Alpaca Connection. (“Not a camel. When I look at an alpaca, I wish I had a camel. Camel gets things done. Alpaca sweaters? Sure. Alpaca? C’mon. Gimme a camel or I get someone who can gimme a camel.”)
Chipotle. (“Again, the Mexicans kill our people. How they gonna do it? With a knife? A gun? A burrito? You never know. How much longer are we gonna put up with it? When I’m President? Gonna be a lot more burger eating. Same thing as a burrito. Delivery system for meat and toppings. But, you know: burger waited in line to get in. Didn’t hop a fence.”)
American Girl Bistro. (“My wife Melania is a real American girl. Don’t you want to see that as a first lady? Huh? Right? I mean: what we got now? Not gonna do it for me. Melania is a real American. “)
Apple Store. (“When I’m President, Apple’s gonna give me what I want. I’m gonna get what I want. What do I want? Terrorists. Now, am I gonna go into this Tim Cook’s–a real loser, by the way–office and have his staff executed in front of him until he hacks the phone for me? I don’t know. I know I’m gonna be the best President ever.”)
Minnesota Sealife Aquarium. (“Loser fish. Stupid? Slow? Maybe they just like being taken care of by the government. Gimme a fish out in the ocean. I’m great with fish, by the way. Catching them, eating them. Just an all-around expert on fish.”)
Long John Silver’s. (“Now you’re talking. Again: fish. Fish don’t invade our country. Fish don’t want to force you to get married at a mosque. Bread ’em. Mayo. I don’t like tomato, but a lot of people do, and that’s fine. Whatever, have your tomatoes. The fish is what we’re talking about. The fish is why we’re here, right? Fish.”)
Ice Skating Rink. (“People forget that I built an ice skating rink. Wolman Rink in Central Park. Best ice rink in the world. Many of the greatest ice skaters have skated there and thanked me. A few cried. If you can do a lutz on a normal rink, you can do a salchow on mine. My rink also adds an axel. You could do a double somewhere else? Triple on mine. It’s the best ice in the world.”)
Brookstone. (“Classy place. Very classy. I don’t ever sit in the massage chair. Thing’s filthy. C’mon. Great business. It sells stuff morons think rich people have. Luckily, many rich people are morons. Great business. Got one of their radios in my shower.”)
Hooters. (“The wings are actually pretty good. Not bad wings. Let’s be honest: about the tits. Lot of people gonna have a problem with that. Hillary sure will. She has a problem with a lot of things. But, you know: no one’s going for the wings. But they are pretty good. People are gonna say the place is sexist. That’s dumb. That’s dumb. How can tits be sexist? Tit’s can’t be sexist: women have them. C’mon.”)
“…so, Ernie’s got Weir’s nuts in one hand, and mine in the other–this was so he could properly fit the trousers, plus he would give you a big discount and free alterations–and I guess ol’ Ern’s hayfever was acting up, because he sneezed.”
“Phil?”
“And, you know: I guess it was just reflex, but the son of a bitch clamped down; Bob starts shrieking like a jackrabbit on a highway. I passed out. Thing about Creepy Ernie: man had strong hands. When he grabbed your ass, it stayed grabbed.”
“Phil.”
“Had to cancel the show that night. On the other hand, we got the pants for free. Ernie felt terrible.”
“Phil, the question was about Red Rocks.”
“Yeah: red rocks. Red, blue, purple, yellow. Our rocks were every color under the sun. Bruise like that does a lot of stuff.”
“No, Phil. Red Rocks the venue.”
“Don’t contradict me, longhair.”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s better, Benjy.”
“Jay.”
“Right, right.”
…
GODDAMMIT, this post was supposed to be about Phil’s show in Vegas tonight. (With special Phriend Anders Osborne, whom I heard on the radio today; dude can sing.) Any of the Haight Street Irregulars in attendance or those in possession of real-time knowledge of the event are encouraged to share with the rest of us.
Picture the Dawn of Man. Maybe a Tuesday. No one had ever done anything before, and then someone did. Immediately after that, people began reviewing it, compiling candid behind-the-scene reports about it, parodying it, and wondering what it all meant, cavemaaaaaaan.
