Warren Zevon Transverse City CD

24-bit digitally remastered reissue of 1989 album includes collaborations with Bob Dylan, Jerry Garcia, Jackson Browne plus the bonus track 'Networking' (acoustic version). Virgin. 2003.

Personnel: Warren Zevon (vocals, guitar, harmonica, piano, keyboards); Waddy Wachtel (acoustic & electric guitars); Jorma Kaukonen (acoustic guitar, background vocals); Mike Campbell (guitar, mandolin); Jerry Garcia, David Gilmour (guitar); David Lindley (lap steel guitar, saz, oud, background vocals); Howie Epstein (banjo, mandolin); Mark Isham (flugelhorn); Chick Corea (piano); Benmont Tench (organ); Bob Glaub, Jack Casady, John Patitucci (bass); Jorge Calderon (bass, background vocals); Richie Hayward (drums); Neil Young, J.D. Souther, Jordan Zevon (background vocals).
Producers: Warren Zevon, Andrew Slater, Duncan Aldritch.
Recorded at Mad Hatter Studios, Los Angeles, California. Includes liner notes by David Wild.
Personnel: Warren Zevon (vocals, guitar, harmonica, keyboards); Waddy Wachtel (guitar, acoustic guitar); Mike Campbell (guitar, mandolin); David Gilmour, Jerry Garcia, Neil Young (guitar); Jorma Kaukonen (acoustic guitar); David Lindley (lap steel guitar, oud, saz); Howie Epstein (banjo, mandolin); Mark Isham (flugelhorn); Chick Corea (piano); Benmont Tench (organ); Richard Hayward (drums); Rob Jaczko (percussion).
Audio Mixers: Rob Jacobs; Rob Jaczko.
Audio Remasterer: David McEowen.
Liner Note Author: David Wild.
Recording information: A&M Studios, Hollywood, CA; Broken Arrow Ranch, La Honda, CA; EMI Abbey Road Studios, London, England; Le Club Front, San Rafael, CA; Mad Hatter Studios, Los Angeles, CA; Paisley Park, Minneapolis, MN; Red Zone Studios, Burbank, CA.
Photographers: Jimmy Wachtel; Jonathan Exley; Nels Israelson.
Released in 1987, Sentimental Hygiene rescued Warren Zevon from record industry limbo and returned him to major-label status, but rather than return to the rough-and-ready sound of that album, he used his new corporate patronage to finance a significantly grander and darker project, 1989's Transverse City. The album features an impressive array of guest stars -- including Jerry Garcia, David Gilmour, Neil Young, Jack Casady, Jorma Kaukonen, and Benmont Tench -- but while its surface is as glossy as the albums Zevon created when he was the darling of the L.A. Mellow Mafia, the tone is as grim as anything the man ever created. Transverse City is a song cycle about a culture in collapse, in which technology has become our unfriendly master, the sky and stars have grown unfamiliar to us, conflict lurks around every corner, and our last remaining freedom is the right to spend our money. Zevon does aim for black humor here and there, most notably in the sly "Networking" and the tongue-in-cheek consumer anthem "Down at the Mall," but more typical is the dread of "Run Straight Down," the urban paranoia of "Gridlock," and the title song's celebration of a land where "life is cheap and death is free." The album's sole note of compassion is the final cut, "Nobody's in Love This Year," and even that song is a rueful meditation on a time and place where solace is a scarce commodity, and it's a fitting closer for an album that digs so deeply into the dark and bloody heart of the last days of the Reagan era. Transverse City didn't fare well at the marketplace -- no great surprise given the album's unforgiving themes -- but it deserves rediscovery as one of Warren Zevon's most ambitious and uncompromising achievements. ~ Mark Deming
Warren Zevon's seventh regular studio album began with the title track, "Transverse City," a dystopian vision of the future as an urban nightmare, a place of "endless neon vistas" and "castles made of laser light." The first of two songs co-written with Stefan Arngrim, it proved actually to be Zevon's take on the modern world, not the world to come, as he followed its portrait of "the clergy of the mall" with the song "Down in the Mall," where "You buy everythiRolling Stone (9/4/03, p.146) - 3 stars out of 5 - "...Zevon is in strong voice, and his dreaming...now rings like fact."