The Apartment, Zevon

I have to agree with someone else's astute assessment of the film The Apartment. It's pretty amazing. I watched it on a Sunday morning, filled with sturdy coffee and thick English muffins from that new store. I don't know if I've seen another film that so effortlessly combined comedy and drama in every scene, other than Boogie Nights which may never be topped in that regard.

(Happy Birthday Patrick)

I've been listening to a lot - and I mean a lot - of Warren Zevon music lately. I recently picked up the oral history/biography of Zevon written by his ex-wife. Growing up, Zevon was one of the Big Three of singer/songwriters that I alternately worshiped and admired. (Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel were the others. This would have been the slightly pre- and slightly-post Reagan era.) I've never stopped liking his music but I have to admit I didn't listen to him much between 1988 and two weeks ago. Upon reading the book, I picked up one of the many anthologies of his music, this one filled with 44 songs spanning 25 years. I'm both amazed by how well his (often time and place-specific) music stands up today and saddened by how I sort of dismissed his songs for all this time. Given that he recently, famously died, the sadness is doubled. Still... wow. At least six of his songs would fall into my top 100 songs of all time if I ever bother to make such a list. Here are my favorite Warren Zevon songs (in order of how I want to write about them):

Desperadoes Under the Eaves. Almost every morning, I drive past Gower on my way to Larchmont to pick up my coffee. Recently, I've made it a habit of listening to this song for its chilling refrain: Look away, way down Gower Avenue. It's a perfect Los Angeles morning song even if he probably wrote it at night. And yes, it's technically Gower Street but that's okay.

Werewolves of London. This song is known as his most famous single and is dismissed as a novelty song by many. But listen closely - the rolling piano melody, joyous yelping chorus, and the odd (for Zevon) bridge-less repetitive structure all combine to make this one of the catchiest songs of the seventies. And the little half-laugh half-yelp he gives out on the final verse, right after singing "I saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic's. And his hair was perfect" is sublime. You see, werewolves have lots of hair and he couldn't help but laugh at his own perfect joke.

Let Nothing Come Between Us. The poppiest song he's ever recorded, from his 1987 post-rehab comeback album. It's heart-achingly sweet. It should be played at all weddings, even if Warren didn't exactly have the best track record with relationships.

Boom Boom Mancini. From the same '87 album, this song never moved me when I first heard it while driving down the mean summer streets of Eden Prairie. Now, this song about a boxer with an up-and-down career and an opponent's death on his conscience, is just plain brutal. And hard. And affirming.

Carmelita. Another great L.A. song from his early, folkier days. Here, he name-drops Echo Park, Alvarado Street, and Pioneer Chicken, the latter a surprisingly frequent topic of discussion at my mid-to-late 90s Thanksgiving family dinners; more on this in the future.

Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School. An indelible childhood memory. Waiting for the U.S. hockey team's 1980 "Miracle" gold medal game to start, I sat in my room and listened to the album of the same name. The title track seemed to be then (and now) the perfect apology for disappointing others. Don't ask why I identified/identify with this topic so much. Just wait for the classical intro to end and the guitars to kick in.

Real or Not. One of his later songs, from the 90s. If I believe the liner notes, he wrote this song for William Shatner. The production is hokey and overly Horsnby/Lanois-esque. But the chorus kills and manages to pull off what most songwriters can't - merging the personal with the political. Speaking of which...

The Envoy. He wrote this song in 1982, about trouble in the Middle East ("The Syrians are mad at the Lebanese... Baghdad does whatever she please"). Every word made sense then and still does now. Bonus points for writing the song about my father's favorite Arab-American diplomat Philip Habib.

Johnny Strikes Up the Band. Wow. If you had to distill California in the 1970s into one song, this would be it. This is the great merging of (and I mean what I'm about to say as a total compliment) the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac. Plus, the greatest bridge ever written.