Down by Law

Thomas Alan "Tom" Waits is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz... as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car." With this trademark growl, his incorporation of pre-rock music styles such as blues, jazz, and vaudeville, and experimental tendencies verging on industrial music, Waits has built up a distinctive musical persona. He has worked as a composer for movies and musical plays and has acted in supporting roles in films including Paradise Alley and Bram Stoker's Dracula; he also starred in the 1986 film Down by Law. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his soundtrack work on One from the Heart. Lyrically, Waits' songs frequently present atmospheric portrayals of grotesque, often seedy characters and places—although he has also shown a penchant for more conventional ballads. He has a cult following and has influenced subsequent songwriters despite having little radio or music video support.
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New Orleans is the birthplace of Jazz, a major US port city, important in river transshipment, naval logistics, and the illegal drug trade. New Orleans is located at the mouth of the Mississipi River, just south of where the river splits off into Lake Pontchartrain, which forms the northern city... limit and a unique ecosystem because of the salt water boundary. The Pontchartrain Causeway is the longest bridge in the world. New Orleans is unique in the United States for many reasons. It shares more in common with european cities and Montreal than most other American cities, and both historically and liguistically has more in common with other port cities like New York than other cities in the South . The architecture of the Vieux Carre, or French Quarter, mainly comes from the 18th century Spanish period, is reminiscent of many european cities, and changes are tightly controlled. The Garden District contains many stately mansions built in the early 19th century, after the city was purchased by the US. There are two distinct local cuisines, cajun and haute creole. Culturally and economically, since the decline of the local oil industry in the 1970's, the city and the attitude of local residents have more in common with a banana republic or a small caribbean nation than most US cities. Tourism is the major industry, and Mardi Gras is the major holiday.
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