Warren Zevon: My Favorite Songs Part 1
Tuesday, April 9, 2013 at 8:15AM I woke up this morning after a very poor sleep, went down stairs, said good-bye to my fiance, and made coffee. (The last part is always key, otherwise I'd be fucking terrible to put up with.) While I was waiting I was listening to a little Warren Zevon.
Then it hit me, "Keith, you haven't fucking blogged in weeks. You should do a list of your ten favorite Warren Zevon songs just for fun this morning." I sat down with my coffee, scrolled through his catalogue to pick out ten favorites. That was when I realized how stupid my idea was. I can't narrow my favorite songs down to ten!
And so, what follows is a quick list of 5 of my favorite Warren Zevon songs:
1. "The Factory," Sentimental Hygiene, 1987 - My favorite part of this song comes in the last lyric as Zevon fits "polyvinyl chloride" into the song without ruining it. (All I could find was this concert version. Still great, just slower than the album version.)
2. "I Need A Truck" (Outtake), Excitable Boy (2007 Reissue) - Just Warren Zevon on this track. Fucking beautiful in it's simplicity. (Don't let the weird truck images in this video distract you.)
3. "For My Next Trick I'll Need A Volunteer," Life'll Kill Ya, 2000 - There are a ton of good songs on this album, but this is a great example of Zevon's dark sense of humor that I just love. It's a great song about relationships and love that isn't sentimental sappy pop bullshit.
4. "Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead," Mr. Bad Example, 1991 - A great example of Zevon creating a world and a story in song. (Yes, a better example would be "Hit Somebody (The Hockey Song)" but that's a little too on-the-nose for me.)
5. "Down in the Mall," Transverse City, 1989 - A song about consumerism that doesn't suck? This lesser known Zevon song is the musical equivalent of Romero's Dawn of the Dead. (Again, this is sadly the only version I could find. Skip 28 seconds in for the song to start.)
That's it for now. I seem to be stuck in a Warren Zevon mood - that's not a bad thing - so look for more songs.
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