Ode to New Year's Eve (More songs about drinking and cussing)

The stars looked like diamonds
Then came the sirens
And everyone started to cuss

-- "New Year's Eve," Tom Waits

New Year's Eve afternoon. Coffee and blogging and putting together a playlist for tonight's revelry -- everything from "Sweet to Mama" to the "Georgia Crawl." Lots of old blues and string-band numbers. Some good ruckus. Jug bands and jazz kings, R&B shouters. ... And I've got the Black Keys and R.L. Burnside, Old Crow Medicine Show and The Clash. I've got Gillian Welch singing Radiohead and Gillian Welch singing Dylan and Gillian Welch singing Gillian Welch -- "The Way the Whole Thing Ends," in a nod, you know, to the passing year. I've got Radiohead singing Radiohead, and Dylan singing whatever the hell he wants. ... And Tom Waits singing about, of all things, New Year's Eve. I do love a beautiful lament. And some Pogues, too, "Broad Majestic Shannon" and "Turkish Song of the Damned." And Van Morrison, "Astral Weeks." Van singing, "If I ventured in the slipstream / Between the viaducts of your dream ... " And some soul, must have soul: Otis singing "Champagne & Wine," just for starters. A mess of electrified blues: Albert King walking the back streets and crying, B.B. King singing, "Nobody loves me but my mother, and she could be jiving, too." ... And I've got all of side 2 of Neil Young's "Hawks & Doves," my favorite second side of any album, ever; Neil singing, "Got rock and roll, got country music playin' / If you hate us, you just don't know what you're sayin'." ... Maybe some Kinks. Love the Kinks. No Beatles, but some solo George and John and maybe even one by Paul. Love that "Monkberry Moon Delight." Bottle that shit, boys. ... Oh, let's see, and Michelle Shocked singing "Anchorage," the only song that can make me cry. And then, to bring me back up, maybe some Hank Williams -- ah, Hank, who died on this night, or the next morning, one, in 1952/53. God bless you, Hank. Come back and sing us a good one. Make it one of those happy songs with the sad-sack titles, "Long Gone Lonesome Blues" or "Moanin' the Blues."