Warren Zevon 4: Bad Luck Streak In Dancing School

Most of the best songs he’d written were spread across his first two albums for the Asylum label, so when it came time for his next, Warran Zevon had to start fresh. As a result, Bad Luck Streak In Dancing School exhibits some water-treading, and some unfortunately dated production. Four Eagles appear throughout the album, and Jackson Browne is still around, but the drummer is Rick Marotta instead of the expected Russ Kunkel.

A brief snatch of a string quartet is a harbinger of sorts, then two shots from a gun start the title track proper. Somehow we don’t believe when he swears he’ll “change”, and that’s the point. A cover of Allen Toussaint’s “A Certain Girl”—probably most notable by the Yardbirds’ version—has fairly enthusiastic vocals with help from Jackson Browne, but it’s still a cover. “Jungle Work” might appeal to fans of a certain headless Thompson gunner, but it’s mostly one riff beaten into the ground. We’re due for a heartbreaker, and “Empty-Handed Heart” delivers. Regret seeps through every line, and when Linda Ronstadt appears in the bridge to offer the departed one’s response, it’s a killer. The first of two instrumental interludes provides a bridge to the Southern rock skewering of “Play It All Night Long”; not only does it begin with the incomparable “Grandpa pissed his pants again”, it’s also the only song we know of that mentions brucellosis. (If he’d lived long enough to hear what Kid Rock did to “Werewolves Of London”, there may have been a murder charge.)

One track that could have been a lot bigger is “Jeannie Needs A Shooter”, a title he picked up from Bruce Springsteen, and finished with his help. Where the Boss’s song seems to be a modern tale of obsession, protection, and revenge, this one takes a more traditional approach, with a mild Old West setting, right down to the strings, and a surprise ending. Considering Bruce’s growing stature, it’s odd that this one seems to have been mostly forgotten. The second interlude lasts almost as long as “Bill Lee”, an ode not to William S. Burroughs’ pen name but to the Boston Red Sox pitcher known as Spaceman for his outlandish behavior, and with whom Zevon shared mutual admiration. It’s a sparse piece with only piano and harmonica plus harmony, but still seems incomplete. One of his favorite words returns in “Gorilla, You’re A Desperado”, a surreal tale of switched identity that’s not entirely clear unless you really concentrate on it. The island-like lilt of the synth seems to link it to the Kinks’ “Apeman”, which it doesn’t need. “Bed Of Coals” was written with T-Bone Burnett before he became more ubiquitous. It’s more than a little bit morose, and he decided Ben Keith was more appropriate to deliver the pedal steel guitar. David Lindley returns to his familiar lap steel seat for “Wild Age”. Here the harmonies are all southern California, though he throws in some off-key yells over the fade.

Most of the successful Zevon ingredients are in place on Bad Luck Streak In Dancing School, when he hasn’t run out of ideas. It’s not as immediately impactful, and only got cursory attention, but the moments exist.

Warren Zevon Bad Luck Streak In Dancing School (1980)—3

Beach Boys 5: Shut Down Volume 2

If you’ve been paying attention to the narrative, you might remember that the Beach Boys’ label—the ever resourceful Capitol Records—had put out a compilation against their wishes called Shut Down. So when it was time for their next album, somebody had the bright idea to name it Shut Down Volume 2. It did continue their tropes of surfin’ and drivin’, and the boys looked all clean and collegiate on the cover (except for Mike Love, who was already balding, and Brian Wilson, who can’t quite pull off a Beatle fringe in compensation). While they were under a lot of pressure to keep new product on the shelves and on the radio, Brian delivered some of his greatest works yet, and some of the band’s worst.

The hit single “Fun, Fun, Fun” starts us off with a bang. From Carl Wilson’s guitar intro through the story running through the verses, this is a wonderful Chuck Berry pastiche, and Brian can’t help throwing in some key changes. As good as it is, it’s immediately bettered by the Phil Spector pastiche that follows. “Don’t Worry Baby” is ostensibly about a guy nervous over an upcoming drag race, but is really a masterwork of a love song. Amazingly, it was released as a B-side.

And from there, the album sinks. “In The Parkin’ Lot” begins and ends with a lush display of harmonies, but in between is merely a lame rewrite of “Fun, Fun, Fun”, complete with the same “blue now/dew now” rhymes. Even worse, “‘Cassius’ Love Vs. ‘Sonny’ Wilson” purports to be a peek into their wacky recording sessions, with scripted insults between the band’s Clay and Liston stand-ins over their vocal idiosyncrasies, taking up three-and-a-half precious minutes where obviously there wasn’t a song available. Perhaps it was here because Brian was self-conscious about “The Warmth Of The Sun”, an astoundingly beautiful reverie with some of his most unique chord changes. “This Car Of Mine” exists solely to give Dennis Wilson a spotlight vocal.

While the remake of “Why Do Fools Fall In Love” has a Spector-style production and some interesting vocal inversion, it’s further proof that Brian was low on material. (A half-century later, an interesting, complex, and unused instrumental track emerged on Keep An Eye On Summer, a copyright dump release.) It made sense for Carl Wilson, who was still in high school, to take the lead on the horny “Pom, Pom Play Girl”, as Mike was already getting creepy, and “Keep An Eye On Summer” is another slow one like “Surfer Girl” and the like, but again, in both cases the harmonies and changes are let down by the lyrics. “Shut Down, Part II” brings back surf-style instrumentals; outside of some sax honking at the top, it’s notable for Carl and Al Jardine trading licks in different tones over more complicated modulations. But “Louie Louie” is a dull cover of the previous summer’s frat house hit by the Kingsmen, except that they try to get the words right, and Brian can’t help throwing in some key changes. Once again Dennis closes a side, this time with the competent stick work in “Denny’s Drums”.

