Tom Waits “Rain Dogs” released 35 years ago today, September 30th, 1985. Waits’ ninth studio LP is considered one of his best and ranks in several best-of-the 80′s lists; it went to #29 in the UK and to #188 in the US. It’s creepy antebellum cemetery dark, bluesy, jazzy, all accented by Waits’ signature gravelly growl. Though written in Manhattan (it references NYC in tracks like “Midtown,” “Union Square” and “Downtown Train”), it feels musically like a midnight stroll through Anne Rice’s New Orleans. Honestly, I can only take so much of Tom Waits – I like him in small doses only – but Rain Dogs is so unusual that it makes a full listen of the album worth it. I like “Cemetery Polka” (I grew up in an area of Wisconsin that was full of both polkas and tiny little abandoned cemeteries), “Jockey Full of Bourbon” (I like bourbon; this track was released as a single but I don’t think it charted), “Hang Down Your Head” (also a single and probably the most straightforward, least creepy tune on the record), the title track “Rain Dogs,” “Gun Street Girl” (good story in this one), “Union Square” (Keith Richards plays guitar on this track, as well as on “Big Black Mariah” and “Blind Love”) and probably one of Waits’ most famous songs “Downtown Train” which he released as a single. His single didn’t chart but others who covered it did: Rod Stewart (#3 US, #10 UK in 1989/90), Patty Smyth (#95 US, 1987) and Bob Seger (#17 US Adult Contemporary, 2011).