Real Life Rock Top 10

By Greil Marcus

Sep 23, 2002 | 1) Press release, D.Baron media relations (Sept. 12)

"Los Angeles, CA -- Celebrated recording artist composer Warren Zevon, one of rock music's wittiest and most original songwriters, has been diagnosed with lung cancer which has advanced to an untreatable stage." Playing: "Mohammed's Radio," the churchy live version from the 1982 "Stand in the Fire" ("Even Jimmy Carter's got the highway blues"); the delirious rising in the 1978 "Johnny Strikes Up the Band"; the regret in the melody of "Looking for the Next Best Thing" in 1982; the shared dread of "Run Straight Down" in 1989; the delicacy of "Suzie Lightning" in 1991 and "Mutineer" in 1995. From 1976, when he went public with "Desperadoes Under the Eaves" on the album "Warren Zevon," it has been more than a quarter century of gunplay and bravado, not for a moment concealing Zevon's loathing for his own betrayals and those of the world around him. "I was in the house when the house burned down," he sang in 2000. From afar he has been a good friend.

2) Music in Balthazar (New York, Sept. 5)

For a still-hot restaurant with a reputation for cool to uphold, either a new concept of cool or real problems with the concept. Playing indistinctly in the background as we come in after 11 -- Can it be, no, it can't be, why is it? It's Scott McKenzie's "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)" from 1967, one of the sappiest songs of all time. Then a lot of terrible "Saturday Night Live"-style fake jazz. Then finally, loud, every note standing out: "Gimmie Shelter" by the Rolling Stones, probably the greatest pop recording of the last 50 years, and not dinner music. Not even walking-out music. Not even cool. Far beyond cool, in a realm where the concept is an embarrassment.

3 & 4) Slobberbone, "Slippage" (New West) and Plastic Mastery, "In the Fall of Unearthly Angels" (Magic Marker)

On "Springfield, IL.," the first track of Slobberbone's "Slippage," the hard, loose, fast band from Denton, Texas, combines a desperate country vocal that's all over the room with a guitar playing off its own promises, never quite paying off, replacing each moment where the music falls just short with a greater promise. You get the feel of a terrible place the musicians want only to escape -- why is it so full of life? In a much more punk manner, with floating chords and vocals lifting away from their songs, Plastic Mastery of Tallahassee catches the same fear, the same hurry. It's a queer sound: the sound of people almost but not sure there is no place for them.

5) Siniad O'Connor, "Lord Franklin," from "Sean-Nss Nua" (Vanguard)

The traditional ballad Bob Dylan recast in 1963 to look back at his youth as if he were already dead -- and, in O'Connor's hands, never more gorgeous, never more accursed. O'Connor's disdain for sustaining a career makes it possible to forget her; this is a reminder of why it is impossible to write her off. She will be around, harrying everyone into their graves.

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