South DaCola art and music club

1. Didn’t Levi’s try to use that song to sell jeans?

   I wonder if their marketing people even listened to the song.

2. That’s what I love about Waits, he has sold his songs to whoever, but he is such an iconoclast nobody knows who wrote the songs, while he cashes the checks. I still chuckle about Rod Stewart making ‘Downtown Train’ a hit. There is no question that the Waits version is much better, but either way, it doesn’t matter, because it is a shitty song anyway.

3. He didn’t sell the song to them. He told them they couldn’t use it in a commercial and sued them when they did it anyway using their own recording of a sound-alike.

   He won too.

4. It was ‘Step Right Up’? Interesting. How long ago was that?

5. I take that back. it was Frito Lay he sued for using “Step Right Up”. Levi’s used “Heart-Attack and Vine”.

   It was back in 1992-1993.

6. Heh. He also won a lawsuit against the LAPD.

   He and a friend tried to stop some guys who were bullying people outside a bar. Turns out the bullies were plainclothes police, and Waits and his friend were arrested. After their aquittal, Waits sued the LAPD and won.

7. Cops harrassing people? They never do that. As my artist friend Starkey said to me one day, “I got pulled over for a DWI last night.” I said, “I thought you quit drinking?” He said, I wasn’t drinking, they pulled me over for ‘Driving While Indian’

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