I came across a YouTube this morning, a clip of Jakob Dylan and the Wallflowers (plus Warren Zevon's son), playing the Zevon penned tune, "Lawyers, Guns and Money," on David Lettermen...it's a cut from a tribute album to Zevon called "Enjoy Every Sandwich."
Yes, indeed...watching the clip, one is struck by how much a young Jakob resembles a famous young Bob... carrying on a certain tradition, doing it in a similiar vein, or at least a familiar vein, (it's in the DNA), but also unmistakably and irrevocably a different vein too, somehow everything is transformed in every particular...and damn, isn't that how the world goes...?
Zevon was one of those rockers who supposedly burned the candle at both ends and in the middle too...but he did leave an impressive collection of songs...(easy to forget, and easy to remember how often I found myself spinning the vinyl, dropping the needle on Zevon's albums, listening to his wry lyrical take, backed by a solid rock band, spiced by L.A. swagger, Raymond Chandleresque, with a shot of HST bravado, and sense of impending doom )...I remember a New Year's Eve show that still ranks up there with the "best ever," maybe because I was young and reckless, and Warren was up there on-stage wielding his guitar like a rock and roll gunslinger, and at the time, (sometimes now too) he seemed to be reflecting something inside me with his rollicking r&r, mock-troubadour, brilliantly smartass music...what a strange alchemy...
"Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School"
So the Zevon legacy lives, the Dylan line continues, Jack Paar morphs into Johnny Carson, Carson morphs into David Lettermen...yes, and every sandwich does count in some way, right? There is a continuity, a sameness about the form (just like r&r, just like life) - two slices of bread, and something (could be just about anything) in between. What you put in there is up to you, although there is ultimately a finite number of choices...but, by some magical formula that adheres in the real world - no two sandwiches are the same... (it's this bread, this slice of bologna, this particular pickle - at this moment - and no other), to paraphrase (or dance around) another famous phrase... since you can't devour the same sandwich twice, make the most of the one you have on your plate at the moment...enjoy...now.