Warren Zevon's music told stories that mixed culture high and low, that were pulp
fiction yet strangely intimate, and that spoke to a world that was
cynical yet surprising. "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner" was about mercenaries in Africa,
"Werewolves of London" was about, well, werewolves, "Carmelita" was about
heroin addiction. No matter what he wrote about, he made those songs feel personal.
They were personal to other musicians, his friends and devotees such as Carl Wilson, J. D. Souther, Phil Everly, Bonnie Raitt, Lindsay Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, Don Henley, Glenn Frey, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Hunter Thompson and Tom McGuane: and they are personal to me.
I make a point to "enjoy every sandwich", and so should you.
Today's Warren Zevon freeloads, are two very different live shows from 1982 with a band, and ten years later, solo.
Warren Zevon Goes to Boston
The Metro, Boston, MA
September 29 or 30, 1982
Warren Zevon - piano
John Wood - guitar
Randy Brown - guitar
Larry Larson - bass
Joe Danield - drums
Warren Zevon (solo)
Festa de L'Unità
Modena, Italy
September 5, 1992
- Splendid Isolation
- Lawyers, Guns And Money
- Mr. Bad Example
- Carmelita
- Excitable Boy
- Hasten Down The Wind
- The French Inhaler
- The Worrier King
- Roland Chorale
- Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner
- Searching For A Heart
- Boom Boom Mancini
- Junglework
- Piano Fighter
- Werewolves of London
- The Indifference of Heaven
- Detox Mansion
- Poor, Poor Pitiful Me
- Summertime Blues
- Play It All Night Long
- Mohammed's Radio
We Real Cool
ReplyDeleteBY GWENDOLYN BROOKS
The Pool Players.
Seven at the Golden Shovel.
We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon./
Neal T this always sticks in my mind when I think of poetry
It’s possible that while we were dreaming
ReplyDeletethe hand that casts out the stars like seeds
started up the ancient music once more
—like a note from a great harp—
and the frail wave came to our lips
in the form of one or two honest words.
Antonio Machado
just realized after answering;
ReplyDeletethat little diddy predates Chapman's Fast Car by 1/4 century but is succinctly the same story :)
Willie found some dynamite
ReplyDeleteHe couldn't understand it quite
Curiosity never pays
It rained Willie seven days
What a wonderful bird the frog are!
ReplyDeleteWhen he stands. he sit almost;
When he hop, he fly almost.
He ain't got no sense hardly;
He ain't got no tail hardly either.
When he sit, he sit on what he ain't got almost.
ReplyDeleteThe Whole Mess... Almost
By Gregory Corso
I ran up six flights of stairs
to my small furnished room
opened the window
and began throwing out
those things most important in life
First to go, Truth, squealing like a fink:
'Don't! I'll tell awful things about you!'
'Oh yeah! Well, I've nothing to hide… OUT!'
Then went God, glowering & whimpering in amazement:
'It's not my fault! I'm not the cause of it all!' 'OUT!'
Then Love, cooing bribes: 'You'll never know impotency!
All the girls on Vogue covers, all yours!'
I pushed her fat ass out and screamed:
'You always end up a bummer!'
I picked up Faith Hope Charity
all three clinging together:
'Without us you'll surely die!'
'With you I'm going nuts! Goodbye!'
The Beauty… ah, Beauty--
As I led her to the window
I told her: 'You I loved the best in life
…but you're a killer; Beauty kills!'
Not really meaning to drop her
I immediately ran downstairs
getting there just in time to catch her
'You saved me!' she cried
I put her down and told her: 'Move on.'
Went back up those six flights
went to the money
there was no money to throw out.
The only thing left in the room was Death
hiding beneath the kitchen sink:
'I'm not real!' It cried
'I'm just a rumor spread by life…'
Laughing I threw it out, kitchen sink and all
and suddenly realized Humor
was all that was left--
All I could do with Humor was to say:
'Out the window with the window!'
There once was a girl from Nantucket.........
ReplyDeleteIn all seriousness:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
I Am
ReplyDeleteBY JOHN CLARE
I am—yet what I am none cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost:
I am the self-consumer of my woes—
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes
And yet I am, and live—like vapours tossed
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
Even the dearest that I loved the best
Are strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man hath never trod
A place where woman never smiled or wept
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie
The grass below—above the vaulted sky.
I only ever had one poem committed to memory this is it:
ReplyDeletePorridge
Why is there no monument
To Porridge in our land?
If it's good enough to eat,
It's good enough to stand!
On a plinth in London
A statue we should see
Of Porridge made in Scotland
Signed, "Oatmeal, O.B.E."
(By a young dog of three)
Milligan, Spike
Oh and I saw Mr Zevon at Town & Country (later Forum) Kentish Town Friday September 25 1992 I know that because still have ticket and there is a bootleg recording if can find it will share. Probably on cassette those being olden times...
Thanks for reminding me of Spike's porridge poem. It was on the first lp I ever bought aged about 11. The World of British Comedy. It has some great stuff on it, including my favourite - Kenneth Williams : Hold up your hands this is a stick up.
Deletehttps://www.setlist.fm/setlist/warren-zevon/1992/town-and-country-club-london-england-33c95835.html
ReplyDeleteInternet archive done it for me :-) https://archive.org/details/wz1992-09-25.aud.flac16
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteanyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn’t he danced his did.
Women and men (both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn’t they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain
children guessed (but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more
when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone’s any was all to her
someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then) they
said their nevers they slept their dream
stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)
one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was
all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.
