Given The Name Of My Blog And Everything

I should probably mention that Warren Zevon is keeping very busy now that he's dead. Two albums have come out this month for the first time on CD. The Envoy, which contains the track Looking For The Next Best Thing, and Stand In The Fire, which I consider one of the great live albums the energy of it is just overwhelming.

The Envoy has a couple of stand-out tracks and it's certainly good to have on CD, but there's something about Zevon's songwriting in this period that seems to trade on clichés and past glories occassionally becoming, I don't know, downright twee. For all Hunter S Thompson's love of Hula Hula Boys (and mine) it can't stop it from being just a bit silly. His, surely, drunken lurch through Wild Thing is an unexpected treat, though.

Stand In The Fire is Zevon live with a band. Really live. He's almost a force of nature. Later in life he just toured on his own with a handful of instruments and the document of that, Learning To Flinch, shows a reflective Zevon taking a stroll through his back catalogue of great songs. There's no such reflection on Stand In The Fire Warren just struts through some of his rockier stuff with great abandon.

Also released a remastered version of Excitable Boy, the one with Werewolves of London on, which has four bonus tracks along with a much clearer, cleaner sound that breathes some new life into a classic album that's worth listening afresh to.