Welcome back to the CD Odyssey! I was delayed an extra day on this review
because I was enjoying the album so much, I decided to treat myself to an extra
day.
Disc 1335 is… Bad
Luck Streak in Dancing School
Artist:
Warren Zevon
Year of Release: 1980
What’s up with the
Cover?
Zevon relaxes with a bunch of beautiful ballet dancers. This looks a lot more
like good luck to me, although maybe moments after this photo was taken
they pushed him over that railing.
How I Came to Know
It: My friend Randall
invigorated my love for Warren Zevon and I dug deep through his catalogue. “Bad
Luck Streak…” was an early favourite, but it was hard to find and one of the
last I located. I can’t remember where I found it, but I think it was at Amoeba
Records in San Francisco.
How It Stacks Up: I have 10 Warren Zevon
albums. Of those 10, I had saved spot #2 for this record, and while the race
was close with his self-titled album (reviewed back at Disc 1161), “Bad
Luck Streak…” still earns the silver medal by a hair.
Ratings: 4 stars
Warren Zevon’s career is full of underappreciated
records, but “Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School” is one of the best in a
treasure trove of forgotten brilliance.
The record came out after his one minor hit
record (1978’s “Excitable Boy”, reviewed back at Disc 901). It did not have
the same success, hitting a less-than-lofty #20 on the charts. It’s one
charting single was “A Certain Girl,” coming in at #57, and it isn’t
even one of the record’s stronger songs. Well, America – you got it wrong, but
in ignoring this record you only punished yourselves.
“Bad Luck Streak…” is Zevon at his best. He
writes seemingly effortless melodies that go exactly where you expect them to
go, and leave leaving you wondering why nobody else walked them there before. He
employs these talents to tell a myriad of stories, from lovelorn personal
stories of loss, through to rock and roll westerns.
His music is pure-hearted rock and roll. It does
not rely on distortion or false bravado, and while Zevon’s voice has a rich
tone, it isn’t going to shatter any glassware. Instead, he just lays it out
there, no fuss no muss and no studio trickery, except maybe the occasional
flash of strings or pedal steel.
One of those lovelorn tracks, “Empty Handed
Heart” starts with a simple unadorned piano. Through a a slow build the
song tells the story of a man that’s been wounded by love in the past but is
determined to find a way forward. Like a lot of Zevon songs it is sneaky in its
construction, throwing in minor notes just in the right places and ending on an
unresolved melody. The effect is to leave all that hope standing on feet of
clay.
This is immediately followed by “Play It
All Night Long,” a song with a martial drum roll and big, anthemic
structure that is immediately undercut by the opening stanza:
“Grandpa pissed his pants again
He don’t give a damn
Brother Billy has both guns drawn
He ain’t been right since Vietnam.”
It is a song about the bravado of the broken,
cranking their Lynyrd Skynyrd (literally referenced in the song) and getting
way too drunk down at the local dive bar. Zevon fills these characters with defiance
and gives them a triumphant march that makes you want to raise your fist, even
as you know deep down how empty a gesture it is in that moment.
My favourite song on the album though is “Jeannie
Needs a Shooter”, co-written by Bruce Springsteen (which just seems unfair,
given the ease with which Zevon writes a song on his own). It is an old-west
ballad in a rock style about a gunman who seeks the affection of a girl over
the objections of her father, the sheriff. By the end, the father has taken his
vengeance on the shooter, and as Jeannie rides away side-by-side with her
father you realize Jeannie didn’t need a shooter – she had one all along. This
song song also ends abruptly, letting you know that while Jeannie’s story is going
to continue, the heroics of her erstwhile lover will be very soon forgotten.
On “Bill Lee” Zevon’s character sings “Sometimes
I say things I shouldn’t” but the next line is just a bar of harmonica. It
is left to us as listeners to fill those mournful notes with whatever things we’ve
recently said that we wish we hadn’t.
There’s a little bit of funny, such as “Gorilla,
You’re a Desperado” but even that song is tinged with regret. Here our
hapless hero is replaced by a gorilla from the zoo, but he takes it philosophically:
“I wish the ape a lot of success
I’m sorry my apartment’s a mess
Most of all, I’m sorry if I made you
blue
I’m betting the gorilla will too.”
Zevon is helped along by his usual surfeit of famous
musicians. On this record he has the backing talents of Don Felder, Jackson
Browne, Joe Walsh. Don Henley and Linda Ronstadt among others. Ronstadt made a
whole lot of Zevon’s songs into hits, so it’s only right she lends her vocals
on “Empty Handed Heart” to make it even more depressing.
I have a couple of very minor gripes about
this record. The production is a bit dull, and I suspect it suffers from the transfer
from record to CD (it is not remastered and was originally recorded in the
golden age of vinyl). It also has a couple of short instrumentals called “Interlude
1” and “Interlude 2” that it could live without. Other than that,
though, this record is a brilliant exploration of the human heart – sometimes broken,
sometimes shot clean through, but always bleeding away on Zevon’s sleeve.
Best tracks: Empty-Handed Heart, Play It All Night Long, Jeannie
Needs a Shooter, Gorilla You’re a Desperado, Bed of Coals
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