Dear Friends,
In anticipation of feeling much better today (so far, so good), I plan on having some fun today. Yesterday was not a terrible day, by any stretch of the imagination, but I still felt a little funky. Here’s how it went down…
TQ and I went down to Rumford after stopping by the Oquossoc Strawberry Festival. The festival was a bummer because of the swamp-like conditions due to the rain that went on all Wednesday night. It’s too bad, too, because the Strawberry Festival is usually a good time.
It was super muggy, though, and it was playing havoc with my sinus infection, so we got on down the road to Rumford. It’s a really beautiful drive, so I was kind of excited to see it after about 10 months of not seeing the sights. The road is in good shape this year, too, which makes it even nicer.
As you can imagine, the winters up here are tough on the roads, so the summer time is usually when crews are out repairing holes and such. It was pretty smooth sailing, though, except for one place on the 45-mile drive.
If you dig trees, there are literally millions of them to see. You can also see a lake (Mooselookmeguntic), some ponds, and the Swift River along the way between Rangeley and Rumford. There is water and trees everywhere along with some really cool old houses and such.
One place I usually like to stop, Coo’s Canyon, is a picturesque spot where you can hike a bit and go swimming, too. Yesterday, though, there was no swimming. The Swift River was flowing mightily, and I’ve never seen Coo’s Canyon with water levels that high. It would not have been safe at all to get in.
For my Arizona friends, Coo’s Canyon is similar to Slide Rock in Oak Creek Canyon, to give you a mental picture, but the canyon part is much, much smaller. It’s really just a cool place where erosion has made a nice little area to hike around in and jump in the water. I look forward to it every year.
Rumford is a dying town. It was built around a paper mill and the mill isn’t doing as well as it once was, apparently. There is a Walmart there and a few stores and such, but not much else. There are a lot of apartment buildings that look like they were built in the 50s. There are also nice little neighborhoods with cute houses, including the one where our cousin lives, that give you hope that Rumford might survive yet.
We got my prescription and then took a little drive around the area. I got to show TQ some of the spots down there she hadn’t seen before. There is a few little neighborhoods that I wasn’t aware of until last year.
It’s weird when a town with a population of about 5000 seems big, but that’s what being in Rangeley does to you. It’s always a bit overwhelming to get down to Portland or Boston after being up here for a while. I’m getting to the point where I prefer the small places more.
We ran some errands, though, and headed back up the hill in the rain. It was a nice drive and good to spend some time with TQ on our own. She’s quite a kid and I’m very proud of the level head on her shoulders.
Let’s see what kind of trouble we can get into today.
*****
What brought me to Excitable Boy by Warren Zevon is the song “Werewolves In London.” I saw a copy of the vinyl for cheap about seven or eight years ago and figured it would be a good one to spin when we DJ’d. Then I listened to the record.
Zevon was an amazing songwriter. I’ve heard that he lived a complicated life. That doesn’t surprise me. You just have to listen to his words to realize the man was very smart and very bitter about the world around him. He shared his views, though, in a beautiful, haunting, and often humorous way.
“Werewolves of London” is probably the best song on the record, but only by a small margin. The way Zevon would deliver a line and then put in a little aside at the end was brilliant. “I’d like to meet his tailor,” for example, is one of those small things that just sinks into the back of your head like the wonderful ear worm that it is.
When I was younger, I guess I always assumed there was some connection between the song and the film, American Werewolves in London, but if anything, the film title was inspired by the song as it came out a few years before the movie. Either way, though, it’s a great song and I never get tired of it. Whenever I spun it, people seemed to be very happy to hear it, too. It’s a rock and roll classic and deservedly so.
I was not disappointed, though, by any of the other tracks on the album. “Johnny Strikes Up The Band” sounds a bit like a Dire Straits song in a way, but that’s not terrible. I love Dire Straits, too. This is a genre that my son, Liam, says is country, but he’s a teenager and doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.
The crew that Zevon was hanging around in these days, Linda Ronstadt and Jackson Browne, to name a few, were making the quintessential late 70s rock records. It was definitely country tinged as all these people were influenced by the Byrds. It makes sense that the boy hears Zevon and thinks country, but this is not country music.
“Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner” is quite the story. It reminds me of a lot of my favorite music from the time it came out. It’s a bit like a Gordon Lightfoot song, although Zevon goes way darker than Lightfoot ever did. Any song that mentions the CIA wanting to rub someone out is good by me.
“Excitable Boy” is probably my second favorite song on the record. It’s got that little piano hook that makes it so damn catchy. You can’t help but sing along with it, too. “Excitable boy, they all said.”
The chorus of “Accidentally Like a Martyr” is sofa king, too. “Accidentally, like a martyr, the hurt gets worse, and the heart gets harder.” I think this one lost Liam the other day when we were listening to it, but someday, sadly, he’ll get it. That line about the hurt getting “worse” and the heart getting “harder” is a glimpse, I think, at the way Zevon viewed the world.
I’m curious if there needed to be a song with a slightly disco beat to make the record company happy. Nothing against “Nighttime in the Switching Yard,” but it kind of sticks out like a sore thumb.
“Lawyers, Guns, and Money,” is another song that is pretty darn memorable. I like the searing guitar work on it quite a bit, but like all the songs, it is the words that make Zevon’s work interesting. If you took his vocals out of the equation, you’d have background music for scenes from movies set in the late 70s.
Well worth the time, though.
*****
See you tomorrow.
When 5000 seems big, AI.
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