| | Warren Zevon CD Warren Zevon Discography of CDs
 (3 Customer Reviews)
Zevon actually released a record prior to his celebrated self-titled "debut," a record so bad that he took to touring with the Everly Brothers. Whatever he did on the road with them paid off. He returned to recording with bone-rattling West Coast tales of prostitutes, heroin addicts, outlaws and suicidal bar hoppers. Thus, Zevon went, with one record, from playing piano on "Bye Bye Love" to becoming supreme chronicler of L.A.'s underbelly.
Easily his richest and most consistent album, this is arguably the best place for the uninitiated to start. The deranged romp of "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" and the tongue in cheek masochism of "Poor, Poor Pitiful Me" introduced the world at large to the darkly sardonic edge of the singer's muse. From the romanticized "Frank and Jesse James" to the starkly beautiful "Desperadoes Under the Eaves," the album rolls with an insightful (albeit sometimes crazed) sense of purpose.
Live Recording
Recorded at Elektra Sound Recorders and Sunset Sound Recorders, Los Angeles.
Personnel: Warren Zevon (vocals, guitar, piano, keyboards); Jackson Browne (vocals, guitar, slide guitar); Richard Wachtel, Glenn Frey, Lindsey Buckingham (vocals, guitar); Jai Winding (vocals, piano, keyboards); Don Henley, J.D. Souther, Gentlemen Boys, Jorge Calderon, Phil Everly, Rosemary Butler, Stevie Nicks, Carl Wilson, Bonnie Raitt (vocals); Ned Doheny, Waddy Wachtel (guitar); David Lindley (banjo, violin, fiddle); Sid Sharp (strings); Bobby Keys (saxophone); Gary Mallaber, Larry Zack (drums).
Audio Mixer: John Haeny.
Recording information: Elektra Sound recorders, Los Angeles, CA; Sunset Sound, Hollywood, CA.
Unknown Contributor Role: Sid Sharp.
Arranger: Warren Zevon.
Personnel includes: Warren Zevon (vocals, guitar, harmonica, piano, electric piano); David Lindley (guitar, slide guitar, banjo, fiddle); Waddy Watchel (guitar); Jackson Browne (slide guitar, piano, background vocals); Jai Winding (piano, organ, synthesizer); Bobby Keys (saxophone); Bob Glaub, Marty David, Roy Marinell (bass); Larry Zack, Gary Mallaber (drums); Phil Everly, John David Souther, Lindsay Buckingham, Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Stevie Nicks, Jorge Calderon, Bonnie Raitt, Rosemary Butler (background vocals).
Rolling Stone (p.129) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "WARREN ZEVON captures the singer-songwriter at his peak as a black humorist."
Uncut (9/03, p.96) - "Zevon's hardboiled reputation for chronicling LA's underbelly starts here..."
Dirty Linen (p.54) - "A song cycle about Southern California, WARREN ZEVON offered a hard-living, gambling, drug-taking contrast to the songs about the sun and surfing."
Record Collector (magazine) (p.105) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "[I]t's perhaps surprising that the caustic attitude and uncomfortably forthright eloquence were so fully formed so early on." Warren Zevon Music | List Price | $7.98 (You save $1.99) | | Category | Rock Albums, Rock/Pop CDs, Singer/Songwriter | | Label | Elektra | | Orig Year | 1976 | | All Time Sales Rank |  4069  | | CD Universe Part number | 1095258 | | Catalog number | 1060 | | Discs | 1 | | Release Date | May 19, 1992 | | Studio/Live | Studio | | Mono/Stereo | Stereo | | Producer | Richard Wachtel; Jackson Browne; Warren Zevon | | Engineer | Kent Nebergall; Fritz Richmond | | Recording Time | 37 minutes | | Personnel | Bobby Keys - saxophone
Jai Winding - piano, organ, synthesizer
Bob Glaub
Rosemary Butler - background vocals
Gary Mallaber - drums
Jorge Calderon
Warren Zevon - vocals, guitar, harmonica, piano, electric piano
John David Souther
Waddy Watchel - guitar
Larry Zack - drums
Roy Marinell - bass
Marty David
Also: Don Henley, Don Henley, Glenn Frey, Bonnie Raitt, David Lindley, Jackson Browne, Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, Phil Everly, Waddy Wachtel, J.D. Souther, Carl Wilson, Sid Sharp, Richard Wachtel, Gentlemen Boys |
Warren Zevon Music Review Average Rating: (4.7 out of 5 stars)   There Goes the Neighborhood
There’s something very comfortable and familiar about Warren Zevon’s major label debut, but also something distinctive that sets it apart from the Southern California Soft-Rock sound of the last half of the nineteen-seventies. What’s familiar is way that Asylum/Warner artists such as the Eagles, Jackson Browne and Linda Ronstadt shared writers and musicians. The compositions of writers such as Jackson Browne and J D Souther were often shared among the Asylum/Warner artists. And Zevon’s band members (including David Lindley, Waddy Wachtel, Bob Glaub and Larry Zack) were session regulars. So Zevon enters this laid back group of “oh ain’t Southern California such a lovely place” musicians, and he’s ready to make a statement! Zevon’s picture of Southern California ain’t so sunny; in fact, its gloomy, puzzling and strewn with casualties. There goes the neighborhood.