Your tweets are today’s Talmudic commentaries, just with fewer violent hand gestures. Probably the same amount of beards.
This is Lucky Number 13, the 13th guitar that Alembic made (was Peanut the first?), and the first one made to Garcia’s specs. It sold for 62 grand back in 2012, and its (comparatively) low cost can be explained by Garcia not playing it on stage. (Although he may have used this for a Jerry Band show; I don’t recall ever seeing a picture of him with it, though.)
Lucky’s definitely a Garcia guitar: look at all the bullshit! There’s TWO plugs! One’s for the power supply! Two switches (which is nowhere near enough switches; by this point, Phil had a bass that was made up entirely of switches) and EIGHT KNOBS, one of which is located directly under the strings, kinda, for some reason.
But it’s an early model, too, obviously. Lucky is to Tiger what a coelacanth is to a tuna: you can see where the design is headed, but it ain’t there yet. The headstock is much too small, plus there are no ornately expensive inlays covering the thing. (The Dead loved their guitar inlays.)
Also, there’s only two pickups. From Wolf forward, Garcia went with three, as that is the most that will fit. The part of a guitar string from the nut to the bridge has to be a certain length, which puts a finite cap on the room you have to jam humbuckers into the thing, although I would feel comfortable in wagering that there were many discussions and sketches about how to get a fourth pickup in there. (“What if we install them sideways?”)
The page from Bonham’s about the auction notes that this item came with a Letter of Authenticity from an unimpeachable source: Bobert Herbert Walker Weir. Now, Bobby is a human and therefore fallible, but if he signs a letter saying Garcia owned the guitar, then Garcia owned the guitar. If you give Billy $40 and a tugger, he’ll sign anything you put in front of him, but Bobby’s signature is his bond.
(It should be noted that the Letter of Authenticity took up most of Bobby’s day. He signed it, and then thought “Well, how will people know that the Letter of Authenticity is authentic?” so he drafted another letter authenticating the first Letter of Authenticity. Then–and maybe you know where this is going–Bobby reasoned, “Well, how will they know that that letter is authentic?” and it went on all afternoon.)
Fun fact: Garcia gave this guitar to Matt Kelly.
Matt Kelly had a mixed and complicated relationship with the Grateful Dead.
You can bail now. Pull the cord: I support your decision because it is mathematically the correct one; it’s the odds play. The vast majority of the general public replied to Warren Zevon with, at best, “Oh, the werewolf guy? What happened to him?” while he was alive, and in death not much has changed. Warren has not yet been re-evaluated in the proper publications, nor did The 1975 cover any of his songs on their new album.
Kanye does not give Warren shout-outs, nor do his guitars or love letters fetch huge prices at auction. The last person to sample him was Kid Rock. (And of course it was fucking Werewolves.) He didn’t have many fans when he was still around, and now that he’s now putting out any new stuff, only the Weird remain. (Warren was good friends with Hunter Thompson, which gives me dispensation to use some good ol’ Hunter Capitals.)
The funny thing is that Warren would have pitched hysterical tantrums over this slight. He was fantastically aware of his niche status in the music industry, and he enjoyed turning that awareness into insults and sometimes punching. Warren raged against the dying of the residuals.
Except: he may not have been wrong to think so highly of himself. Three of his records (and Warren Zevon is a guy who made records; the live act is up and down for many reasons that I’m sure will be covered) are legitimate masterpieces. The rest of them all have at least one transcendent song on them (along with one stinker, but we’ll also cover that) except for maybe on or two.
Last chance to click over to Jezebel, where women demand to be taken seriously in between posts about the Kardashians. I won’t hold it against you.
Okay, here we go.
This is the first album, called Warren Zevon, which is some solid first album namin’. Can’t trust an act without a self-titled first album.
Also: remember the thing about how you could leave? And that I wouldn’t mind? It turns out that’s not true, because this video is from Warren’s official channel and it’s got 674 views and I stared at that number for a while and almost cried for a little while after that.