The good songs on Shut Down Volume 2 stand so tall, but the clunkers overshadow them in the original context. But again, nobody was crafting albums as works of art in those days. That would change, and soon. (This album was paired out of order with Surfer Girl in the 1990 two-fer campaign to avoid that album’s song repetition with Little Deuce Coupe; the slightly longer single version of “Fun, Fun, Fun” and the big production outtake “I Do” were the bonus tracks related to this one.)

The Beach Boys Shut Down Volume 2 (1964)—2½
1990 CD reissue: same as 1964, plus Surfer Girl album and 3 extra tracks

Frank Zappa 58: Läther

As we’ve learned from the various reissues and forensic work done by scholars, Frank Zappa loved to edit and re-edit. One prime legendary example was the saga of Läther. Pronounced “leather”, this was a four-record (eight vinyl sides) box set that Frank said he delivered as a complete unit to the label, only for them to reject it, whereupon he re-sequenced them into the albums released as Zappa In New York, Studio Tan, Sleep Dirt, and Orchestral Favorites. In actuality, he delivered those four albums in one batch, but the label didn’t want to shell out for all of them, whereupon he then converted them into the box format for another label, which was also quashed. In the end, the four albums were released individually over the space of a year or so, and well after the tracks were originally recorded.

The legend of Läther persisted for a couple of decades for a number of reasons. For one, at the height of the dispute, Frank appeared on an LA radio station and played the whole thing, resulting in various bootlegged copies that circulated. But fanatics soon discovered that while most of the songs did appear on those official albums, many of the mixes and edits were different, there was music that was exclusive to the box, and a Lumpy Gravy-style conversation, mostly between bass player Patrick O’Hearn and drummer Terry Bozzio, along with other percussive blasts from the past, appeared between tracks as “grout”, which was also heard throughout Sheik Yerbouti and other later albums.

So it was a nice surprise when the estate officially released the album as a three-CD through their arrangement with Rykodisc two decades after it was first mooted. And while it’s a lot for anyone to ingest, it’s still a better way to hear the music than as they appeared on those four albums, even though those had material that was not on Läther. Confused yet?

A snippet of the “leather conversation” heralds “Regyptian Strut” in its original mix, not with the replaced drums from the Sleep Dirt CD, for a great start. “Naval Aviation In Art?” provides a nice interlude before an earlier version of “A Little Green Rosetta”, which is just Frank singing the familiar melody over a tack piano, switching sharply to the guitar solo one day known as “Ship Ahoy”. That eventually becomes “Duck Duck Goose”, 45 seconds of another solo over “Whole Lotta Love” that’s engulfed by more conversation and other grout from the archives. “Down In De Dew” is a reconstituted snippet of a jam with Jim Gordon from the Apostrophe sessions, and “For The Young Sophisticate”, the first real “song” on the side, is an earlier version of similar vintage, and pretty good until Ricky Lancelotti’s vocals.

That would have been a pretty strong first side, but then it gets a little more, shall we say, challenging. “Trying To Grow A Chin” and “Broken Hearts Are For Assholes” are even more obnoxious versions than the ones on Sheik Yerbouti, followed by “The Illinois Enema Bandit”, complete with Don Pardo’s narration. What would become side two of Studio Tan is next, and aren’t any more exciting in this context; after “Lemme Take You To The Beach” the focus is more instrumental, through “Revised Music For Guitar & Low Budget Orchestra” and “RDNZL”.

What would have been side four is made up of Zappa In New York tracks, kinda. “Honey, Don’t You Want A Man Like Me?” is a different edit, including some jousting with a heckler; “The Black Page” is the musical portion after the drum solo; “Big Leg Emma” is pretty much the same; “Punky’s Whips” is the edit from the original LP before the label axed it. Continuing the balance of ridiculous to less so, “Flambé” is a shorter edit and different spelling without the later vocals, then some entertaining grout is the bridge to “The Purple Lagoon”, the same as side four of New York. “Pedro’s Dowry” and “Duke Of Orchestral Prunes” are from Orchestral Favorites, surrounding the title track (a gratefully better title for “I Promise Not To Come In Your Mouth”) and “Spider Of Destiny”, again without the later overdubs.

In the home stretch there’s a slightly edited “Filthy Habits”, its fusion grandiosity followed by a minute of grout that somehow leads to a slightly edited “Titties & Beer” that still retains its puerility. A few minutes of noodling are chopped off the beginning of “The Ocean Is The Ultimate Solution”, so than most of the track features the full band. The final side was given over to “The Adventures Of Greggery Peccary” with mild cosmetic differences; while it actually works better ending a journey than starting one, it’s still an acquired taste.

So all in all there are some strong sides’ worth of music here, predominantly when there are no vocals. While each of the original four releases made sense in their own buckets, Frank did a remarkable job of sequencing this material into a different perspective. And yes, we like the grout.

The original Rykodisc release included four bonus tracks at the end of disc three, containing 16 more minutes of music, bracketed by more grout and some of Frank’s announcements from that radio show. “Regyptian Strut (1993)” is an alternate mix with different drums, while “Time Is Money” is merely the original track from Sleep Dirt without the added vocals. More interesting was “Leather Goods”, a longer excerpt of the solo that spawned “Duck Duck Goose”, and “Revenge Of The Knick Knack People”, an excerpt from a collage featuring snorks and percussion by the original Mothers, edited and sped up. (Some of this would end up as grout elsewhere.) None of these were included on the 2012 reissue, which still spread what was left across three discs, and also used different artwork.

Frank Zappa Läther (1996)—3