Friday's a poppin'!

Welcome party people to another Friday. It seems the older I get the faster they come around… Of course, the same can be said for Mondays… To sum up my week, I started a blog, which you’re fully aware of if you’re reading this right now, and if you aren’t well… then… you’re not seeing this and… Man… It’s getting all existential in here… It must me the Massive Attack humming on the iPod… So other than the blog, I finished reading The Girl Next Door, a pretty disturbing novel by Jack Ketchum that’s worth a read if you’ve got $7, an Amazon account, and a few hours to kill, watched some flicks, listened to a whole lot of music, and got 5 days closer to my Vegas/Santa Inez Valley vacation in July.

Viva, dear internet... Viva...

No huge plans for the weekend. I’ll be hanging with Dad on Sunday as that’s the day for it and all. Past that, I have no clue… The wife is my social event planner so I pretty much just go where I’m told and dress accordingly. Reason number 1,254 why I enjoy being married… I don’t have to think nearly as much as I used to…

My wife is not ACTUALLY Julie the Cruise Ship Director, I just call her that...

Ooh! One of my favorite new discoveries has just fired up on the old Pod… Although, I must admit my embarrassment that this particular discovery is new to me, since the song is over 30 years old, but it just shows to go ya that no matter how much music you may have, there’s always something else out there that’s worth a listen…

Get ready for some ZEVON!!

Anyhoo, I’m referring to the only musical account (to MY knowledge) of the Biafra war, Warren Zevon’s Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner. I can not begin to tell you how tickled I was when I first downloaded the Excitable Boy album and say this track listed. I mean, how can you write a song about a HEADLESS THOMPSON GUNNER and NOT have it be a classic? The short answer is you can’t… So the story goes a little something like this… Roland is a mercenary for hire from ‘The Land of the Midnight Sun’ who makes a deal in Denmark (on a dark and stormy day) to head out for Biafra, to join the bloody fray… So what I’m telling you is in the first 30 seconds we find out we’re listening to the story of an Norwegian guerrilla warrior embarking on a trip to the deepest parts of Africa to fight in a civil war… This has already beat the hell out of the tune about the drunken werewolf…

Back to the story… So Roland spends the next few years deep in combat, fighting the Congo war, knee deep in gore no less… Warren sums up this section best with a little justification… ‘They killed to earn their living, and to help out the Congolese.’ Well, so long as we’re helping out the Congolese, then by all rights continue the bloodshed! It's like he's talking about helping a buddy move out of his apartment... "Alright pal, I'll kill a few corrupt millitants, but I'm NOT carrying your refrigerator down those stairs..." At this time, we’re ready for the chorus…

Roland the Thompson Gunner (See, he’s still got a head at this point, but we all know what’s coming)
Roland the Thompson Gunner (Just in case you missed it the first time)

Hey, wait… we’re back into a verse now? So you pulled out a little drum breakdown so you could tell us the dude's name a couple of times? Where’s the catchy rhyme about gunnin’ folks down? Alas, I’m enjoying your tale… sorry to interrupt…

Now we’re introduced to Roland’s buddies, the fellow mercenaries… Specifically a gentleman named VanOwen… Could this be FORESHADOWING??? Only time, and Warren Zevon will tell… We’re also informed that of all the hired guns, nobody kills folk QUITE like Roland kills folk… He’s the A#1, cream of the crop, Top dog, big cheese, head honcho… Although I get the sinking suspicion he’s soon to be a HEADLESS honcho, mostly because I know the name of the song…

(psst... In case you forgot, it's Roland the HEADLESS Thompson Gunner... kthx...)

We all know what happens where you’re the Best of the Best… That’s right, the CIA starts gunning for you… That’s why I always try my best to be just slightly below average in everything I do. The last thing I need is a CIA price on my head, and those dudes just LOVE to kill whomever’s best at something… I know this ‘cause Warren told me… Oh! OOH!! That sonofabitch VANOWEN! Blows off Roland’s head!!! VanOwen was working for the CIA!?! It's like all double crossing any Spy vs. Spy like in here now! I KNEW that dude was bad news… Probably because he was the only other guy in the song who’s had his name mentioned… Anyway, now we’re ready for the REAL chorus…

Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner
Norway’s Bravest Son
They can still see his headless body
Stalking through the night
In the muzzle flash
Of Roland’s Thompson Gun

AWESOME! We’re not only singing about virtually unknown civil unrest in a country that no longer exists (‘cause the Congolese win this mother, sorry to spoil it for the Biafra fans…) We’re ALSO singing about the headless corpse of a gun for hire stalking through the night, no longer motivated by sheer greed, but by bloodlust! Roland starts with an R, and so does REVENGE!!! Damn… They should make a slasher flick out of this thing… That line is MADE for the DVD cover… Alls I can tell you is I’m glad my name isn’t VanOwen right about now…

So that dirty rotten no good VanOwen is hiding out in a Mombasa ballroom face down in a glass of gin. His days are SO numbered, and even he knows it… Roland’s one bad dude, head or no head… At this point, the no head part is probably best forgotten, because it raises too many questions as the Z opines:

Roland aimed his Thompson Gun (How do you aim without a head)
He didn’t say a word (Of course not, HE’S GOT NO HEAD)
But he blew VanOwen’s body
Clear to Johannesburg (Hah! Take THAT VanOwen…)

I envision at this point in the song, there’s a video montage of the headless Roland training for his meet up with VanOwen, interspersed with shots of his post-revenge-murder celebration while the other drunkards of Mombasa stare on in horror. It makes WZ’s breakdown so much more entertaining if you look at it that way.

OK... Now imagine him without a head...

Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner
Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner
Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner
TALKIN’ ABOUT THE MAN…
Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner

Warren know gets to the bread and butter of this tune. Although it MAY seem like it, thisi isn’t just a sensationalized ditty about a dude getting his head blown off and then exacting revenge upon the poor sap who did him in, oh NO… It’s a call to arms! Warren is asking headless mercenaries the WORLD over to rise up against their oppressors… From Ireland to Lebanon, from Palestine to Berkley (OK, one of these things is not like the others… I’m just sayin’)

And now… wait for it… Warren’s just full on lost it…

PATTY HEARST
HEARD THE BURST
OF ROLAND’S THOMPSON GUN
AND BOUGHT IT…

You heard it here first folks, Stockholm Syndrome, Shmockholm Syndrome… Patty Hearst wasn’t identifying with her captors, she was just doing what the headless Thompson gunner told her to… It makes SO much more SENSE now… Oh that pesky Roland, out there convincing heiresses to rob banks in the name of a wacky left-wing cause… What a scamp…

Oh, by the way, that’s the end of the tune… Warren gives us the little nugget of Patty Hearst related truth and then just figures we’ve got enough to chew on… This is why, my friends, it is a horrible shame this man was taken from us at such a young age… In three minutes and fourty seconds he has summed up the Congolese war, told us the tale of a murdered gun for hire hell bent on finding his own personal justice and in closing, explained away all the civil unrest going on in our world (at least, as of 1977). Had Warren Zevon chosen a career in film making, movies as we know them would be much, much shorter…

Happy Friday all, and watch out for the headless!