Zevon Song of the Week #10
Howard Roseman
Category: Geopolitical
Another week, another song, this time in a brand new category and from a
not-yet-covered album, The Envoy.
The album is a fabulous effort that is still, to somebody's everlasting
shame, unavailable yet on CD except as an import. Unlike last week, I won't
speculate as to who is responsible for this, especially since I own the LP,
bought in a record store back in '82 when it came out. If you're desperate
for the CD, I think you can snap up the Japanese copy for a few million yen
or so.
The album cover is probably the coolest Zevon picture there is, complete
with trench coat.
I'm very fond of the song as well, a rousing and hopeful rocker that today
seems simultaneously both dated and all too on point. What prompted me to
address it this week was this recent comment by Washington Senator Maria
Cantwell: "I think it's very important, given the amount of resources the
United States and the loss of life and the impact on our military, that the
United States play a larger role in saying where is the international
community. I've called for a U.S. envoy. You know, we've had former
President Clinton and former President Bush go around the globe raising
funds for tsunami relief, for Katrina relief. I'm fine -- send them to the
Middle East and ask the countries to pledge support for the new Iraqi
government so it can stand up and we can bring our troops home."
I'll try and avoid launching into another all-too-familiar political rant,
but doesn't the world seem like a much more dangerous place in 2006 than it
did back in the early '80s when Warren wrote the song? Then there were two
superpowers, now there's only one. Coincident with this development has been
the rise of radical Islam as the planet's most disruptive force. The U.S.
had the sympathy of most of the world the day after 9/11, but squandered it
quickly by abandoning the hunt for bin Laden and instead pursuing an old
vendetta against Saddam Hussein. I heard an American general on Friday say
that this was the worst possible strategic move, in that it was the first
time the U.S. had invaded a country preemptively, there was (obviously) no
exit strategy whatever, Iraq is now a fertile breeding ground for new
terrorists, and American blood and treasure are being squandered there in a
seemingly hopeless cause. The general's opinion was that the U.S. has
suffered no further terrorist strikes at home because there's no need for
it, that Bush has played into bin Laden's hand in every way.
The idea of an envoy itself seems rather quaint now, doesn't it? Warren's
envoy was modeled on Philip Habib, who served under Carter in the late '70s,
and was described by the New York Times when he died in 1992 as "the
outstanding professional diplomat of his generation in the United States".
In the ISWID booklet, Warren wrote, "Mr. Habib sent me a very nice letter of
appreciation on State Department stationery."
Who would be today's Habib? What country would he come from? The U.S., a
nation that ignored U.N. inspectors and jumped into an invasion in 2003 of a
small, backward, and complex nation of warring feudal sects that posed no
tangible threat to Americans and had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks?
The same U.S. that now forces its volunteer army into repeated tours of duty
with insufficient training and equipment (and resulting My Lai-type
atrocities), and arrests and detains indefinitely suspected terrorists, many
of whom pose as much threat as my grandmother, in Guantanamo Bay without
recourse to legal counsel? Are Clinton and Bush Sr. up to the job? The
father was smart enough to avoid the mistakes of the son in the first place.
How can he, even with the help of slick Willie, possibly clean up this mess?
"Whenever there's a crisis, the President sends his envoy in ."
The genie is out of the bottle. There's no envoy, no hope in sight, nobody
to send for. Just misery as far as the eye can see, no foreseeable prospect
of reconciliation at this time between the incomprehensible (to most of us)
forces of Islamic fundamentalism and our western,
live-large-while-the-rest-of-the-world-weeps ways. They hate us for our
freedoms? I think not. To them, we're from say-one-thing-and-mean-another'
s-ville.
So, Iraq's an ongoing mess, Israel is back in the news dealing with
militants in Gaza, and bin Laden continues to issue snarky, threatening
tapes. Canada is among several countries on his hit list, but we all know
who #1 is.
Feel safe?
I guess that was a rant. It's over now. No help to anyone, but I feel a
little better. Back to the song.