So, give the man a chance. His songs deserve to be listened to.
If you’re a newcomer to Zevonia–
Don’t call it that.
–then start here. Warren could already write better lyrics than anyone who wasn’t born in Hibbing, Minnesota, and the arrangements are tight as the first line of coke and performed by all of LA’s 70’s music scene: Jackson Browne, and Linda Ronstadt. It’s the Laurel Canyon sound, but without the songwriter’s head up his ass.
The production has become so dated that it now qualifies as classic, which is a theme with Warren’s records. Check out the muffled drums: you can see the carpeted walls in the studio. Most of it is just Warren and his piano.
He played the piano well.
(Note: Rock Nerds are already mobilizing in the Comment Section to say that this was not Warren Zevon’s first album. They will tell you that this album was called Wanted Dead or Alive but they are wrong, even if they link to the album and provide photographic evidence. Trust me on this one: Wanted Dead or Alive is so awful that it doesn’t exist. That’s right: it is Star Wars Prequel-level shitty. Warren Zevon‘s the first record.)
WINNERS Every song except Backs Turned Looking Down The Path.
SINNERS Back Turned Looking Down The Path. I mean, it’s not horrendous, but if it were a coffee shop, you would not poop there.
Not only does Warren avoid the dreaded sophomore curse with his second album, he also avoided it on his third and all subsequent releases, though it got less impressive every time.
This was the big record, with the big hit, the one that made him famous (and the other two hits, that made him a not-one-hit-wonder). Dead even covered it, and while it was still on the charts. Maybe the radio crowd didn’t get the morbid humor and sheer delight in words, but the chorus is fun as fuck for the whole bar to sing along to.
It wasn’t a tossed-off novelty hit, either. Warren went through days of tape and numerous rhythm sections trying to find the song, and after 70 takes with the guys from Fleetwood Mac, someone turned the beat around and the song emerged and found its way to horror movies and Classic Rock stations.
Still good, though.
THE GOODIES Lawyers, Guns, and Money and Excitable Boy are the other two (minor) hits I mentioned from the record, and if you can write a better opening line than…
I went home with a waitress,
the way I always do.
How was I to know
she was with the Russians, too?
…then you should stop fucking around on this dumb site and go write songs for a living. Plus, Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner actually lives up to its title. Most songwriters would come up with a title that good, and just cruise for the actual song, but Warren put in the work.
THE DOODIES Nighttime in the Switching Yard never did it for me.
Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School is a transitional album, in that it’s the record in between the great stuff and the middle period. And, you know: if the middle period stuff was any good, it would just be lumped in with the great stuff. That these categories are needed should be a clue as to the general curve of quality Warren followed.
As stated, Warren loved his records to sound like all the other records, which meant the muffled drums in the 70’s, but Bad Luck Streak was an 80’s record. Somebody got himself a synthesizer AND HE WANTED TO SHOW IT TO YOU.
The first inessential release. Of many, to be honest. But there are high points you should hear.
SWAG The title track will be played at my funeral and anyone who doesn’t think it’s funny can be fed to the vultures, too. It’s a perfect song, with another one of Warren’s masterful titles. Jeannie Needs a Shooter is a clever western tale of love and dumbness and betrayal, co-written with Bruce Springsteen, whose name Warren would drop at almost every performance thereafter.
SCHWAG There’s clearly filler on this album, despite only being 35 minutes long: a couple classical interludes, and a shitty Ernie K. Doe cover. There’s also a song about a gorilla having a midlife crisis in Los Angeles that’s not as endearing as it thinks it is.
The contractually-obligated live album! A career milestone for any artist, the fourth or fifth release by most of your bigger acts was the contractually-obligated live album. Your superstars got double-live albums. You will notice this is a single LP. (Plus the mandatory unreleased extras that, by law, must be attached to any remastered live album.)
I won’t lie: it’s not what you want. The band is tight, but not interesting in any way: they’re competent, plus Warren chafed at being behind the piano and wanted to do his Rock Moves, except he looked goofy when he did them, and sounds weirder. There is a live record worth your time, but not this one.
