting makes this a winner big time. It took a few episodes to get used to who the character’s were but after that it was plain sailing.
So in honour of this show restoring my faith in television, today’s song is the theme tune to the tv show. Tom Waits needs no introduction, a true legend and the song is taken from the album Frank’s Wild Years . Dave blogged about one of his songs previously here. The song today took on greater significance when relating it to the show as it made me sit up and listen to the lyrics. For me the song is all about addiction and redemption whatever these addictions/redemptions are entirely subjective to the individuals life. There is strong references to Jesus and asking him for help to get on the righteous path and prevent the demons from entering and is, I think, very appropriate for the theme of the above said show. An example of the lyrics are:
‘If you walk with Jesus
He’s gonna save your soul
You gotta keep the devil
Way down in the hole‘
What’s interesting about the show is that most season’s they use different artists interpretation of the song as the theme tune. Artists that are featured in different season’s are The Blind Boys of Alabama, The Neville Brothers and Tom Waits himself. I can’t reccommend this show highly enough. Below is a video of Tom himself performing the song.
Last 5 posts by Des
- 'Fearless' - Pink Floyd, 1983 - December 30th, 2008
- 'Frankie Teardrop' - Suicide, 1977 - December 19th, 2008
- 'After Midnight' - J J Cale, 1971 - December 17th, 2008
- 'Acid Tongue'- Jenny Lewis, 2008 - December 12th, 2008
- 'Baltimore'- Randy Newman, 1977 - December 9th, 2008
