Songtown - Introduction and #1 (The French Inhaler)

Hi again. So my plan for this year was that I would countdown my 260something favorite songs of all time. Once a weekday, I'd riff on one particular song and maybe why its made my life better.

I've adjusted this plan a tiny bit since its inception. First off, there's no way that I could put these songs into an sort of definitive order, so it wouldn't be a countdown. Secondly, I'm not going to force myself to write one everyday. So, there won't necessarily be 260some of them. And I won't necessarily stop on December 31st. It might end in February or it might continue forever, as long as I keep liking songs. And finally, some days, I'll riff on more than one song. Perhaps an entire album or a trilogy of songs that I feel go hand in hand with each other. "Hand in hand," "hand and hand," or both??

Without further ado, I decided that the first song obviously had to be the one that shares its name with this blog...

Artist: Warren Zevon
Title: The French Inhaler
Album: Warren Zevon
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My fascination with Warren Zevon began in 2002. I had known "Werewolves of London" and I had inherited my uncle's Excitable Boy LP, but had never listened to it. In addition, he was always the guy that would fill in for Paul Schaffer on The Late Show With David Letterman whenever Paul would take a vacation. He seemed like a real character and he'd say a lot of weird stuff that only he and Dave seemed to find the humor in. He generally seemed like my kind of guy.

Still, I didn't explore anymore of his music until Fall 2002, when I read that Zevon had been diagnosed with mesothelioma and that he had six months left to live. In November, Letterman invited him onto the Late Show as the guest. The only guest. Letterman spent the monologue talking about how good of a friend Zevon had been and how he was one of the greatest songwriters of all time. Then Zevon came out for one of the saddest interviews I've ever watched and also played three or four songs. It was awesome. The next day, I bought his greatest hits collection and from that point on, he was my Bob Dylan.

Warren Zevon seemed like someone that my mother should have introduced me to years earlier. He ran around with the Eagles and Jackson Browne, two of her favorites, and at his best, wrote songs every bit as good as Browne, Frey and Henley. That said, she missed the Zevon train for some reason or another, which forced me to find him on my own.

I'm not saying that he doesn't have plenty of rough patches in his catalog, but when he's on, he's on fire. That said, his voice would probably be placed in the Acquired Taste category, so I've held back in terms of promoting him to my friends, for the most part. Until now! Plus, most would describe my tastes as having gone off the deep end in the past few years, so they'd most certainly scoff at me with Boy Who Cried Dylan incredulation, anyhow.

"The French Inhaler" didn't pop out at me immediately when I first heard that collection. "Poor Poor Pitiful Me," "Excitable Boy," and "A Certain Girl" took me by the hand immediately, so TFI had to wait its turn before it truly made its impact.

I don't have a particular talent for breaking down songs enough to tell you specifically what they're about, but this one sounds pretty simple. The age old tale of one too many nights at that old Hollywood bar with all of the other horny, down-and-out, out-of-work actors and musicians. Zevon is the master of turning his narrators into the saddest of sacks and paints Hollywood as the most depressing town in all of the world. Yet, it makes me want to move there.

When the lights came up at two, I caught a glimpse of you
And your face looked like something Death brought with him in his suitcase
Your pretty face looked so wasted
Another pretty face devasted

Acquired taste or not, when the Eagles harmonize that bit behind him, there are zero alternatives to those shivers.

I've always been fascinated with pop songs that have no discernible verse/chorus pattern, yet each part is so fantastic that it sounds like you're listening to a four minute refrain. He only repeats two lines. He returns to the opening line once, "How you gonna make your way in the world, woman, when you weren't cut out for working?" And then for last line, "So Long, Norman," he sings it twice because it makes the most sense musically, plus he must have known that I love that sort of thing. Its only just now that I've figured out who Norman is.

I've become pretty awful at lyric retention in recent times, so it was to my surprise when I picked up my guitar last night and played this one all the way through, having never attempted it previously. Sure, nothing repeats itself, but it all makes sense. Each part and each lyric logically leads into the next.

Anyhow, listen to this thing and maybe come back tomorrow!