The Big Green House

Monday, September 08, 2003

 

Life�ll kill ya

You�ve probably heard by now that Warren Zevon died. If not, well, he did.

Ordinarily, what I�m supposed to do now is tell you what a cool guy he was: clever songwriter, intelligent, willing to credit his audience as being just as intelligent, mordant dark humor, blah blah blah, etc. All of which is true, in spades. But I�m not gonna do that this time around, mostly because if you didn�t like him when he was alive, his being dead isn�t gonna make you like him any better.

I tried to buy his new album on Friday, but they were sold out. I�d heard a lot of very good things about it, I�d liked his last couple of albums, and I knew it was going to be really difficult for me to buy it after he�d died.

See, I used to work in a record store, back when they used to be record stores. During my tenure behind the cash register, the following musicians died (this is from memory, so there�s no intended slight if I forgot somebody): John Bonham, Bon Scott, John Lennon, Bob Marley, and if you want to stretch the term �musician�, John Belushi. After each death, there were swarms of people coming in to the store & asking for the deceased�s records � people who would never have thought of listening to that particular artist while he was alive. It was truly creepy. I opened the store the day after Lennon was shot. There was a line of people waiting there, before I�d even gotten in the door. For weeks afterward, there was a steady stream of people asking us where the John Lennon albums were. It finally got to the point where we started referring to him as Dead Lennon, as in �The Dead Lennon section is right over here. Enjoy!�

The same thing happened, to lesser degrees, when the other guys died. The ghouls would descend and snap up LP�s they never would have touched while the artist was still around to enjoy the royalties. Sure, there were also some actual fans among the vultures, but most of them already had everything anyway.

So I�m gonna feel a little funny going into the store on Wednesday, when they�re supposed to get in another shipment of The Wind. Not funny enough to keep from buying it, but I�m going to be wondering what�s going through the clerk�s mind the whole time.

Life�ll kill ya � that�s what I said
Life�ll kill ya � then you�ll be dead
Life�ll find you, wherever you go
Requiescat in pace, that�s all she wrote

bmarkey 9/08/2003 10:19:00 AM