Although both Waddy and David Landau are listed on the track's credits,
Warren somehow convinced them for once to let the "excitable boy" have the
guitar solo, and he does an admirable job. The song also makes liberal use
of synthesizer, also courtesy of WZ, to simulate the sound of bombs
descending, which I find quite convincing but that my friend Jim R. has
expressed some impatience with in a prior thread.
I love the song's energy. Warren often led off his albums with hard rockers:
Finishing Touches on MBE, SH on SH, Seminole Bingo (not all that hard) on
Mutineer, and The Envoy are all in that mould. Like A Bullet For Ramona, he
takes a dire subject and transforms it into something optimistic (most of
his pessimism can be found only in the Love-Gone-Wrong category). You feel
like you shouldn't be singing along with a tapping foot and a grin on your
face, but you just can't help yourself. Back in '82, there was reason to
believe that a man like Habib could save the day.
But today? Not any more, not by a long shot. Send for . send for.. God, who
the hell can we send for? What would Warren write now? Superman is back on
movie screens saving the world, but he has no real-world equivalent. Looks
like another threat to world peace. But the idiots are in charge of the
asylum. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Categories to date
--------------------------
Family: 1
Geopolitical: 1
Love-Gone-Wrong: 2
Mortality: 1
Satire: 2
Social Commentary: 2
Sports: 1
Phantom Engineer
squandered it>>>
Yes we did.
Joanne Corsano
mysterious and ominous feel to it, as Zevon enumerates various trouble
spots around the world, but it also has a hopeful feel since the envoy
is on the scene, almost like a superhero, to save the day. An
oversimplification perhaps, but in a 3 minute pop song, there's only
so much you can do to explore world events in any sort of detail. This
song mentions more foreign countries than just about any other song.
Wikipedia mentions the song in their writeup on Habib. That Philip
Habib wrote a letter acknowledging the song to Warren is a nice bit of
Zevon trivia (or "Zevonia").
It's interesting that Warren, after singing "send the envoy"
throughout the song, switches to "send for me" in the last verse.
Zevon was a well-read and well-informed person and he clearly admired
Habib (or else he wouldn't have written a song about him). Maybe in
his secret heart he wished he could be in public service, rather than
a "lowly" rock 'n' roll star. Maybe he felt that someone like Philip
Habib was making a positive difference in the world and he (Zevon) was
"just" an entertainer. Or maybe "send for me" is just a songwriting
trick to make people like me listen more closely and speculate; if
that's the case, it worked.
When I saw Zevon at the Somerville Theater, Halloween 1999, one of my
concert going buddies said she wished he would play "The Envoy," so
that shows it's at least one person's favorite Zevon tune. (He didn't
play it.)
Joanne
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Howard Roseman
> mysterious and ominous feel to it, as Zevon enumerates various trouble
> spots around the world, but it also has a hopeful feel since the envoy
> is on the scene, almost like a superhero, to save the day. An
> oversimplification perhaps, but in a 3 minute pop song, there's only
> so much you can do to explore world events in any sort of detail. This
> song mentions more foreign countries than just about any other song.
> Wikipedia mentions the song in their writeup on Habib. That Philip
> Habib wrote a letter acknowledging the song to Warren is a nice bit of
> Zevon trivia (or "Zevonia").
>
I think for a while Warren had a schtick in concert about how Habib ignored
the song. Perhaps it just took the envoy some time, being so busy and all,
to acknowledge it.
I agree about the hopeful feel. But a former poster here, Sam Rusk (a
great-nephew of Dean Rusk IIRC), took a very contrarian view a couple of
years ago. At that time, I started a thread about The Envoy because a mere
1000 American soldiers had died in Iraq. Here's the link:
http://snipurl.com/svke.
> It's interesting that Warren, after singing "send the envoy"
> throughout the song, switches to "send for me" in the last verse.