BARELY ACCEPTABLE It’s kinda fun to listen to the crowd sing along with Werewolves; Poor Poor Pitiful Me is real loud.
COMPLETELY OUT OF THE QUESTION Everything else, especially the opener title song. Stand in the Fire might be the worst song Warren ever wrote: it sounds like a moderately talented 16-year-old’s first try at writing a tune.
Hoo, boy. Rough going for a little bit here. The Envoy was objectively terrible, and in certain spots, downright embarassing. One of the lines in one of the songs is “Don’t stop believing in tomorrow,” and that should be a warning. There are two good things about this record: one, it tanked so hard (and rightly so) the next record was Warren’s rehab record; and two, the fact that The Envoy in question isn’t a metaphorical envoy: Warren met a diplomat.
KEEPERS Honestly, just one, and I didn’t link to the album, just this song. There’s only three chords and a cuckold to Hula Hula Boys, but Warren tells the slight tale well.
WEEPERS The fact that the best song on the record is Hula Hula Boys should be a clue. The little ditty about a guy’s wife fucking around on him is a great short story for the middle of Side One; it shouldn’t be the best thing on the record. Sadly, it is.
Unlike most Rehab Records, Sentimental Hygiene‘s good. No matter how sober Warren got, he couldn’t blather about Higher Powers at you; it wasn’t in his constitution. Warren believed that if God existed, then He was pissed at him. No use appealing for favors there.
The band’s a lot better on this one, which makes sense because the band is R.E.M. (Remember: Warren liked to sound like whatever the popular sound was at the moment, plus R.E.M were famous (which he loved) and fans (which meant he could get R.E.M for the price of his usual hourly-rate guys).
FUCK YEAH Detox mansion: best rehab song ever. Not the process of rehabilitation: the actual 28 days at the actual place. Bonus points for being about a place I’ve heard about from some guy that I met in some place. I don’t want to talk about it. Look over there.
Reconsider Me is as pretty a song as Warren ever wrote, plus Boom Boom Mancini, which is the best song ever written about Boom Boom Mancini.
FUCK ME Y’know what? No outright turds on this one. You could rank the songs a million ways, but there’s no songs about diplomats or gorillas. Wait: the last song is shit. And it’s about a monkey, which is close enough to a gorilla.
Transverse City has the greatest credits line-up you’ve ever seen: David Gilmour, Chick Corea, Neil Young, plus the Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers backing him up for some of it. Also, a certain accidental arsonist near and dear to us on two songs.
Not great. Maybe not even good. Moments of brilliance, but weird and cold brilliance. The album’s its best when it’s at its most off-putting. (You’re right: that was a terrible sentence.) You can skip it.
BONERS! They Moved the Moon, which is one of the tunes Garcia plays on and, as Mr. Completely has noted, would have blown motherfuckers’ minds if the Dead had played it coming out of Space. Also, Splendid Isolation, which is the best song ever written about being alone and taking a perverse pleasure in it. Warren Zevon wrote a lot of the best songs ever about very specific subjects.
GROANERS There is a song about going to the mall.
Mr. Bad Example is inconsequential, though they did make a movie out of one of the songs. (The title, at least.) Mostly notable for being the last of the middle period records. (I forgot Mutineer, which is understandable.)
YIPEE That movie was Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead. Never seen it, but it cannot be as good as the song. The title track is also the funniest non-novelty song ever written. (Although, no novelty songs are actually funny, but you get my meaning.) Also, Heartache Spoken Here is a nifty country tune.
SKIPEE Again: no tragic shit. Just–as opposed to his other albums–a bunch of songs that, even after listening to them for many years, you still can’t think of how they go from looking at the track listing.
Mutineer had its moments, but all you need is the title track.
But, trust me: you need the title track. I didn’t post the album, and I won’t do the little bold-faced joke. Just watch him song Mutineer on Letterman right before he died.
