A little better this week with timeliness....
I was watching one of the latter episodes of Roadies, when Jackson Browne performed a mostly acoustic version of this week's tune and reminded me that it had been years since I'd heard it, and just how good it was. I revisited this week's artist's original version of it (which I have zero idea of how I came to originally know it), and it was like catching up with an old friend. By the way, for the three of you keeping track at home, this is the sixth Friday Night Jukebox post inspired by watching Roadies, which is pretty impressive for a show that had a whopping ten episodes....
I wrote about Warren Zevon in Jukebox LXVII (which would mean that I've written exactly four hundred FNJ posts since then, which is kind of cool in a major dorky way), and after rereading that post, decided I'd done a pretty good job of briefly outlining his musical bio, and am happy to leave it at that.
"Mohammed's Radio" was the seventh song on his second studio album, the ever so cleverly named Warren Zevon. The song was not released as a single, but the album would be the first of Zevon's career to hit the charts, peaking at #189 on the Billboard 200.
Fun Fact: Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac fame provided backing vocals on "Mohammed's Radio," with Buckingham also playing guitar.
Throughout "Mohammed's Radio" Zevon sings of the trials and tribulations of everyday folks, but with the chorus he interposes a remedy for the day-to-day drudgery: music. There's an understatement that carries the song, both musically and in Zevon's vocals, and in an odd twist, I actually think that gives the song an anthemic nature. In the end, though, I don't think Zevon is singing about the power of music to redeem us, or the power of music to heal us, but rather the power of music to help us persist, and how maybe, just maybe, that's good enough.
Lyric Sheet: "Don't it make you want to rock and roll?/All night long, Mohammed's radio/I heard somebody singin' sweet and soulful/On the radio, Mohammed's radio..."
Republicans = Nazis
Peace,
emaycee
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