> Zevon was a well-read and well-informed person and he clearly admired
> Habib (or else he wouldn't have written a song about him). Maybe in
> his secret heart he wished he could be in public service, rather than
> a "lowly" rock 'n' roll star. Maybe he felt that someone like Philip
> Habib was making a positive difference in the world and he (Zevon) was
> "just" an entertainer. Or maybe "send for me" is just a songwriting
> trick to make people like me listen more closely and speculate; if
> that's the case, it worked.
>
I never took that as Warren singing "send for me", but as Habib singing it,
with the utter confidence that an envoy would have to have that he could
solve any problem.
> When I saw Zevon at the Somerville Theater, Halloween 1999, one of my
> concert going buddies said she wished he would play "The Envoy," so
> that shows it's at least one person's favorite Zevon tune. (He didn't
> play it.)
>
> Joanne
>
I think he played it in concert quite a bit, but only when he had a band
behind him.
cc
>I agree about the hopeful feel. But a former poster here, Sam Rusk (a
>great-nephew of Dean Rusk IIRC), took a very contrarian view a couple of
>years ago. At that time, I started a thread about The Envoy because a mere
>1000 American soldiers had died in Iraq. Here's the link:
>http://snipurl.com/svke.
>
An interesting discussion that I missed the first time around. I agree more
with Dr. Sam - though I don't think really that the song makes a cogent
statement either way. It's more of a character sketch, though actually not
much detail about the envoy, a situation sketch then. But I hear the
"hopeful" major-key bridge as thoroughly ironic and satirical.
cc
cc
class. It had a shocking effect when I played it on my boombox. One kid
asked if I listened to it before I went to sleep in order to have
nightmares.
Howard Roseman
> "hopeful" major-key bridge as thoroughly ironic and satirical.
>
> cc
It appears that Warren achieved what he wanted with the song, with people
interpreting it according to their own view of the world situation rather
than his. I always saw that hopeful bridge as, well, hopeful, although
ironic and satirical is also a possibility, I suppose.
Didn't Carter, with Habib's help, achieve some successes with Begin and
Sadat, before it inevitably went all to hell, as it always seems to do?
Howard Roseman
Was that a private school?
How times have changed - The Envoy would be laughed out of today's middle
school music conclaves for being much too tame.
cc
wrote:
Nope, public. Though gangsta rap was hardly the soundtrack of our lives.
(Actually it may not have been developed yet.) I was surprised, too.
Valerie Brock
>> rant,
> but doesn't the world seem like a much more dangerous place in 2006 than
> it
> did back in the early '80s when Warren wrote the song? Then there were two
> superpowers, now there's only one.
Back in the early '80s, I was reading "The Fate of the Earth" by Jonathan
Schell, and worrying about nuclear war. Now, I'll grant that things are
even more scary, as more countries (and non-affiliated combatants) have
nuclear arms, but the world in the early '80s seemed pretty scary.
Also, I remember saying to a co-worker, when Bush the 1st was President, and
Pete Wilson was governor of California, "at least things can't get worse."
So naive!!
My point is that things always seem as if they are at their most dangerous,
and yet the world keeps spinning. As the effects of global warming start to
manifest, we'll look back on this time as a golden era of prosperity.
Howard Roseman
dangerous,
> and yet the world keeps spinning. As the effects of global warming start
to
> manifest, we'll look back on this time as a golden era of prosperity.
>
The major difference today from, say, the '70s is that North Americans and
Europeans are demonstrably less safe because of the war declared against us
by radical Islamists. Bush's invasion of Iraq, a country that posed no
threat and home to not one of the 9/11 terrorists, has made things much
worse.
When Warren wrote The Envoy, all the trouble spots were in so-called third
world countries. Since the turn of the century, New York City and London,
among other places, have been hit.
It's interesting to see Warren's lyrics playing out over just the last few
days, as Israel, Lebanon, and Syria have regained prominence in news
coverage, for all the wrong reasons.
As for global warming, I have no confidence that our leaders will do
anything substantive until it gets much worse. In that decision-making
process, they'll be echoing the electorate.
sfw
> When Warren wrote The Envoy, all the trouble spots were in so-called third
> world countries. Since the turn of the century, New York City and London,
> among other places, have been hit.
