It's a fox hunt, it's a f-stop
It's a ten acre wood


Jeremy Blake, Freedom (a phone call away), 2005

* Additional excerpts from Crystal Zevon's oral history bio of Warren Zevon:

-- Richard Edlund: "Warren was very closely associated with my invention of the Pignose amplifier. For the first model, I build one inside an English Leather box. Warren was recording "An Emblem for the Devil" [recorded for, but not used on, his first, relitively unknown record Wanted Dead of Alive] and he had these Marshall amps turned up to 12, and he was incurring the wrath of all the other session because his sound went through the walls. I said, 'try this.' It had a particular sound that Warren loved, and he was the first to use a Pignose on an album. Eventually, I made seventy of these amps and gave them to Mick Jagger, Keith Richards...everybody. Warren got the 'Jukin' Dedication Model,' which was the first one.

-- Burt Stein on the genesis of Lawyers, Guns and Money: "Warren would sit on the balcony till all hours of the morning reading Raymond Chandler novels, sipping Stolichnaya. I'd get up in the morning and invariably he was ready to carry on. It would be time for breakfast, and Warren would stop at the refriderator, and he'd say, 'I can't have breakfast on an empty stomach.' He'd down more vodka and we'd go have breakfast."

"Of course, every afternoon we spent hours in the cocktail lounge -- to the point where Warren got friendly with the waitress. One day he says, 'A friend of the waitress has a cabin in the mountains. She's off tomorrow and she'll take us there. We can get a little mountain experience.' The three of us get in my rental car. We're going to spend the night up in the mountains and come back the next day. So, we're driving through a sugarcane field and Warren's sitting next to me. The girl is in the backseat. I ask how long before we get up there. She says, 'oh, ninety minutes.' She goes on to say, 'I'm sure my friend won't mind if we break in. I say, 'Oh, shit. Warren, I can see it now. A telegram to Joe Smith: Dear Joe, please send lawyers, guns and money.' And, Warren says, "Joe, send lawyers, guns and money.' And then I say, 'Warren, we're not going up there.' He says, 'You're right, back to the bar.' So, we go back to the cocktail lounge. On two cocktail napkins, he wrote 'Lawyers, Guns and Money."

* Watch this NOW.

* Wednesday: The Foreign Press at the Velvet Lounge (915 U Street, NW, wdc, 9 pm).

* Thursday:An Evening with David Berman at the Corcoran Gallery of Art (7pm):

From the Corcoran website:

"David Berman is the subject of Sodium Fox, one of the two complete portraits featured in the Corcoran's exhibition Wild Choir: Cinematic Portraits by Jeremy Blake. An American songwriter, and the man behind the beloved rock band, Silver Jews, David Berman has until recently avoided the spotlight (waiting 15 years and five albums before taking the Silver Jews on tour in 2006), and yet his tragicomic bearing and influential works continue to capture critical acclaim and attention all around the world. The Corcoran is honored to have Mr. Berman on our stage for a rare and intimate evening as he honors the memory of Jeremy Blake."


* "Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage." -- H. L. Mencken