True to form, Warren did the next thing on the Rock Star Checklist: the surprising late-period artistic resurgence. Life’ll Kill Ya is like the funeral of a sworn enemy: the subject is death, but you’re filled with joy. Warren was–according to his biography–miserable, broke, and suffering from a rather time-and-money-consuming case of OCD.
(Please don’t think I’m throwing that initialism around lightly: the man counted stuff, and could only wear grey Calvin Klein t-shirts, and would open three or four cans of soda before he found the one that was “lucky.”)
And then this, this grown man’s masterpiece. No more howling. Hell, there’s a Steve Winwood cover. Make no mistake: this is a thoroughly AOR record.
But it works. And, at the time, it worked; Warren went back to bigger venues and more of the critical esteem he lived on.
THE BEST
Well I can saw a woman in two
But you won’t want to look in the box when I am thru
I can make love disappear
For my next trick I’ll need a volunteer
There are some big-time swingin’ dick writer types that read this nonsense, and not a one of them ever wrote anything that good. I know I haven’t.
The whole album is verging of perfect, but maybe you don’t have time. (Warren’s albums, once tight half-hour affairs, now bloated to an hour and 14 songs in the CD era.) Then just try this one, the Winwood cover I mentioned before:
As I said in a previous post: I will fight you for not liking that. Physically fight you.
THE REST There’s being blunt, and there’s being pedestrian. Looking at you, My Shit’s Fucked Up.
My Ride’s Here is the middle entry in Warren’s Death Trilogy, recorded right before his cancer diagnosis. Maybe artists can see what’s coming before doctors can. The least cohesive and weakest of the three; half of it is co-written by the authors Warren loved hanging out with and, you know: Hunter Thompson was good at a lot of things, but composing a pop song was not one of them.
Plus, and of course, Warren let the adulation from the previous record go immediately to his head and the whole record is way too smart, or at least smart-sounding. There’s a song about Lord Byron, which is the kind of thing that should be left to Iron Maiden, and one’s in French.
PLEASE The song I linked to, The Hockey Song. Literally the only thing of value that Mitch Albom has ever contributed to humanity, this is the greatest song ever written about a small-town Canadian boy who grows up to be a goon, but still dreams of scoring just one stinking goal. If O, Canada weren’t such a kick-ass anthem, and every Rush song didn’t precede it in the line of succession, this song would be played before all hockey games while beavers removed their hats.
CHEESE The rest. Honestly? The rest.
The Wind is an impossible album to listen to. Not that it’s bad, but there’s no way to divorce the songs from the circumstances surrounding them. The last album of Warren’s Death Trilogy would be the last album. Cancer’ll do that. At least cancer waited until the third record; perhaps cancer respects the integrity of a good trilogy.
Even still, fuck cancer.
So, Warren went back into the studio to record his eulogy, because he knew he would say it better than anyone else. Most of the music business and half of Hollywood are on the album, which makes it a bit disjointed as an artistic whole, but Warren’s exhausted voice and acoustic guitar anchor it.
WAKE The opener, Dirty Life and Times, and the closer, Keep Me in Your Heart, are classics.
FUNERAL I’m pretty sure pointing out flaws in this album is like making fun of the Donor Rap: you can do it, but then I can’t be your friend anymore, at least in public. That said, the fact that one is literally knocking on heaven’s door does not make one’s cover of Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door good by default. (No one ever needs to cover that song again, quite frankly. Why has Hillary not spoken on this issue?)
And, well: that’s it. (Except Learning to Flinch, which is a live record recorded during a solo acoustic tour he did when he couldn’t afford a band. It’s a beautiful record, but it’s 3 a.m. and I’m not going back.
No big wrap-up. No grand pronouncement. I’m sure no one’s reading by now.
But if you are, then perhaps you’ll have seen that the full album of Life’ll Kill Ya isn’t available. I looked, but quickly grew tired of arguing with YouTube.
This song is missing, and it’s a crime.
Don’t let us get sick;
Don’t let us grow old;
Don’t let us get stupid,
All right?
Just make us be brave,
And make us play nice,
And let us be together
Tonight.