I'm going to disagree here Howard. London and much of Northern Ireland
had long been targets of the IRA. Madrid had long been a target of the
Basque seperatists.
We could add some Eastern European countries to the list too, but IMO,
in those days they fell kinda between the third world and the old world.
Sarah
Howard Roseman
> > When Warren wrote The Envoy, all the trouble spots were in so-called
third
> > world countries. Since the turn of the century, New York City and
London,
> > among other places, have been hit.
>
> I'm going to disagree here Howard. London and much of Northern Ireland
> had long been targets of the IRA. Madrid had long been a target of the
> Basque seperatists.
>
True enough. I should not have used the word "all". The two you mention were
internal battles of Great Britain and Spain, respectively. A lovely
terrorist precursor of things to come, now transnational.
sfw
>>I'm going to disagree here Howard. London and much of Northern Ireland
>>had long been targets of the IRA. Madrid had long been a target of the
>>Basque seperatists.
>
> True enough. I should not have used the word "all". The two you mention were
> internal battles of Great Britain and Spain, respectively. A lovely
> terrorist precursor of things to come, now transnational.
Well, depending on how you look at it. I mean, the IRA and the Basques
both maintain that they are NOT internal to the countries involved.
Sarah
Howard Roseman
> Well, depending on how you look at it. I mean, the IRA and the Basques
> both maintain that they are NOT internal to the countries involved.
>
> Sarah
Yes, we have a similar problem here in Canada, known as Quebec!
sfw
>>Well, depending on how you look at it. I mean, the IRA and the Basques
>>both maintain that they are NOT internal to the countries involved.
> Yes, we have a similar problem here in Canada, known as Quebec!
Exactly, only with explosives.
Sarah
Howard Roseman
>
> Exactly, only with explosives.
>
> Sarah
Believe it or not, Quebec has had some violence, the same kind as Ireland
and Spain if not nearly the same degree. In 1970, Pierre Elliott Trudeau had
to invoke something called the War Measures Act because of it.
Read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Crisis
Howard Roseman
> The Envoy
>
> Category: Geopolitical
>
"Nuclear arms in the middle east,
Israel's attacking the Iraqis,
The Syrians are mad at the Lebanese,
And Baghdad does whatever she please,
Looks like another threat to world peace ..."
And the beat rolls on.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13952922/
U.S. military confirms sharp rise in attacks
General says extremists planning 'all-out' attack on Baghdad
The Associated Press
Updated: 5:08 p.m. PT July 20, 2006
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Bombings and shootings soared by 40 percent in the Baghdad
area in the past week, the U.S. military said Thursday. An American general
said extremists were preparing “an all-out assault” on the capital in a
decisive battle for the future of Iraq.
Iraq’s most influential Shiite cleric issued his strongest call yet for an
end to Shiite-Sunni bloodletting, urging all Iraqis to wake up to the
“danger threatening the future of the country” and stand “side-by-side
against it.”
U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said there had been an
average of 34 attacks a day involving U.S. and Iraqi forces in and around
the capital since Friday — up sharply from the daily average of 24
registered between June 14 and July 13.
“We have not witnessed the reduction in violence one would have hoped for in
a perfect world,” Caldwell told reporters. “The only way we’re going to be
successful in Baghdad is to get the weapons off the streets.”
Caldwell said insurgents were streaming into the capital for “an all-out
assault against the Baghdad area.”
“Clearly the death squad elements, the terrorist elements, know that Baghdad
is a must-win for them,” he said. “Whoever wins the Baghdad area, whoever is
able to bring peace and security to that area, is going to set the
conditions to stabilize this country.”
Sectarian killings hard to prevent
But much of the bloodshed has been carried out by Shiite militias seeking
retribution for attacks by Sunnis — including organized insurgents,
religious extremists and Sunnis not affiliated with resistance groups but
fearful of Shiite gunmen.
The result is a pattern of tit-for-tat vendetta killings which is difficult
to stop by military action or political overtures to Sunni insurgent
leaders.
