Warren Zevon (1 Viewer)

Gerard K H Love

Gerard K H Love

Appreciate your friends
Warren Zevon may have nothing to do with Bukowski, but he was a great artist by his own right. I bring him up because he has been refrenced a few times on this forum and someone even asked if his lyrics had any Bukowski connections.

Besides I forgot all about this song until I heard it on a very good blog connected to one of the poets from this forum.


Tell me what you think. ???????????????????



This is a better version and a better video. (especially the blood diamonds refrence)
 
Gerard K H Love said:
... Tell me what you think ???
Click to expand...

i am sorry. REALLY sorry.
but this guy doesn't do it for me.

the song itself sounds like the songs we played at the fireplace in summernights when i was around 12.
and the guy looks like a prick.

you know, Gerard, i love you - so you know it isn't an insult.
only, you asked for oppinions. this is mine. sorry again.

Gerard K H Love said:
This is a better version and a better video ...
Click to expand...

o.k. true.
the song itself comes much better in a 'rock'-version.
the video is alright. but still ...
 
Roni I agree, he never did it for me, except for a couple of songs. He is like mayonnaise you could live without it but it would not be the same.
Erik brought up a Bukowski connection but I have only known of his connection to Hunter S Thompson.

I love you too Roni. Babe.
 
I'm going to agree with Gerard. Lord, he was good. Recently, I posted the lyrics from one of Zevon's best songs, Mr. Bad Example, on my blog solely for it's literary merit. Take the time to look this over. It's pretty amazing (methinks).
 
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He like most people who die from cancer deserved a better fate-most of his stuff was hit and miss for me but keep me in your heart for a while was a good song-hit the mark.
 
His sense of humor is what forever cemented his reputation with me.
some clever lyrics over rowdy piano rock

Randy Newman with a drinking problem...
nothing wrong with that

please
send lawyers guns or money

:)
 
I have heard some of the songs before but did not pay much attention to them,

nymark said:
I'm going to agree with Gerard. Lord, he was good. Recently, I posted the lyrics from one of Zevon's best songs, Mr. Bad Example, on my blog solely for it's literary merit. Take the time to look this over. It's pretty amazing (methinks).
Click to expand...

well, I'm very familiar with the 7 sins too

I'll to read more...
 
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Gerard K H Love said:
Tell me what you think. ???????????????????
Click to expand...
Warren Z is great. His lyrics often have a seemingly artless, easy sincerity that reminds me of Buk's poems.

I love this one from Mutineer (95). He really sings well too:

Something Bad Happened to a Clown

 Every touch is measured out
Every word is written down
Sunny skies are seldom seen
In the land of few and far between
And everybody wears a frown

Someone lost their squirting rose
There's his red nose on the ground
No one's seen his painted smile
He's been gone for quite a while
Something bad happened to a clown
Something bad happened to a clown

He used to honk his horn and everyone would laugh
He used to honk his horn
She doesn't think he's very funny anymore
Footprints in the sawdust leading to the edge of town
Something bad happened to a clown
Something bad happened to a clown

He used to honk his horn and everyone would laugh
He used to honk his horn
She doesn't think he's very funny anymore
Footprints in the sawdust leading to the edge of town
Something bad happened to a clown
Something bad happened to a clown
Click to expand...
 
I think that Warren Zevon was a great songwriter ... "Poor Poor Pitiful Me," "Carmelita" and "Hasten Down the Wind" for Linda Ronstadt, his own greats like "Mohammed's Radio," "Excitable Boy" and of course "Werewolves of London." The lyrics of "Excitable Boy" are some of the creepiest anywhere in rock 'n' roll ...

For those who want to hear what Zevon sounded like at his rockin' best, there has been a reissue of his live album, Stand in the Fire. I would highly recommend it and in fact I'm gonna re-buy it (old one was vinyl, of course.) You can buy it for only $9.48 at spun.com, my favorite music site:

http://www.spun.com/music/product-detail.jsp?id=2668852

Thanks for reminding me about Mr. Zevon, Gerard K H Love!
 
