"Renegade"

There seems to be an occasional theme of dissing the South among songwriters. Neil Young's "Southern Man" is the one we all know, Randy Newman wrote "Rednecks" and then there's Warren Zevon's "Play It All Night Long" which, in the words of David Letterman, may be the only song ever written to use the word "brucellosis". Anyway, I've always thought that "Renegade" was Warren's apology for having written "Play It All Night Long". The version I listen to is a live solo performance, just Warren, a piano and violin, and it's a stately, epic, bitter indictment: "We ain't seen no reconstruction here/Just the scorched earth all around/And the high school band played Dixieland/While they tore our tattered flags and banners down".