There is a strong argument that the best way for the guitarist to learn their favourite song is to play along to the record. However having a useful reference book nearby can only improve their chances.

 Stop the presses! Hold the phones! Pick your jaws up from the floor, as 2005 ends with Babyshambles making headlines for an event related to music. Given the to-ings and fr-oings of the past year, Down In Albion could either be the ultimate triumph over adversity and a two-fingered salute to every nay-saying critic in the Western world, or what's likely to be the final chapter in a story titled "We Knew You'd Blown It". However, appropriately for a band for whom nothing ever seems straightforward, the truth lies somewhere in between.

Tom Waits is back after an absence that lasted seven long years, strolling again through the apparently arid American scene with his music and his usual charm, his drunk, poetic pessimism and his devil’s baritone, crossing the boundaries of a rich variety of genres including blues, rockabilly, and jazz to paint an almost perfect sketch or vignette of the American life. In Bad As Me Tom Waits seems to just shake the stories and ideas out of his sleeve onto the record. It's an ebullient and brightly imagined (and executed) album, with some jaw-droppingly good bits.