The James Brothers reek havoc on the locals (Frank And Jesse James), Zevon’s mom abandons him and runs away with a gambler, and there’s this little S&M thing going on in ‘Poor Poor Pitiful Me.’ Instead of watching another Tequila Sunrise, Zevon can’t even make it out of bed (Carmelita). And his “outlaw” image surfaces on ‘Desperados Under The Eaves.’ Southern California may not be the land of dreams, but Zevon is not about to be beaten by the grim landscape (I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead). His fanatical effect on the normally laid back band is contagious: ‘Poor Poor Pitiful Me’ and ‘I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead’ rock like a California earthquake (sorry, but I just had to sneak in an earthquake metaphor). More surprises? They just never end. Waddy Wachtel’s guitar has never been better (except for the debut of his own band Ronin). Pop master Lindsey Buchingham and half of the team who invented two-part vocal harmony (Phil Everly) drop in to lend some musical exuberance to Zevon’s doom and gloom perspective.
Zevon pretty much crashed the Southern California Soft-Rock wine and cheese party, and things would never be quite the same. Welcome to Zevon. Welcome to the eighties.
Submitted by a reviewer (Baltimore, MD, USA)
Was This Review Helpful? Yes No 2 of 2 found this helpful.
 Warren Zevon at the peak of his career.
I didn't even know Warren Zevon until the late 80's, by that time, Warren was on the downside of his career. "Werewolves of London" was the first Zevon song that I can recall hearing, I'm sure that I heard some of his songs before "WOL", I just don't remember them. The music on this CD is from 1976, and in my opinions, it's Warren at his best. My favorite tracks are "Hasten Down the Wind", "The French Inhaler" and "Carmelita", which is my all time favorite WZ tune. The album is produced by an upstart Jackson Browne. This CD is best listened to in a darkened and quiet room, the mental images are the best part of listening to this album!
Submitted by Steve Hazzard (Wilkes-Barre, PA, USA) 
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WARREN Z LIVES ON
If you are a dyed-in-the-wool Zevon fan as I am, there just isn't enough product ever. I have this on vinyl from 1976, I believe, and now on CD, I listen to it often. This was the real beginning of a great career. He is a genius songwriter and musician. I can't get enough of this album. If you are a fan, 'nuff said. Get it now. If you are not a fan yet, try it, you will be surprised.
Submitted by gary (Burbank CA)
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Purchase Warren Zevon CD To buy, Click on price to add to cart | Warren Zevon Excitable Boy CD (1978)
Warren Zevon album
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The terrain is unsettling, bizarre and often soaked with blood. Stalking across the landscape are pina colada-sipping werewolves, headless mercenaries, and desperate gamblers. That the sound and overall musical mood of the record is upbeat underscores Zevon's ability to attach a winning melody to a gallow's tale. The home runs are the instantly memorable "Werewolves of London," the murderous glee of "Excitable Boy," and the affecting "Accidentally Like a Martyr." The inclusion of obvious filler cuts detract from the overall focus of the record but that is a small complaint. After all, it takes a special man to turn a tale of rape and murder into a cheery singalong.
