...which had a certain romantic appeal to me in those days, when I lived in that general area. Tom Waits, her sometime lover, played well in that genre as well.
This performance, which was actually in Paris, captures that ethic quite well. She looks as if she's on a heroin bender, but still the performance was quite exceptional all the same, even though she forgot the lyrics momentarily and nearly fell off her high heeled shoes.
It wasn't available on the internet for a time, and I missed it.
I love the gasoline soaked references in the song, the motor head play on words, the play on the 1950's "On the Road" trips through small towns in the desert, the "last chances" I knew from driving rickety cars across the country, translated into deep emotional pain.
She could certainly encapsulate a shitty love life in music better than almost anyone else.
I worked a long time to learn to play "Last Chance Texaco" in my own time as a backwater club folksinger, but never felt I got it well enough to actually play it in public. The same is true of another song from that time, "Company," which summed up my own unhappy love life at the time. It actually required an incredible singing range that I could never come close to faking.
I can't believe I took that awful love life of mine at the time that I was involved with her songs so seriously. If I met those people on the street, I wouldn't know them, which is a good thing.
My life is very far from where I was in those times, happily, but I still remember the feelings which, as an incredible talent, she interpreted so well.
I can't believe I ever lived in the LA area, nor that I ever found that Bukowski type low life shtick romantic, but probably it was worth going through that experience, since life today seems so much sweeter by comparison.
I do hope she's well. She was a remarkable musician, one of the best, a tremendous talent.
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