Zevon

[Rae]

discuss.

~Rae

[noddin0ff]

like. should buy some someday.

[Rich-n-Texas]

"Send lawyers, guns and money..."

[PeruvianSkies]

is dead. boo hoo.

[Swish]

Once. Good.

Swish

[3-LockBox]

He's one of those guys who are/were highly revered, like Elvis Costello, Graham Parker or Todd Rundgren, that I just never got into beyond one or two albums. Oh, he had that one album I liked, like Costello, Rundgren and Parker, that makes it into my rotation at least once a year, but I can take or leave most of his stuff.

[Rae]

Okay, I should elaborate a little by saying that I picked up a half-dozen Zevon LPs this weekend for an average of $2 a pop. s/t, Excitable Boy, Bad Luck Streak In Dancing School, Stand in the Fire, The Envoy, and Sentimental Hygiene. I know there are some Zevon-lovers on this board. I want them to come out of the woodwork so we can talk about him.

~Rae

[Rae]

Here is what some other people said on some other, lamer board, just to get things started:



I've never really listened to his music but I saw him on Letterman when he told the audience he was gonna die in a couple months. (I think he might have been the only guest the entire episode, but I may be wrong. It was a few years ago.)

Based on the grace he showed facing death on that show, I couldn't give a rats ass if he was in a band like reel big fish or a band like neurosis. If I hear a song that I find out is by Warren Zevon, I'm gonna think it's awesome. Even if it is Werewolf In London.



I had a big Warren Zevon phase back in high school (circa '98). I found Excitable Boy at Aardvark on vinyl, picked it up and brought it home and jammed out to it... it's a great ****ing record.

The only other one i really listen to anymore is the self-titled (is that the first one? i can't remember). Great songwriter, great voice, great sense of humor. I think the dark humor is what initially drew me into his stuff, and only later did i really get an appreciation for what he was doing.

I never got to see him in person, and I'm really wishing I would have.

Bummed.



I like Zevon's stuff a lot. Parts of Bad Luck Streak are great, like the title song, and "Bill Lee." And, I still like "Werewolves of London."

My old band put out a single with a cover of "Play It All Night Long" on the back side. PM me if you want to get one.

Sometimes, he threw really awful stuff into otherwise excellent songs, and I have trouble dealing with that. By this, I mean that parts of "Accidentally Like a Martyr" and "Desperadoes Under The Eaves" suck pretty bad, while other parts, I wish I could put on repeat for the length of album sides. *Especially* that little transition in the middle of "Accidentally Like a Martyr" that comes back at the end. I could listen to an entire show's worth of that. Totally slays me. It's so neatly packaged up.

I also wish that there weren't a part in "Desperadoes" where he sings, "except in dreams, you're never really free," because honestly, that's about as good as Ronnie James Dio singing "Like the tiger--you can see his stripes but you know he's free--oh, can't you hear what I mean?" which is to say, it is awful.

All that said: I do love the Zevon.



I don't really care about his conceptually deep-cloaking, tragic, self-abusing what-not.

Can't you just like a dude for his music?



during my last month living in NYC, the only comfort i took was listening to Warren Zevon.



dude don't say bad things about Dio.

i like Zevon....he was a weird, brittle sort of MOR middleground between the American dudes like Petty/Mellencamp/Springsteen and the bilious angry young scribe wing of pub rock Costello/Graham Parker/etc

wrote some good songs, i only have excitable boy, but i like it....although there's something about him that leads me to think he maybe under performed to a degree, i sometimes wish i liked it more.

lawyers guns and money is a jam.

~Rae

[3-LockBox]

Here is what some other people said on some other, lamer board, just to get things started:some dude that had 3LB's thoughts before he had them

basically...

[Swish]

Here is what some other people said on some other, lamer board, just to get things started: ~Rae

He was a very good songwriter and a pretty good performer, at least from what I saw. He played a couple shows in Northeast PA when I lived there, and I'm ticked that I missed the first one. The music critic from the W-B Times Leader, and he's a pretty good dude, said it was one of the best shows he'd ever seen, and that was when he was swilling a fifth of vodka or whatever a day.

I saw him years later in an all-acoustic show after he dried out and it was pretty good actually, although not in any of my personal 'top 10' categories. He did most of the familiar stuff from "Excitable Boy' and 'Sentimental Hygiene', and some stuff I'd never heard. I was never a big fan, but always liked him, and Excitable Boy was one record I used to play over and over back in my college days.

On a side note, his opening performer at the show I saw was Chris Whitley, and as fate would have it, Whitley also died from lung cancer about 2 years after Warren passed away.

Swish

[Mr MidFi]

The excellent Stand in the Fire live album was finally released to CD for the first time this year, and it came with some excellent bonus tracks from the same show(s). If you're a Zevon fan, it's well worth getting.

[Rae]

Damn, some of these songs are jams. My neighbors are probably incensed at the volume I've been playing "Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School" over the last couple of days (swear to god I'll change, guys). This morning started off to "Play It All Night Long" and I feel hell of melancholy and down on the world.

~Rae