"Lawyers, Guns & Money"
Tall Tales of Civilizational Collapse
From KW Norton Borders - situated on a small muddy river near Nashville where the North American River Otters and Great Blue Herons and Great Horned Owls are at play. -
There is more going on around here than may usually meet the eye.
I, for one, can barely manage to keep up with it all.
Warren Zevon may be the ultimate American songwriter when it comes to playing around with the idea of civilizational collapse.
Tales have been told that Dylan’s favorite song of Zevon’s is “Desperados Under the Eaves”.
For those of us who are not Great American Troubadours - it is likely the song “Lawyers, Guns and Money” - which first comes to mind.
Today on this fateful Saturday in February of 2025 perhaps it is “Wild Age” which seems particularly great.
For me personally it will be songs like “Mutineer” which grab my heart most fiercely - at least in my saner moments.
The favorite Zevon song of our household broken-hearted songwriter troubadour is the following - “Carmelita”:
One of my all time favorites of any artist is “Mohammed’s Radio” - and seems particularly applicable to this civilizational collapse - we find ourselves in this weekend.
But where do we begin and end with such an artist?
The riches seem well beyond quantifying.
But then we must begin and end somewhere.
Have a great weekend despite the really bad vibes going around these days.
Our human future is all about our conscious awareness.
I was gambling in Havana
Like I always do
How was I to know
The bitch was with the Rooskies too
Good stuff all.
A little bit about my early life to share with you - Growing up in Waycross GA in the 50’s-60’s there was a wealthy family, the Conners, who lived around the corner from our house. My folks told me that the dad commonly known as Coon Dog was a notorious drunk who one day blew his brains out. And left behind were the mom and 2 kids I used to play with, sister Avis and brother Gram who was older and I remember sometimes terrorizing my me and my pals. Well shortly after Coon Dog’s suicide, the 3 remaining Conners move away never to be heard from again until one day I was reading an article in Mojo about Gram Parsons and saw that he was originally from Waycross and all the pieces came together in my head. And now there is a popular yearly concert there named for Gram attended by musicians and music lovers from all over the world.