Genius: Best of Warren Zevon

I picked up the library's copy of Genius: Best of Warren Zevon. I haven't even listened to the whole thing yet but I can't stop thinking about it.

Like most people I really only knew him because of Werewolves of London, but I always figured there was more to him because there are some great lines in that song, like Little old lady got mutilated late last night (say that three times fast) and throw-away lines like I'd like to meet his tailor and His hair was perfect.

One of the strangest and instantly addictive songs I've ever heard is Roland, the Headless Thompson Gunner. The first chorus goes "Roland, the Thompson Gunner", but then he gets his head shot off by a CIA operative so for the rest of the song the chorus is "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner". You would think, "Well how can there be a rest of the song, if Roland has no head?" Apparently in Zevon's twisted world, Roland's body can travel the ends of the earth to get its revenge on the CIA agent.

Zevon is a master of turning a phrase around to mean the opposite of what he says. If the song title is Poor Pitiful Me, then you know good things happen to him in the song. In Excitable Boy, the excitable boy rapes and kills his prom date. Doo wop back-up singers sing the refrain, adding to its irony. (According to one online biography, Excitable Boy was played on the Dr. Demento Show.)

Zevon's lyrics are as quirky as Tom Waits (who in Frank's Wild Years had the great first line "Frank hung his wild years on a nail that he drove through his wife's forehead") but without the jazz club chic. The music is more straight foward rock and roll, sometimes with a Celtic bent.

I would recommend it to anyone who likes their rock with a bit of dark humor.

Posted by Mike Waugh at July 29, 2004 03:28 PM