Despite owning the album for years now, I'd never really listened to 'Frank's Wild Years'.

My introduction to Tom Waits was 'Bone Machine', and I immediately took to the sandpaper beauty and the diesel fume drift. It scratched itches I didn't know I had. So when I got earlier albums like 'Raindogs' and 'Swordfishtrombones', the more crooner-mode just wasn't binding to the same receptors, so I didn't listen to them as much.

However, building up music to listen to for my 8-bit Cyberpunk story I decided to use almost entirely period music (1985-1988, and of course anything that came before), so I dumped a lot of Waits into the list. I was sitting down to do the little crab-walk up to writing some more words one day when 'Cold Cold Ground' comes up, and it goes straight into my bloodstream in a way music doesn't do that often. Not just the swaying melody like a swingset in a New Orleans cemetery, but the words. They stopped me in my tracks and I just listened.

Sometimes a piece of music is just exactly perfect to put down roots behind all the walls and I can see the leaves when I look out my window. I can rarely ever get them back out, but it's not so bad really. The music that's done that for me is a hugely eclectic lot: there's 70's era Vangelis, Simon Bonney (the lead singer of Crime and the City Solution), Cliff Martinez, Talking Heads, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Nick Cave, Astor Piazzolla, Carl Orf, The Cramps, Steve Reich. I keep thinking that garden is full, but stuff keeps sprouting.