No, Warren, we haven’t forgotten you guy.
1. Werewolves Of London – This isn’t just a template for every howl on every song up to and including Shakira, it is also the concept behind every horror comedy where the laugh turns into a sob up to and including “Being Human”
2. Carmelita -When Saint Motel can write LA songs this good, Saint Motel can not put my writers on their guest lists. Till then they should gather every one of those local bands together and listen to Warren Zevon. Except for Wavves, Nathan knows it even if he hasn’t quite executed it yet.
3. Searching For A Heart – A Zevon masterpiece with one of his bittersweet chorus. I mean, either a reference to love that “you can’t start like a car…” is so, er, mechanical, either it is high end satire or low end poetry.
4. Looking For The Next Best Thing – No doubting the satirical nature of this thing. The problem with Zevon is as he funs soft rock cali style he simultaneously falls into it.
5. The Rosarita Beach Beach Café – Off the post-humous demo album. All booze, girls, and border towns.
6. Nightime In The Switching Yard – Disco Zevon!! Nails the rhythm down. The vocals? Not so much.
7. Boom Boom Mancini – A pounding blues rocker about the blue collar concerns of white collar rockers. A highlight of the live show.
8. Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner – It’s sorta a folk song about a mercenary.
9. Genius – Art rock middle finger.
10. Hasten Down The Wind – Just piano demo to remember you how little anybody had to add to it.
11. Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door – Better then Dylan’s original, better then anyone elses version. The gold standard. “Open up, open up…”
12. Accidentally Like A Martyr – A nursery rhyme about love the destroyer.
13. Please Stay – Like the buttons on your coat , it falls away even as Warren holds on for dear life.
14. Lawyers, Guns And Money – The central song of the Carter administration.
15. Reconsider Me – Zevon as King of MOR
16. The Factory – In which Warren pisses all over the Bosses boots. I can’t say enough about this song putting to sting to Springsteens fake blue collar bullshit.
17. Raspberry Beret – Warren takes it seriously and rocks Prince out.
18. Excitable Boy – A theme song. Zev was first kin to Raymond Chandler: a great California cynic, with a code of ethics which wouldn’t allow him to waltz into the 70s party without pointing out the price they would have to pay.
19. Desperadoes Under The Eaves – This is one of the greatest songs ever written. Indisputably the greatest West Coast song that doesn’t have Brian Wilson’s name on it. How do the air conditioners go again?