I've always loved Zevon. As for Ronnie's comments, I respectfully disagree. The lyrics for "Lawyers, Guns, and Money" are like a perfectly devised in media res short story: the narrator is stuck in a Latin American country, "an innocent bystander" who is "down on his luck" and somehow he got caught "between a rock and a hard place" and he is pleading to his dad in the U.S. to send every shred of help ... "send lawyers, guns, and money ... the shit has hit the fan." Notice how, as in the best of media res (and Bukowski did it well), the back story is left to one's imagination.
 
HarryC13 said:
Thanks for reminding me about Mr. Zevon, Gerard K H Love!
Click to expand...

Thanks but I was reminded about Warren Zevon when I heard Lawyers Guns and Money on the blog of one of the famous poets of Bukowski dot net. Someone else cited him in another thread here recently.
Thank you to C-dog for your comentary that helped make some things clear.

Linda Ronstadt owes a bit to Warren Zevon and vice versa.
 
I had a fish. It was dying of some weird disease.
I don't name my pets. It's a weird thing with me.

Anyway, the fish was dying. It had grotesque mold
growth all over it. It looked painful. It needed to be
euthanized. A mixture of water, vodka, and oil of
clove is the proper euthanasia for a fish. The oil of
clove puts the fish into a sleep, and the vodka
dilutes the concentrated oil, and carried it through
all of the water.

I had to name the fish if I was going to take it's
life.

When told that he had inoperable lung cancer,
Warren Zevon said that he hoped that he would
live long enough to see the next James Bond Movie.

I liked that spirit. I named the fish Warren.

There is my Warren Zevon story.
 
Warren was great. Although, he really pissed me off once. I've since forgiven him.

Watching that video of him solo is really freaky to me. It's like watching a mirror. I still think he may be my real father. If you saw me, you might agree there's a very uncanny resemblence.

Here's my Warren story.

Around that time, '94, he was touring solo. I was working at a nw Indiana radio station at the time. He played locally at the fairgrounds. I got to bring him up. "Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Warren Zevon!" All that shit. Well, after the show, and I won't even mention all the fake music coming out of his keyboard, me and a friend were backstage and had hoped to meet him and shake his hand and say thanks for all the years of great music. Well, he comes off the stage, and waiting for him is a long white limo. Note, the motorhome he came in was parked not 25 yards away. He gets to the limo, where maybe 9 or 10 people waited for him. He opens the limo door, signs one autograph and then silently gets in and closes the door. Well, for some reason, this really pissed me off. It surely didn't help that I had a real good beer buzz on by this time. So, I flipped. Started yelling at his road manager and by proxy since the moon roof on the limo was open, Warren, "Hey, what the hell?! There's not even ten fucking people out here! You can't take 10 minutes of your fucking time for a couple fans!? That's BULLSHIT WARREN!!!"
So, I happened to have his most recent cd, Learning To Flinch in my hand. I took the CD, and frisbee'd it right into the moonroof. (It was an astounding example of good aim actually, being the limo was just starting to drive away) Shoooom! Right in there. The limo stops immediately. The side window where he was opened a crack, and out pops the cd like a reciept from the gas pump. His manager took the CD from him and handed it back to me. Unsigned of course. (Not that I expected that at all. I was just pissed) The road manager apologized to me and walked off to the motorhome as the limo made a big loop over to the motorhome. I left.

I was pissed at him for years after that. Kinda rude really. It's not like he had a mob of hundreds of people waiting for him. And of course at that point of his career, it didn't seem like he could really afford to piss off and alienate any more or what fans were left.

Seeing the documentary they made when he was dying on VH1 made it all ok with me. He made amends for a lot of things he'd done to people in those last few months. Including to me, just for his facing his own self-induced death so insanely brave. No chemo, no operations. Just a lot of drugs.
 
how could you not love a guy who writes a song like 'excitable boy'...:cool:
 
Warren Zevon Inside Out is a great documentation of his final recording. I believe he does quote Bukowski in it as well. These two are similar in the fact that they accomplish a unique mixture of humor and insight, while having a number of people not give them enough credit for either.
 
Apropos to this thread, Randy Newman apparently has a new release that is "a scathingly political album that makes the new Nas album sound like a campaign PSA for John McCain." Review here.
 

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