Women and men (both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain
— ee cummings
The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me by Delmore Schwartz
ReplyDeleteThe heavy bear who goes with me,
A manifold honey to smear his face,
Clumsy and lumbering here and there,
The central ton of every place,
The hungry beating brutish one
In love with candy, anger, and sleep,
Crazy factotum, dishevelling all,
Climbs the building, kicks the football,
Boxes his brother in the hate-ridden city.
Breathing at my side, that heavy animal,
That heavy bear who sleeps with me,
Howls in his sleep for a world of sugar,
A sweetness intimate as the water’s clasp,
Howls in his sleep because the tight-rope
Trembles and shows the darkness beneath.
—The strutting show-off is terrified,
Dressed in his dress-suit, bulging his pants,
Trembles to think that his quivering meat
Must finally wince to nothing at all.
That inescapable animal walks with me,
Has followed me since the black womb held,
Moves where I move, distorting my gesture,
A caricature, a swollen shadow,
A stupid clown of the spirit’s motive,
Perplexes and affronts with his own darkness,
The secret life of belly and bone,
Opaque, too near, my private, yet unknown,
Stretches to embrace the very dear
With whom I would walk without him near,
Touches her grossly, although a word
Would bare my heart and make me clear,
Stumbles, flounders, and strives to be fed
Dragging me with him in his mouthing care,
Amid the hundred million of his kind,
The scrimmage of appetite everywhere.
--Muzak McMusics
Link
ReplyDeletehttps://we.tl/t-lkmP6m72Cq
The Next Time
ReplyDeleteI
Nobody sees it happening, but the architecture of our time
Is becoming the architecture of the next time. And the dazzle
Of light upon the waters is as nothing beside the changes
Wrought therein, just as our waywardness means
Nothing against the steady pull of things over the edge.
Nobody can stop the flow, but nobody can start it either.
Time slips by; our sorrows do not turn into poems,
And what is invisible stays that way. Desire has fled,
Leaving only a trace of perfume in its wake,
And so many people we loved have gone,
And no voice comes from outer space, from the folds
Of dust and carpets of wind to tell us that this
Is the way it was meant to happen, that if only we knew
How long the ruins would last we would never complain.
II
Perfection is out of the question for people like us,
So why plug away at the same old self when the landscape
Has opened its arms and given us marvelous shrines
To flock towards? The great motels to the west are waiting,
In somebody’s yard a pristine dog is hoping that we’ll drive by,
And on the rubber surface of a lake people bobbing up and down
Will wave. The highway comes right to the door, so let’s
Take off before the world out there burns up. Life should be more
Than the body’s weight working itself from room to room.
A turn through the forest will do us good, so will a spin
Among the farms. Just think of the chickens strutting,
The cows swinging their udders, and flicking their tails at flies.
And one can imagine prisms of summer light breaking against
The silent, haze-filled sleep of the farmer and his wife.
III
It could have been another story, the one that was meant
Instead of the one that happened. Living like this,
Hoping to revise what has been false or rendered unreadable
Is not what we wanted. Believing that the intended story
Would have been like a day in the west when everything
Is tirelessly present—the mountains casting their long shadow
Over the valley where the wind sings its circular tune
And trees respond with a dry clapping of leaves—was overly
Simple no doubt, and short-sighted. For soon the leaves,
Having gone black, would fall, and the annulling snow
Would pillow the walk, and we, with shovels in hand, would meet,
Bow, and scrape the sidewalk clean. What else would there be
This late in the day for us but desire to make amends
And start again, the sun’s compassion as it disappears.
(Mark Strand)
Thanks Babs. AND thanks to the repliers who've provided these poems, my lack of poetic knowledge is robust. Thanks for helping to change that with these thoughtful contributions.
ReplyDeleteAbout suffering they were never wrong,
ReplyDeleteThe Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
W. H. Auden, "Musée des Beaux Arts" from Selected Poems, ed. Edward Mendelson. Copyright © 1979 by W. H. Auden. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd. (US).
from D in California
The whole thing is too long too post so here's my favourite section:
ReplyDeleteChristopher Brennan ~ The Wanderer
The land I came thro’ last was dumb with night,
a limbo of defeated glory, a ghost:
for wreck of constellations flicker’d perishing
scarce sustained in the mortuary air,
and on the ground and out of livid pools
wreck of old swords and crowns glimmer’d at whiles;
I seem’d at home in some old dream of kingship:
now it is clear grey day and the road is plain,
I am the wanderer of many years
who cannot tell if ever he was king
or if ever kingdoms were: I know I am
the wanderer of the ways of all the worlds,
to whom the sunshine and the rain are one
and one to stay or hasten, because he knows
no ending of the way, no home, no goal,
and phantom night and the grey day alike
withhold the heart where all my dreams and days
might faint in soft fire and delicious death:
and saying this to myself as a simple thing
I feel a peace fall in the heart of the winds
and a clear dusk settle, somewhere, far in me.
Just an intro (since copying an entire book is a bit much):
ReplyDeleteI saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz...
ReplyDeleteNo te des por vencido, ni aun vencido,
no te sientas esclavo, ni aun esclavo;
trémulo de pavor, piénsate bravo,
y arremete feroz, ya mal herido.
Ten el tesón del clavo enmohecido
que ya viejo y ruin, vuelve a ser clavo;
no la cobarde estupidez del pavo
que amaina su plumaje al primer ruido.
Procede como Dios que nunca llora;
o como Lucifer, que nunca reza;
o como el robledal, cuya grandeza
necesita del agua y no la implora…
¡Que muerda y vocifere vengadora,
ya rodando en el polvo, tu cabeza!
Pedro Bonifacio Palacios (“Almafuerte”)