If you ever wonder what it’s like to roam the midnight streets of a cynical, depraved city full of alcoholics and deadbeats, you will never find a more poetic account than Small Change, the 1976 masterpiece by Tom Waits. It flows as a shambling, drunken journey through neon squalor. On each track, he takes us to some bar, nightclub, diner, or strip joint, and tells the stories of the people he finds there. Hawkers on “Step Right Up” offer him an incoherent slur of sales pitches. (“We’ve got a white sale on smoke-damaged furniture. You can drive it away today!”) A young punk on “Jitterbug Boy” nonchalantly brags about accomplishing all sorts of improbable feats and then tells Tom to get lost. (“If it’s heads I go to Tennessee, tails I buy a drink. If it lands on the edge I’ll keep talking to you.”) A shameless deviant on “Pasties and a G-String” rambles about his lust. (“Crawling on her belly, shaking like jelly, and I’m getting harder than Chinese algebra.”)

The album is brilliant from start to finish. Lyrically, I think I can safely call it my all-time favorite. And while the title track, “Small Change”, is not my first pick on the album generally, it’s the one that most robustly captures the dystopian theme in this music series. It tells of a small-time gangster who gets murdered, and how the community passes by in apathy or else dives like vultures to try and make a buck off the tragedy.

Small Change got rained on with his own .38,
And nobody flinched down by the arcade,
And the marquees weren’t weeping; they went stark-raving mad,
And the cabbies were the only ones that really had it made,
And his cold trousers were twisted, and the sirens high and shrill,
And crumpled in his fist was a five-dollar bill,
And the naked mannequins with their cheshire grins,
And the raconteurs and roustabouts said “Buddy, come on in,
Cause the dreams ain’t broken down here now; they’re walking with a limp,
Now that Small Change got rained on with his own .38”,
And nobody flinched down by the arcade,
And the burglar alarm’s been disconnected,
And the newsmen start to rattle,
And the cops are telling jokes about some whorehouse in Seattle,
And the fire hydrants plead the Fifth Amendment,
And the furniture is bargains galore,
But the blood is by the jukebox on an old linoleum floor,
And what a hot rain on forty-second street,
Now the umbrellas ain’t got a chance,
And the newsboy’s a lunatic with stains on his pants,
Cause Small Change got rained on with his own .38,
And no one’s gone over to close his eyes,
And there’s a racing form in his pocket circled “Blue Boots” in the 3rd,
And the cashier at the clothing store didn’t say a word,
As the sirens tear the night in half, and someone lost his wallet,
It’s surveillance of assailance, if that’s what you want to call it,
And the whores hike up their skirts and fish for drug-store prophylactics,
And their mouths cut just like razor blades, and their eyes are like stilettos,
And her radiator’s steaming, and her teeth are in a wreck,
She won’t let you kiss her, but what the hell did you expect?
And the gypsies are tragic, and if you want to buy perfume,
They’ll bark you down like carnies, sell you Christmas cards in June,
But Small Change got rained on with his own .38,
And his headstone’s a gumball machine,
No more chewing gum or baseball cards or overcoats or dreams,
Someone’s hosing down the sidewalk and he’s only in his teens,
Cause Small Change got rained on with his own .38,
And a fistful of dollars can’t change that,
And someone copped his watch fob, and someone got his ring,
And the newsboy got his porkpie Stetson hat,
And the tuberculosis old men at The Nelson wheeze and cough,
And someone will head south until this whole thing cools off.