In a music-rich culture, how do you decide what (and whom) to listen to in the first place? And what keeps you listening to it, over time?
My kid brother and I have had this pervasive and often subconscious back-and-forth influence on each other ever since he arrived on the scene. (Well, that first year was sort of blurry for me. Kindergarten, y’know. (“You’re leaving me where? By myself?!?”)) He has numerous stories about borrowing my stuff, from wherever I thought I’d stowed it securely, when I was looking the other way (i.e., often); he claims that the music he found on these occasions influenced what he listened to. (The books supposedly influenced what he read and, no doubt, the whole thing influenced how he sneaked.)
For my part, I haven’t always had an easy time “getting” the music he listened to. Some of it, like Pink Floyd, came along just a wee bit too late to make much of a dent in my awareness. But even obvious greats with whom I should have been familiar — The Who, for Pete’s sake! — didn’t click at first.
I think the problem was that I’d early fixated on melody in music (although I couldn’t and still can’t explain what melody is). No doubt, the hearing thing played a role: if I couldn’t reliably make out the lyrics, I at least had to like listening to whatever-it-was, as background to whatever I was really paying attention to. (Hence, for example, my early Herb Alpert fascination.) Once I’d listened to it a few times, okay, then I could move on to the lyrics. But if the sound didn’t strike me right, I might never care about the lyrics at all.
The first honest-to-gods musical bull’s-eye which he scored in my consciousness was Talking Heads. Even with them, I remember saying something like: I really like their music, but none of their song titles ever appear in the actual lyrics. He stared at me for a beat before answering, as tactfully as he could, That’s not true. So much for trying to fake my way through an assertion about lyrics which I didn’t, like, actually know.
Then we have the case of Warren Zevon. It may be the one recommendation whose failure with me has most surprised Little Brother.
I sympathize. On the face of it, what a natural fit: the guy wrote witty, sardonic, outright mordant (and often macabre) songs. Just look at some of the song titles, and know that the lyrics fall into line behind them:
- “Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner”
- “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead”
- “Bad Luck Streak In Dancing School”
- “You’re a Whole Different Person When You’re Scared”
Yet he also had a side capable of great tenderness. “Hasten Down the Wind,” anyone? And over the course of his career, he befriended and worked with some artists I flat-out loved: Linda Ronstadt, the Everly Brothers, Bonnie Raitt, Stevie Nicks, Jackson Brown, Neil Young, Bryan Setzer, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris — if I didn’t know any better, I’d swear the guy had been rummaging around in my head.
But somehow, a taste for the guy’s music itself always eluded me. Consequently, I’ve never listened to Zevon enough to “get” him. This breaks my heart as much as it may break my brother’s. (He’s been trying so long, and he’s so… so earnest about it, y’know?)
Well, Little Brother, tell you what. I’ll take this as a personal challenge, nay, mission: over the next year, I’ll commit myself to “getting” Warren Zevon. And I’ll check back with you about it in 2012.
In the meantime, here are a handful of Zevon selections that have already begun to grow on me, on the off-chance that some of the rest of you might not have encountered them.
Let’s start with “Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead” (originally from 1991’s Mr. Bad Example album; this is a solo acoustic performance in 1994):
[Lyrics]Next, “Sentimental Hygiene” (from 1987’s album of the same name):
[Lyrics]Finally, a selection from 2000’s Life’ll Kill Ya (released a couple years before Zevon’s diagnosis with the mesothelioma from which he’d die in 2003) — “Don’t Let Us Get Sick”:
[Below, click Play button to begin Don’t Let Us Get Sick. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 3:04 long.]
Happy birthday, Little Brother — the family’s very own, our one and only excitable boy.
suggesting that Troxel and Christopher have squabbled over who deserves how much credit, appears at Troxel’s site. That site also contains this tidbit: the license plate on one of Troxel’s restored antique cars — a 1932 Ford Roadster — reads NDOBEDO. Ha!
[The scene: a suburban home in North Florida, USA. He has stayed home from work on this day to prepare a guest bedroom for painting. In this guest bedroom is a closet, and in the closet are His clothes. All of them. Woven shirts, knit shirts, jeans, suits, ties, socks, underwear, shoes… It’s not a particularly big closet. It makes sense, on this occasion, to go through the stuff folded or hanging in there, putting aside usable-but-old stuff for Goodwill donation, throwing away unusable-and/or-old stuff, and just generally… organizing — since He will have to completely empty the closet for painting, and then refill it when the painting’s done.]
