My Kids and I Spent a Day Watching Fan Videos of Warren Zevon Songs

Your tips are greatly appreciated! Upgrade at 30% offThis article originally appeared on Medium around Thanksgiving in 2023.Yesterday one of my readers left a comment that my work sometimes made him depressed. He kindly emphasized that he felt my writing was important, but mentioned that the depressing state of our dystopian reality can be too much to take in all at once.In the past, I have made more of an effort to alternate a kind of frivolous story with the ones that hit a little harder. Today, I want to give you one of those stories. My kids have been off from school, and we recently stumbled upon something that might bring a smile to your face.Sit back and settle in because this is going to be one of those long-winded narratives you tell after dinner, with a full belly, when you’ve got no other ambition but to try and coax a laugh out of the people you care about the most.Thanksgiving breakMy wife’s holiday didn’t start until Wednesday, so I was home alone with my girls on Monday and Tuesday. Lately, I’ve been trying to get 10,000 steps a day, so when the pharmacy called to tell me I had a prescription to pick up, I thought we could walk there.My eldest didn’t want to go, but my youngest came along with me. We had a nice walk and chat, and we took the opportunity to explore some streets we’ve never been down before. It’s kind of amazing how much there is to see right out your door if you bother to go for a walk. I think part of the fun of vacations is just that you get off your butt and go out in search of adventure. If you just did that at home, you could spare yourself the expense of travel.Still, it turned out to be a five mile walk, so we were running out of things to talk about in the last half mile. That’s when I decided to teach my daughter a song.Warren ZevonI’ve always gotten a kick out of the music of Warren Zevon. The thing I like about his work is that you never quite know if he’s being serious or if he’s putting you on. Most people have heard Werewolves of London. It’s one of the few Halloween themed songs out there so it gets plenty of airplay in October. It could be that you’ve heard it so many times you don’t recognize how funny it is.Zevon is really good at creating absurd little narratives. The idea that a city could be filled with dashing werewolves in impeccably tailored suits rushing around in search of quality Chinese food is almost too much to absorb all in one sitting (and that’s just the first line).Zevon manages to sing all this in the form of a serious song. He’s not Weird Al, he’s not trying for a laugh. In fact, he seems indifferent as to whether you laugh or not (I laugh).Maybe you could say he’s the songwriting equivalent of Lewis Carroll. That comparison might be more apt that it immediately appears.I’ve got quite a few stories about Warren Zevon. I’ve enjoyed his music since I discovered an album in my dad’s collection back when I was 7 or 8. I even saw him in concert once when I was 18, and then he showed up in the lobby of the hotel where I was staying. There are more stories, but I’ll save those for another day.Roland the Thompson GunnerAs we walked back from the pharmacy, I started teaching my daughter the words to Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner. It’s another narrative song about a Thompson gun wielding mercenary who gets his head blown off. The best part about the song is that Roland gets killed in the second verse and his story just continues on as if that’s not even close to the most significant thing that ever happened to him.After getting shot, the only change is that the chorus switches from “Roland the Thompson gunner” to “Roland the headless Thompson gunner.”I love that.So, I started teaching the song to my daughter and she gave me a bit of side eye, but seemed to enjoy it. As I was singing the song to her, it occurred to me that we needed to share this with my eldest daughter.“When I get home, I’ll look for it on YouTube. Maybe there’s a video. We can tell her that this is the best song ever and that she’s going to love it. Don’t give away the part where Roland gets his head blown off.”“Okay.”My eldest daughter’s responseI started becoming hopeful that maybe there was a music video to Roland that I’d never seen. Then I started thinking that if there wasn’t a video, there should be. Finally, I started contemplating how I should make my own video if none existed.Every now and then I stumble across a rabbit hole that leads to a weird little community on the internet. I didn’t know it, but I was on the precipice of one of those holes.But we hadn’t gone down the rabbit hole yet. The first thing was to sit down and explain the song to my daughter and get her reaction to it. So, we went with the straight video that plays the music without any other image but the album cover.At the point where Roland got his head blown off and then just continued about his business, my daughter started to laugh.