TOM WAITS – Legendary Barfly Crooner Released His 9th Album ‘RAINDOGS’ Today 40 Years Ago

Significant longplayers from yesteryear

30 September 2025

Legendary barfly crooner TOM WAITS (aged 75 now) released his
9th LP RAINDOGS on 30 September 1985, today 40 years ago.

A concept record about the urban dispossessed of New York City.
Rain Dogs is generally considered the middle album of a trilogy
that includes Swordfishtrombones and Franks Wild Years.

Tom Waits: “I didn’t really want to be part of a clique or a niche. But I also was
looking for my own voice, as a writer, y’know? And a world I could call my own.”

Artwork: The man on the cover looks definitely like Waits, but the photo is actually
one of a series taken by the Swedish photographer Anders Petersen at Café Lehmitz (near the Hamburg red-light street called Reeperbahn, where The Beatles used to play gigs in small clubs in the early days) in the late 1960s. The man and woman on the front sleeve are called Rose and Lilly.

Rolling Stone Magazine: “Rain Dogs insists on nosing its way
around the barrooms and back alleys Waits has so often visited
before.”

SINGLE

ALBUM


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All Albums – Instagram

BIG BLASTS FROM THE PAST – 10 Classic Albums Turning 40 In 2025

Back in time

24 December 2024

Band: NEW ORDER
Album: Low Life
Their 3rd one,
#7 in the UK.

Melody Maker said: “The album boasts the most articulate sound
since The Cocteaus’ Treasure, elevating depression to ecstasy.”

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Instagram – All Albums
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Band: THE POGUES
Album: Rum Sodomy & The Lash
2nd LP, #13 in the UK.

The album’s title is taken from a quotation attributed to Winston Churchill:
“Don’t talk to me about naval tradition. It’s nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash.”

NME wrote: “A collection of free-ranging stuff to be sure. It’s never
sentimental, it’s rarely polite, and it’s certainly not ordinary.”

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Linktree – All Albums
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Artist: TOM WAITS
Album: Rain Dogs
9th LP,
#188 in the US,
#29 in the UK.

The Village Voice wrote: “Waits worked out a unique and identifiable lounge-lizard
sound that suits his status as the poet of America’s non-nine-to-fivers.”

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Instagram – All Albums
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Band: THE FALL
Album: This Nation’s Saving Grace
8th longplayer.

AllMusic: “This collection is ample proof of the pure confidence the group had
at this time. The Fall sound mysterious, down-to-earth, and hilarious all at the
same time.”

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Instagram – All Albums
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Band: THE CURE
Album: The Head On The Door
6th one, #7 in the UK.

Pitchfork: “Their most focused
pop album. A tight, terrific package.”

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Instagram – All Albums
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Artist: BRIAN ENO
Album: Thursday Afternoon

AllMusic: “Thursday Afternoon is an hour-long, uninterrupted ambient piece
created in Eno’s “holographic” compositional style, in which even the most brief
snippet of music is representative of the performance as a whole.”

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Instagram – All Albums
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Band: TOM PETTY AND THE HEARTBREAKERS
Album: Southern Accents
Their 6th LP,
#7 in the US.

AllMusic: “An ambitious album, attempting to incorporate touches of soul,
psychedelia, and country into a loose concept about the modern South.”


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Linktree – All Albums
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Band: THE CULT
Album: Love
Their second LP,
# in the UK.

AllMusic: “Considering the musical schizophrenia that would plague each
subsequent Cult release, Love just may be the band’s purest moment.”

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Instagram – All Albums
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Band: THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN
Album: Psychocandy

NME said: “A great searing citadel of beauty whose wall of noise,
once scaled, offers access to endless vistas of melody and emotion.”

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Band: HÜSKER DÜ
Album: Flip Your Wig
4th longplayer
#1 Indie charts UK

AllMusic: “Flip Your Wig would be a remarkable record on its own terms, but the fact that it followed New Day Rising by a matter of months and Zen Arcade by just over a year is simply astonishing.”

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