Going back to the Warren Zevon reference - Zevon was brilliant, but I understand that some people don’t get him. To appreciate Zevon, like a lot of other ‘cult’ bands, you really have to invest effort in the appreciation. It’s like reading great literature - to a lot of people (me included, for some books), great literature is dreary and dull. Pop fiction, like pop music, is about instant gratification, simplicity, straightforward plots/lyrics/melodies. It’s accessible and catchy. And there’s nothing wrong with that, and I like lots of pop music and pop novels.
But Zevon was a writer’s writer. To appreciate him, you have to appreciate a well-crafted turn of phrase, a particularly clever rhyme scheme, a great metaphor, or an inventive use of words. This is why his biggest fans and closest friends tended to be writers like Carl Hiassen, Hunter S. Thompson, Amy Tan, Dave Barry, Steven King, and others.
Here’s an example, from ‘Genius’:
Did you light the candles? Did you put on “Kind of Blue?”
Did you use that Ivy League voodoo on him, too?
He thinks he’ll be alright but he doesn’t know for sure
Like every other unindicted co-conspirator
Those last two lines are brilliant. The song is about how geniuses can manipulate people and relationships (well, that’s the subtext. The song is ostensibly about being personally manipulated, cheated on, and dumped, but Zevon being Zevon, he turned it into a statement a bit bigger than that).
Drawing the parallel between a guy who’s being seduced but feels something isn’t quite right and an ‘unindicted co-conspirator’ is fantastic. If you take the time to really think about what it means to be an unindicted co-conspirator, to feel the hammer coming down, but not quite knowing where or when, to know you’re guilty but maybe might get away with it, is perfect. Coupled with the fact that the rhyme scheme is perfect, and that it takes a certain kind of brilliance to even work a phrase like ‘unindicted co-conspirator’ into a song about relationships, this is the kind of thing that Zevon fans love.
Then there’s the lighter side. Take this lyric from ‘Mr. Bad Example’:
I got a part-time job at my father’s carpet store
Laying tackless stripping, and housewives by the score
I loaded up their furniture, and took it to Spokane
And auctioned off every last naugahyde divan
First, he works in a little verisimilitude by mentioning something as mundane and ‘inside knowledge’ as tackless stripping. Then the clever bit about also laying housewives by the score. But the last line is really great - not only do you never expect someone to work the phrase ‘naugahyde divan’ into a song, but it tells you a bit about who his customers were - not rich old ladies, but poor vulnerable housewives who have cheap stuff. And that his father’s carpet store probably wasn’t a swank affair, but a tawdy ‘discount carpets’ or somehing. And this guy still rips the poor ladies off. It’s all a little seedy. Zevon called his music ‘song noir’ and this is the kind of stuff that made it that.
Here’s another stanza from that song:
I opened up an agency somewhere down the line
To hire aboriginals to work the opal mines
But I attached their wages and took a whopping cut
And whisked away their workman’s comp and pauperized the lot
That’s just great writing. And if you hear it set to music, that last line scans beautifully.
There - my short defense of Zevon. I could go on.
Bringing this back around to the appeal of ‘cult’ music (and cult film) - part of it is those little moments that you love - whether it be a special look of a character in a film, a particularly funny line, a particular melody that grabs you in a way that other music doesn’t. As you become a bigger fan, you start to savor more and more of these moments, and listening to the music or watching the movie feels like being rewarded over and over again.
For some, there’s an added pleasure in feeling that this artist is your little undiscovered gem, something you get to appreciate that the masses won’t ever know about. For others, that doesn’t matter, but what does matter is that the special qualities the artist has (even the qualities that keep them from having mainstream appeal) are the ones that really touch your soul.