“That sounds like the kind of stupid song that you would write and constantly sing in the kitchen while you were making pancakes.”It’s true, I invent a lot of songs and sing them at my family. I also sometimes come up with long, bizarre narratives and tell them while my family gives me perplexed looks. It’s how I wind down.The fan videosAfter we listened to it once, I decided to see if I could find a video. I was hoping for an official video, but instead I stumbled across a cache of fan films that turned out to be well… let’s just call it a deep dive into the internet.I didn’t wake up that morning expecting to discover a community of people united in their need to animate Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner, but that’s what happened. They ranged from good to bad to weird to really weird which is as it should be.The thing is, you never know what you’re going to get when you watch a homemade video. Anything can happen. When you’re trying to adapt a song like Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner, you’ve already established a baseline that most people can’t handle.Now, there are a couple of key elements in the song that I was curious to see depicted. For example, there’s the moment when Roland gets his head blown off, and there’ s the moment when he gets his revenge.Some of the videos had some really creative elements. One depicted the Thompson gun muzzle flash like lighting in the distance. I mean, it was cheaply done, but the idea was excellent.The first videoAnyway, here’s the first video which is just a slideshow of sketches (you can fast forward to the various sketches if you don’t want to hear the song again):My daughter was laughing, and she said, “Actually those sketches are really good.”As a side note, I don’t know why so many of the videos I stumbled upon included some variation of “for those who served” at the beginning. I mean… you think your fan video of Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner is a way to “honor the military?” I’m not sure it’s a pro-military song.The cat videoThere was one video I thought was concerning because it seemed to be actual footage of mercenaries in various conflicts. I have no idea what’s going on there. Who are those people? Who were they fighting? Who took the videos? That was a little too real for me, I shut that one off and went to the one that featured cat animation instead.I didn’t like that one as much because it was a cover and it didn’t depict the three scenes I was looking for. Still, it was delightfully weird.More or lessThis next one is kind of creepy and funny, I liked how they depicted Roland stalking around with his head blown off (again, I recommend watching it on fast forward).After we were done with that one, I turned to my daughter and said, “Imagine if growing up, fan films of Roland the Headless Thompson gunner were the only forms of animation you were ever allowed to watch.”My daughter looked back and said, “Was that what your childhood was like dad?”“More or less.”The senior projectI liked this one because it felt like a slideshow project a high school kid might turn in for a class project. He’d fail, but the class would laugh when the video was shown.Then there’s this one that doesn’t play the song, but instead uses the elements of the song to create a trailer for some sort of Indiana Jones style movie.The best oneAnyway, what happened is that me and my daughters spent about an hour watching all these bizarre fan films of Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner. We scrolled and scrolled and scrolled into the darkest regions of the internet. It was a perilous journey that exposed us to many dangers and many things we will never unsee. But it was only after we’d scrolled until our fingers were exhausted and we were well off the map that we came across the best fan video of them all.I present to you now, the Lego version of Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner.The part where they printed off a couple of newspapers had me crying with laughter.“The rest.”A Thanksgiving tradition is bornHow much time did we spend on this? Thirty minutes? An hour? A lifetime? I can’t tell. All I remember is that my daughters were laughing and I felt compelled to click on bizarre video after bizarre video.The internet can be a weird place. This experience reminded me of the time I came across the community of kids who made hysterical parodies of survival shows featuring Bear Grylls. Weird internet communities should be a television show. You could absolutely do an episode with commentary on every bizarre fan film of Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner.My eldest daughter is a piano player and an artist and a singer. I turned to her and said, “You should do some videos like this! You could sing and play and make videos of your drawings!”“No!” she replied, but I think the seed has been planted.I’m just delighted to find things like this. Some of these passion projects took people HOURS to make. There is some great stuff out there. You just have to set off boldly in the direction of weird.There is value in forgetting about the problems of the world and exploring the bizarre creativity of the human race. My daughters and I spent the day laughing, that’s a win.You all make this newsletter happen! Thanks for your sponsorship! I have payment tiers starting at as little as twenty dollars a year.Upgrade at 30% offUpgrade at 40% offUpgrade at 50% offUpgrade at 60% offI'm so happy you're here, and I'm looking forward to sharing more thoughts with you tomorrow.My CoSchedule referral linkHere’s my referral link to my preferred headline analyzer tool. If you sign up through this, it’s another way to support this newsletter (thank you).I'd Rather Be Writing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to I'd Rather Be Writing at walterrhein.substack.com/subscribe