That's Just God When He's Drunk

Tom Waits is on the jukebox at Molly's At The Market, but that's because I picked the song.

Heart Attack & Vine (there's even a blog by that name) has one of my all time favorite lines in any song ever and ol' Tom repeats it three times, "Doncha know there ain't no devil that's just God when he's drunk." By this point my mother, who is reading these posts, is having her own "Heart Attack and Vine," but by this time I think she's figured out that there's nothing to do about my basic heretical nature except pray for me, and frankly, I'll take all the prayer I can get.

I'm sitting at a table at Molly's (if you click on this you can see the table where I'm sitting when the picture opens). Apropriately it is the table right next to the sign pointing to Central Baptist Church) where they have good beer, some pretty good Mexican food and a free WiFi connection. On top of all that, they have (and this was really the point of the post) one of the best jukeboxes in the world (you can see that in the picture too, it's right by the front door)!

In addition there's a brass plaque on the wall from Larry Flynt to "The Chaplain of Bourbon Street" - Bob Harrington, whom I met in Tucson over 30 years ago in a Jesus Revival at 22nd Street Baptist Church.

I have become instantly attached to this place. It was originally recommended to me by my friend Merle Ellis who has spent a lot of time in New Orleans and who I have come to really appreciate as a mentor and friend. He's the one who told me about this place and boy was he spot on.

I mean come on! An Irish bar (or more specifically a "free house") on the edge of the French Quarter, across from Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville with a mexican food menu and good beer, but where the journalists and locals (as opposed to the tourists) in town have always hung out (along with a regular complement of garden variety drunks and standard issue reprobates), from where one of the most notable St. Patty's Day parades begins!?!? If there's a place on earth more suited for me, I don't know where it is (though Vesuvio in San Francisco and Nepenthe in Big Sur come pretty close).

We just finished Randy Newman's song "Louisiana 1927," another one of my all time favorite "desert island disc" songs, which Marcia Ball has covered with a startling and definitive version. By the way, be sure to click on the ball bearings link on Marcia's page for a great blog about this past year's Jazz Fest, as well as a shout out to the crowds at my old stompinng grounds, The Mystic Theater in Petaluma.

Now, Tom Waits is back on with "The Heart of Saturday Night." I can actually play that wonderful song on the guitar, but one of the best versions I ever heard was performed one summer near Atlanta at the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America (yes, there really is such an organization) Summer "Peace Camp," by a wonderful singer, songwriter and friend, D.E. Adams.

My battery is about to go out, so it's time for me to leave.

More later, from the Heart of Saturday Night.