FREE TOM WAITS!

No, he's not in jail -- as far as I know. He's offering free downloads, eight full songs to be exact, 38 minutes worth of music from his new live album Glitter and Doom, to be released next week.

I just downloaded it and it's sounding great. Check out the groovy widget below:

Also, I might have plugged this a few months ago, but a free two hour podcast of a 2008 Waits concert in Atlanta is available from NPR. CLICK HERE

True story: A couple of days ago my son and I were in the car listening to my iPod on shuffle mode. A Waits song came on. My son's pretty hip (He has Rev. Beat-Man's "Jesus Christ Twist" on his MySpace page.) But he started grumbling about the Waits song.

"You don't like Tom Waits," I asked disapprovingly.

"No," he said. "He always sounds like a hobo yelling at me."

He has a point, but I still love Waits.