A Moment for Warren...

Salon had done a review of his last album only a few days ago, and they all but published his death rattle along with a favorable review of the album.

It's not often you have someone in music grab you by the ears, twist you around and say, "What's THAT?" I was in high school at the time, the local Camelot Music in Merrillville, Indiana’s (now Hobart’s, I think, thanks to the joys of property zoning and local politics) Southlake Mall. The cashier had just put on "Werewolves of London", and I wanted to know more. I was able to convince the guy to play one other piece he thought was good. It was a quiet song about an American who had to choose between survival and his lover in Veracruz during the time of Woodrow Wilson’s shelling of the city around the time of World War I (NOTE: The world has always, always been more complicated than you think – we just can see more of the whole thing nowadays.) The phrasing was just OK, but the music and the attempt to take a historical incident and narrow it down to the lives of two people was intriguing to my young ears – I bought the album the same day.

After that, I liked his next album, then college and life and nothing particular about his albums grabbing me anymore (perhaps it was my foray into punk and new wave around that time that just shouted out his relatively quieter, but lyrically stronger work for my ears) put him in a corner shelf in my mind.

I heard about his possibly having lung cancer about a year or so ago, and the bits and pieces I read about here and there about his dealing with it showed his resilience and humor in the face of death.

If he’s lucky, he’ll become rock music’s cross between Jim Morrison and Bix Biederbicke – died too young (though he lasted a lot longer than both examples listed above), but died only after giving us the best he could, which was pretty damn good stuff. Over time, I suspect he’ll be canonized by the critics, more famous after passing than he ever was when alive, and we’ll notice more closely just what he did with his music.

His gruff attitude in his final years won’t hurt selling him to the “young, angry and seeking” crowd either.

Now an older guy myself, it's interesting to me how there's so little out there that isn't overblown that musically discusses both mortality and how the world works with a wry sense of dark humor. (Don’t get me started on the “late blowhard” years of Frank Sinatra’s music.) Warren's stuff did that, so now, a little late to the party, I'm returning to his music.

I hope he'll understand.

Posted by Palamedes at September 8, 2003 01:00 PM | TrackBack