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Friday, May 22, 2020
The Warren Report Part I
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ReplyDeleteNot wanted.
The rest of the drums is almost-Flying Burrito Brother Jon Corneal. I also remember Warren reminiscing about the fact that for this album they had about five different drum tracks, so they would slow them down or speed them up to try to make them fit on the rest of the songs.
ReplyDeleteThe album is way underrated, obviously by the artist himself as well. Sure, it's juvenilia, often unsure, and only about half of the album is good. But it's far from a disaster. "A Bullet For Ramona" is the blueprint for the later Warren and "Tule's Blues" is just beautiful. The title song is also pretty kick-ass, as is "Traveling in the Lightning".
Thanks for the comment, OBG. Totally agree. Love that drum track detail!
DeleteNever heard this one. Interesting.
ReplyDeleteThanks Farq!
OBG nails it. Basically, if you like Zevon, you'll like at least half the album, which is still a better piece of work than Abbey Road, another demi-LP.
DeleteBoy, you're really in for the kill on them Beatles these days, huh, Farq?
DeleteI actually like the "odds & sods" medley on Abbey Road and, unlike critical concensus, will always listen to Abbey Road rather than the "acknowledged masterpiece" Sgt. Pepper or the White Album.
"These days"? What, since 1969? I suppose so. And the medley is the half that's worth listening to, so we're in agreement there. Sgt. Pepper has long fallen from the "acknowledged masterpiece" category, replaced im most fans' hearts by Abbey Road, Revolver, and the white album, which isn't even half an album.
DeleteWell, the medley sure as hell beats listening to Maxwell's Silver Hammer, that's for sure. But other than the double stinker combo of Maxwell and Oh Darling, unwisely sequenced right after each other, I think all of the other songs are pretty good.
DeleteBut hey, you assassinating the holiest of holy cows repeatedly is great. I like how you will defend the listening pleasures in the most obscure (and sometimes not completely fantastic) stuff, and then go and beat the snot out of critical darlings like The Beatles and Neil Young. I like it! Ignoring critical consensus since 1969! That should be the tag line of the FMF island!
I've never been put off by farq's treatment of The Beatles. They are every Englishman's pride. He's allowed to hit them. Yanks, on the other hand, need to know their place in the pecking order. I'm surprised he allows me to speak of the Oxford English Dictionary. The OED was the device that helped colonize most of the planet...until The Beatles did it with guitar string and polyvinyl chloride!
DeleteOh farq...PLEEEEEEASE believe me <---(from Oh, Darling)
Oh, I'm not put off either. For years, I was having a "yeah, the Beatles are great, but so what, big deal" sentiment and despite familiarizing myself with their albums since, that distance never really went away. As for Farq, it's Byrds all the way for me.
DeleteHey, OBG - "Ignoring critical consensus since 1969"?
DeleteI'm way ahead of you:
deadhendrix.blogspot.com
Thanks, Farq.
ReplyDeleteHere's Warren singing every country's new national anthem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnoRWmN9mOg
And it sure is. From one of his very best albums, "Life'll Kill Ya". And it did.
DeleteFrom the Woody Harrelson movie KingPin:
Delete"How's Life?"
(Taking FOREVER!!!)
Thanks -- liking at least half of it would be fine with me.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason I've never got round to Zevon. Maybe half of this will convince me that I should explore what I've been missing.
ReplyDeleteSam, you really should get round to Zevon, he's one of the greatest songwriters that there are. He's not for everyone, mind, but generally, if you're in for Zevon, you're all in.
Delete"Wanted Dead Or Alive" is NOT the best way to start, that would be the self-titled sophore album, the "Excitable Boy" album, probably "Mr. Bad Example" and "Life'll Kill Ya".
For me, personally, "Warren Zevon" (1976) is my desert island disc.
Seeing how this is called "The Warren Report, Part 1" I'll wait and see if there are more Warren posts coming along, if not I'll post some Zevon...
That paragraph is arguably the greatest thing written on this site.
ReplyDelete@sambgodot:
ReplyDeleteFor decades, my "career," such as it was, involved putting in
what amounted to 13-hour workdays, not counting the commute,
and my music-listening time was limited to the drive back and
forth. During one of those stretches, I ended up playing the
2-disc, 44-track Warren Zevon anthology "I'll Sleep When I'm
Dead." Later on, it occurred to me that everything in that
collection, every individual song, had been (at the very least)
good. The same probably cannot be said for "Wanted Dead Or
Alive," though your own mileage may vary.
And let the Foam chain continue.
ReplyDeleteWhen will we get "Hindu Love Gods"
Yes, well, I listened to Wanted and there were a couple or three songs which I thought were good, e.g Tule's Blues, so I thought I'd find the first true album. I've just finished listening to it and it's been a very long time (maybe hearing Fleet Foxes first) that I've been so overwhelmed by an album. Hell, yes, I have been missing something great. Now for excitable Boy, I think. I've found a rich source for his records: here: http://www.filefactory.com/folder/29146fb204bc5c04. Big thank you to Farq for setting me on this road.
ReplyDeleteThat link really is the motherlode, and saves me the hard labor of hefting prime 192s into the internet dumpster.
DeleteWe're beginning to see the problem here - most of the albums that are natural Isle O'Foam© material - the more obscure, second-division stuff - have already been posted, and posting mainstream acts like Zevon ... there's always a better source, and most of you have most of them already. I'm not done yet, but I can see the tunnel at the end of the light. I don't want this to become another mainstream grab-bag, nor do I want to fall into doing re-ups to keep going.
There's some way to go yet, pals, but it can't go on forever. Or even nearly.
Sure it can. Just get one of those "MIDI" tracks to play here endlessly.
DeleteYou know the ones, they were all over the Webernet Homer pages in the yrly daze of the WWW, we're talkin' Netscape, A-O-He!!, MySpace and Angelfire.
"Excitable Boy" seems a good theme for the Foamheads to hear upon opening their browsers to FMF...
Put it on an endless loop, and there ya go!
Is this party just getting started?
DeleteBad luck streak on foam island!
There's a certain farq I been in love with a long long time
(What's his name?)
I can't tell ya...
(Awe!)
Nice, KC.
DeleteWell, now that sam has seen the light, our Zevon work might be done.