Warren Zevon came roaring out of the '70s touchy-feely California ...
| | Warren Zevon Bad Luck Streak In Dancing School CD (1980)
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BAD LUCK STREAK IN DANCING SCHOOL finds Warren Zevon knee deep in his own literary yet sardonic and grotesque music. From the opening riff of the title track, Zevon pounds and rocks against the tide of typical singer-songwriter blather. Zevon swings his mighty piano through an array of countrified boogie, bare-knuckle rockers, absurd pop, and swooning ballads. He hits the mark with the doomed love of "Jeannie Needs a Shooter" (title supplied by Springsteen), which became a minor hit upon its release. There are a few missteps, mainly the forced funk and overwrought machismo "Jungle Work."
He turns his sights on country life on "Play it all Night Long," invoking incest, cancer and Lynyrd Skynyrd ...
| | Warren Zevon Sentimental Hygiene CD (1987) Remastered
Warren Zevon music CDs
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West Coast based songwriter Warren Zevon emerged from middling activity and high-strung excess with SENTIMENTAL HYGIENE, his strongest record in years. The album zooms with renewed vigor, well placed cameos, and Zevon's trademark mix of black humor and heartache. Things kick off with the chugging title track, highlighted by a stinging solo from fellow iconoclast Neil Young. Zevon then turns his chronicler's eye towards the boxing ring with the gripping "Boom Boom Mancini."
From there it's Springsteen territory "Working at the Factory" with Bob Dylan supplying the harmonica breaks. R.E.M. turns up on the jaunty "Even the Dog Can Shake Hands," which takes passing pot shots at hanger's on. Never one to wallow in self-pity, Zevon turns his forked tongue inward on "Detox Mansion." His alcohol rehab experiences bubble over the top in the alternately hilarious and gripping song, resulting in the album's funniest, hardest hitting and ultimately, most rewarding moment.
After a rather well-publicized fall off the wagon following the release of The Envoy, Warren Zevon went five years without releasing an album, but his time in the woodshed seemed to have done him good, as Sentimental Hygiene was his strongest album since Warren Zevon in 1976. While a few members of the ...
| | Warren Zevon Wind CD (2003)
Warren Zevon songs
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THE WIND won the 2004 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album. "Keep Me in Your Heart" was nominated for Song Of The Year and for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. "Disorder in the House" won for Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal and was also nominated for Best Rock Song.
With the specter of a terminal lung cancer diagnosis hanging over his head, Warren Zevon responded by rallying to make THE WIND, an album that found him working with longtime collaborator and friend Jorge Calderon, shortly after getting the news. The result is a tight group of 11 songs wrapped up in a year, despite a diagnosis that only gave Zevon three months to live. Along the way, plenty of famous names--both friends and fans--pitched in, including Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, Emmylou Harris, Jackson Browne, Dwight Yoakam and Don Henley. Allusions to his situation are naturally sprinkled throughout, whether it's partying in the face of doom ("The Rest of the Night"), using a self-penned blues song to look back with no regrets ("Rub Me Raw"), or pledging his eternal love ("El Amor De Mi Vida"). Even Zevon's cover of "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," avoids the pitfall of sentimentality as he can be heard ...
| | Warren Zevon Envoy CD (1982) Bonus Tracks; Remastered
Warren Zevon album
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While moderation was never Warren Zevon's strong suit, his efforts to clean himself up in the early '80s resulted in two of his finest albums, 1980's literate but corrosive Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School and the following year's explosive live set Stand in the Fire. It seemed as if the wired chaos of Zevon's personal life had been channeled into his art on those LPs, but after another bout with the bottle and another attempt at sobriety, Zevon tried another approach at merging his music and his life on 1982's The Envoy. On The Envoy's best songs, Zevon tackles his dangerous appetites head on; "Charlie's Medicine" is a chilling requiem for a drug dealer who used to sell him dope, "Jesus Mentioned" is a spare but curiously moving meditation on the death of Elvis Presley, who "went walking on the water with his pills," and the ragged but right "Ain't That Pretty at All" is an unlikely but powerful recovery anthem in which he howls "I'd rather feel bad than not feel anything at all." When Zevon confronts his own demons on The Envoy, the album is intense and compelling stuff, but unfortunately there aren't enough of these moments to prop up the rest of the set, which is smart and literate but not especially exciting. Novelist Thomas McGuane co-wrote "The Overdraft," a hard-charging rocker that unfortunately doesn't make much sense, while the ...
