Waiting for Tom
He was once described as having a voice "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".
And I think the critic Daniel Durchholz was trying to pay Tom Waits a compliment!
But whatever you think of him, there was no question that his two nights at the Edinburgh Playhouse this weekend were going to be the hottest tickets of the summer.
Not only is it his first Edinburgh performance since 1987, but it's his only UK dates on his European tour.
Promoters decided to pre-empt eBay bidding wars with a strike of their own.
Tickets were limited to two per application and applicants had to name their guests too. Tickets were only delivered in the last week and the six thousand fans who have tickets will have to show photo ID at the Edinburgh Playhouse on Sunday and Monday to get in.
The promoters - Regular Music - say the impetus has come from Waits himself, who often agrees to auction for charity front row seats for his rare appearances (so clearly knows their value).
They say they're anxious to tackle the touts who're now regularly offering tickets at five or ten times their face value (two tickets for Neil Young's Playhouse gig in March were on offer for £500).
But do fans have anything to gain from the scheme? It's not as if it'll bring the prices down - an eyewatering £75 and £95 a pop.
And who's to say those sellers on eBay aren't just offloading their tickets because it clashes with a party/funeral/bar mitzbah? Or they've gone off Kylie since buying the tickets. Or indeed just cashing in on the popularity of their favourite act - if someone is prepared to pay several hundred pounds for a ticket, who are we to stop them?
The promoters want to make it illegal - just as it is for sporting events, but so far the government has failed to respond to their lobbying.
And meanwhile, people are already finding ways round the restrictions. A number of Irish fans offered their second tickets on eBay to the highest bidders and then simply named them as "friends" to the ticket agents.
Presumably they'll have to sit next to them at the gig anyway so perhaps they will become friends (or sit quietly seething about having subidised their neighbour's ticket for the cult of Tom Waits).
Whatever happens, it's going to be interesting, and probably a bit frustrating. Extra staff and extra entrances are promised but there are still going to be lots of passports to check (and no doubt lots of forgotten ID to verify).
And then there's the small matter of the misprinted tickets which have only one name on. According to Ticketmaster, there are only a handful - mine among them - which have to be changed at the Box Office. Hopefully I'll be in my seat before "Closing Time."
Not London’s South Bank, but the south bank of the River Clyde in Glasgow - every bit as lively in cultural terms as its namesake. I’m Pauline McLean, BBC Scotland’s arts correspondent, and I’ll be blogging here about arts events and issues happening across the country.
© MMX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~31~RS~)