Got sick, Warren. Holy shit, did you get sick. But not old. Certainly not stupid. And I’m glad we were together tonight.
How many times did the water bottle get knocked over before someone figured that trick out?
Additionally of note: Phil’s 76th birthday is coming up and he doesn’t look a day over 75. He has a proud posture and a new Apple watch. There could not be a more obvious “yes” answer to a question than, “Has Phil called his Tesla to him with his Apple Watch?” Maybe “Did Phil make Jill come and watch him do it, like, three times?”
Also, on Phil’s right arm is his new Apple sweatband. It has Bluetooth.
What Jay Blakesburg is pointing at may be guessed in the all-new, chromed-out, luxury-package Comment Section.
…
Wait.
…
Is that Tiger? And, wait, what? There are two? (Partially obscured behind Jay: white pickups.) Did Phil borrow them for the night? I don’t think you’re allowed to borrow any of Garcia’s guitars anymore. (I mean: you weren’t allowed to borrow them when he was alive, but I’m pretty sure no one ever asked.) Garcia’s guitars–even the minor ones–now go out On Loan.
Or are those Fake Jerry guitars? Does Phil make his band play Fake Jerry guitars, like how you had to dye your hair when you joined KISS? (Because I don’t get that. No judgement, but having yourself a Fake Jerry axe crafted by Alembic–has to be Alembic or it doesn’t count–just confuses me. Do you go all the way and strap on a fake beard and shove a pillow under your shirt? But, hey: different strokes for different Enthusiasts. If you’ve got a couple grand to spend on a guiHOLY SHIT, THEY’RE ELEVEN THOUSAND DOLLARS.)
The DMV. (Actually, werewolfs at the DMV is a fine topic for a song. Lot of ways you could go with it: do they work there, or are they registering a used Saturn? Do werewolfs need two pictures on their licenses? One as a wereperson and then as a werewolf? Someone take this idea and write a rock opera about it, please. I don’t need to be paid, I just want tickets to see it.)
The Wild West. (There’s just too much going on.)
Saturn. (Too Sci-Fi, plus Saturn has 61 moons. Werewolfs should not go to Saturn.)
A bit outside London, not London proper at all, but if a non-British person asks, the werewolfs just say London to make things easier. (Too suburban.)
Bet you didn’t know that the “H” in “Jesus H. Christ” stood for “H.R. Haldeman.”
Stay on target, stay on target.
The Comment Section is open for business and images, videos, GIFs, and whatnot can now be posted there easily.
Some have noticed that the images are too small; I have two thoughts on that.
(I am not counting “Oh my God, you fucking picky entitled Deadhead whiners, stop whining,” as a thought. That is because I love you, and would never say that out loud, just in parentheses.)
On my screens (Firefox browser on laptop, and the WordPress app on iPhone), the images are not small, so it might be your browser or your computer’s settings.
Second: as I am now a feared and respected LEET HAXXOR, I took a look in the code to try to fix the image-size problem.
Did you know you can tell a computer to do things in many languages?
And, like actual languages, computer languages vary in difficulty.
The best metaphor I can think of is this: the code I successfully changed a word and number in was written in Spanish, and the code for the comment image plug-in is written in Hindi.
Couldn’t make heads or tails of it, if I’m honest: the only thing I know how to do is fuck around, but I couldn’t even tell where the fuckery should take place, so I didn’t touch anything.
I didn’t think of this, but the indispensable Deadheadland reminded me on Twitter: some of the sidebar might not show up if you’re using AdBlock.
Now: your computer is your computer, but if you do choose to turn it off for this site, I can at least promise there won’t be any pop-ups or trackers or hot singles in your area who just want to fuck.
(I mean: there may very well be hot singles in your area who just want to fuck, but you’re not going to find them here.)
Also updated the e-mail notification, so if you haven’t been getting them, then sign up again.
I’ll probably only make you re-subscribe to that sucker four or five more times.
You can get it fast, cheap, or done well.
Or, you know: I can do it.
Sincerely, I hope this hasn’t been too annoying: a little change is a good thing, but some things need to stay the way they are.
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