Rebellious Jukebox: Warren Zevon

Read enough of the bullshit that I write on this page and you\’ll start to see that when I talk about something I usually like to outline the route by which I arrived in the place where I found the artifact. This, I\’m afraid, is going to be no different. How did I locate and become entangled in the dark and vital lyrical meanderings of Warren Zevon? Well, I was, to put it mildly, obsessed with REM and would follow their wagon wherever it led. It eventually led me to the Hindu Love Gods and that was where I found Warren Zevon hanging out with Berry, Muck and Mills.

I am what some call a meta-textual reader and every single medium has its metatext, music being no different. It was a short leap from the Hindu Love Gods to Zevon\’s own solo work and the first album that I found was a great one called Transverse City. Why so great, I hear you eagerly ask, the thing intersected with another passion of mine — the cyberpunk world of William Gibson, which Warren had a more than passing interest in.

He wasn\’t that easy to track down in the music shops, having been dropped by several labels and going through what might be called a few fallow periods. Life\’ll Kill Ya bounced him back into the public consciousness and he seemed to be around pretty consistently after that.

The next big impact he had on me was when I caught the news that he had cancer and that they were going to have a VH1 special on him, then that he was going to be on Letterman. That instead of taking treatment he was going to record a last album and tour. I don\’t care what anyone says — that is a damned ballsy thing to do (Ian Dury did a similar thingwhen he was diagnosed (not that I am trying to be crass by comparing musicians with cancer as if there were some stupid club)).

Anyway, as is often the way with a blog — at least when I am writing them, the meandering is all dressing around a central point which I could have got to much earlier — and it is the usual point that I am making when I am writing about anything on this blog — that you should check him out; hunt down the albums and buy them all. Read up on him — he\’s an interesting man, and take the guy\’s philosophy to heart, on the subject of facing death Zevon had this to say \”Enjoy every sandwich.\”

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Now playing: Crowded House – In The Lowlands
via FoxyTunes