With thousands fleeing areas where their sect is in the minority, Iraqis
fear Baghdad is being transformed into a Sunni west and a Shiite and
Christian east — divided by the Tigris River that flows through the center
of the city.
Alarmed by the crisis, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani issued a rare
statement, saying the time has come for “all those who value the unity and
future of this country” to “exert maximum efforts to stop the bloodletting.”
Al-Sistani, a longtime voice of moderation, urged Iraqis against “falling
into the trap of sectarian and ethnic strife,” which he said will only delay
the departure of foreign troops.
“I repeat my call today to all Iraqis of different sects and ethnic groups
to be aware of the danger threatening the future of the country and stand
side-by-side against it,” he said.
Caldwell’s comments were among the most frank by a senior American military
official about the grave crisis facing Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s
two-month-old national unity government.
U.S. officials have long pointed to relative peace in many of Iraq’s 18
provinces, dismissing the insurgency as a problem limited to Baghdad and
sparsely populated Sunni Arab areas to the west and north.
However, Baghdad is the country’s major transportation hub, the center of
political and economic power, and home to more than 20 percent of the
population. Its religiously and politically mixed population makes it a
natural battleground for control of the country.
“Baghdad is a must-win not only for the prime minister, but for al-Qaida in
Iraq,” Caldwell said. “Without Baghdad’s centralized access to power
brokers, Baghdad’s large, diverse population, its financial resources, the
terrorists elements will lose here in this country.”
With the stakes high, al-Maliki last month unveiled a much-heralded security
plan for Baghdad, including up to 50,000 police and soldiers on the streets,
more checkpoints and raids in neighborhoods where violence is high.
But with surging attacks in the capital — including the kidnappings of Iraqi
officials — leading politicians from Shiite and Sunni parties have declared
the plan a failure. The United Nations said this week that about 6,000
civilians were killed in May and June, many of them in sectarian violence.
About 50 people were killed Thursday in attacks nationwide, police said.
They included a U.S. Marine killed in Anbar province and 12 people who died
in a car bombing near Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad. Five others were
killed by a car bomb in the northern city of Kirkuk.
Can Iraqi forces cope?
The crisis in Baghdad raises questions about the ability of Iraq’s
U.S.-trained police and army to cope with sectarian violence. That in turn
casts doubt about the U.S. timetable for handing over security
responsibility to the Iraqis in all 18 provinces by the end of next year.
Despite the recent bloodshed, National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie
said Iraqis will be in charge of security in eight of the 18 provinces
before year’s end. However, he said the fight against insurgents could last
for years.
The government said al-Maliki has dismissed an undisclosed number of
security officials for failing to respond to a Monday attack in Mahmoudiya
in which at least 51 people were killed. Suspected Sunni gunmen went on a
rampage through a market, shooting at shoppers and vendors. Most of the
victims were Shiites.
Nevertheless, Caldwell insisted Iraqi forces were “giving their all to bring
security to the Baghdadi citizens.” He said at least 92 Iraqi police and
soldiers had been killed and 444 wounded in fighting in the capital since
mid-June.
In other violence Thursday:
a.. A car bomb exploded at a village gas station in northern Iraq, killing
10 people who had gathered around the vehicle after discovering a corpse
inside. Seven others were injured in the blast near Beiji, 155 miles north
of Baghdad, police Capt. Arkan Ali said.
a.. A U.S. Marine assigned to the 1st Armored Division was killed in western
Iraq. A U.S. statement said the Marine died in Anbar province, which
includes Ramadi and Fallujah, but did not specify the location or give
further details. His death brings to at least 2,557 members of the U.S.
military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003,
according to an Associated Press count.
a.. A car bomb exploded in the northern city of Kirkuk, killing one person
and wounding seven.
a.. The bodies of four men were found in two areas in eastern Baghdad.
a.. Gunmen assassinated a former official of Saddam’s Baath party in
Karbala, 50 miles south of Baghdad.