| | Deep Purple This Time Around: Live In Tokyo 1975 CDs (2001)
Warren Zevon CD music
$14.89
The Mark IV lineup of Deep Purple was the last before this innovative heavy metal band's initial 1976 breakup. By this time, a variety of factors were sounding the death knell. Vocalist David Coverdale, guitarist Tommy Bolin, keyboardist Jon Lord, bassist/vocalist Glenn Hughes, and drummer Ian Paice were facing business and personal pressures, and these things inevitably affected Deep Purple's music. The Mark IV Deep Purple's last concerts in Japan occurred in December 1975, and Bolin's severe drug and alcohol addiction would kill him one year later. The final Japanese show was recorded and released in that country and a few others in a severely edited form in 1977. Finally, 2001's two-CD set This Time Around: Live in Tokyo '75 captures the entire concert with remixed and remastered sound. Some good moments occur, but so do sloppy ones from an enormously talented yet obviously drained group. Musically speaking, Lord and Paice make notably valiant efforts to hold it all together. Coverdale's voice is strong in spots while dodgy in others. Hughes' bass playing is reliably solid, but the less said about his shrieking vocals the better. Bolin's gift is obvious, but his guitar work sometimes misses the mark on the Ritchie Blackmore-era material. "Burn" and "Love Child" are respectable, and the 16-minute ironically titled ...
| | Crystal Method Community Service CD (2002)
Warren Zevon music CDs
$14.25
Most folks know the duo Crystal Method best as a genre-blending duo famed for mating electronica with pop, rock, and hip-hop. Scott Kirkland and Ken Jordan have always presented themselves as a band, rather than a transient electronic "project." Nevertheless, the pair apparently couldn't resist using their dancefloor smarts to create their first remix album, COMMUNITY SERVICE. Here they incorporate tracks by everyone from fellow electronica maven Orbital ...
| | Elliott Murphy Strings Of The Storm CDs (2003)
Warren Zevon songs
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At age 54, Elliott Murphy has been recording albums of his original compositions regularly for 30 years, and unlike some musicians who have been at it that long (such as Neil Young, whose raucous, Crazy Horse-style guitar playing is echoed on this album's leadoff track and whose After the Gold Rush ballad "Birds" is covered under the title "Bird"), he hasn't changed much about his musical or lyrical approach in that time. The Elliott Murphy of 2003 is not very different from the Elliott Murphy of 1973. He still writes semi-autobiographical songs full of poetic imagery and literary references (The Great Gatsby and Samuel Beckett are favorites), and he still sets them to folk-rock arrangements that call to mind Bob Dylan. If one thing has changed, it is that, for the first several years of his recording career, Murphy worked for major labels that presumably gave him bigger recording budgets and exercised some degree of editorial control over his work. But over the last couple of decades, he has been making his albums for small labels, doubtless recording on a shoestring at times, but pretty much able to do as he liked. The sprawling Strings of the Storm is as good an example of this as any of his albums; in fact, perhaps a better one than most. It is a two-CD studio recording of 21 new original songs (in addition to "Bird," there is a cover of the traditional song "The Banks of the Ohio," for a total of 23 tracks), with a running time over an hour and three-quarters. Murphy leads an acoustic band for the most part, playing his guitar and accompanied by lead guitarist Olivier Durand (whose efforts, which also include a handful of co-writing credits and some singing, earn him a featured billing on the album), longtime bassist Ernie Brooks, and drummer Danny Montgomery, with some added percussion and keyboards here and there, notably Kenny Margolis' accordion, plus frequent harmony vocals by Cindy Bullens. Singing in a gruff conversational voice, Murphy frequently expresses romantic regret, especially in the songs on the second disc, his rueful world-weariness ...
| | Rusty Anderson Undressing Underwater CD (2005)
Warren Zevon album
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When you've done a lot of work as a session player, you learn to get good at a lot of different things, and for over 20 years Rusty Anderson has been playing guitar with a dizzying variety of artists, ranging from Cher and Ricky Martin to k.d. lang and Paul McCartney. So once the guy finally goes into the studio and cuts an album all his own, it's no great surprise that the results are, to say the least, a bit eclectic; Undressing Underwater is rooted in hard rock guitars as well as the quirkier avenues of 1960s pop, sounding too hard and chunky for power pop but with a rich and imaginative melodic undertow that reveals an intelligence and wit you wouldn't get from a typical shred-meister. Anderson also puts a stronger emphasis on his songs than his guitar work; while he makes it clear he's got the skills on the fretboard (especially on the surf-centric ...
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| | Charles Mingus Let My Children Hear Music CD (1972)
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