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Rating: Errors may perhaps be forgiven, but not forgotten. And that's called regret.
Or perhaps they can be forgotten, but not forgiven. And that is called remorse.
I have never seen Warren Zevon perform live. And that is for me a HUGE regret, knowing as I do that there will never be a remedy for this, because unfortunately (and it's already been eight years, which seem like eighty) "...even Hope, the last goddess, flees the tombs". But more than that, it is a TERRIBLE remorse. I have seen concerts plenty of: super famous, famous, moderately known, obscure, very obscure, undetectable by sonar. For some of these, I’ve traveled several hundred kilometers, but many, perhaps too many, have left no trace, forgettable and forgotten. If I could, I'd put them all together, I'd add a nice sum of good ones as a tip, maybe a couple of excellent ones, and even the gold medal from my first communion in exchange for the opportunity to see just one of Warren Zevon.
[Aside: for me, Warren Zevon is to rock what Sam Peckinpah is to cinema, or Cormac McCarthy is to literature. He and a few others (very few, almost none) managed to satisfy my thirst for a rock that knows how to be both spectacle and reflection, plot and the pleasure of writing, thought and action, gut and brain, muscles and heart. He (maybe only he) was able, in the middle of a round stanza or a well-crafted chorus, with a sharp guitar and a simple four-beat drum, to sketch memorable figures of the comédie humaine of all times and places: outlaws and cowboys of the old West, merciless mercenaries, Chicano proletarians, urban werewolves, drug-addicted double-zeros, and even tormented boxer-philosophers. Someone who in three lines could craft with equal ease and effectiveness "social" sketches ("Send lawyers, guns, and money / The shit has hit the fan...") or "personal" ones ("Everybody's at war these days / Let's have a little truce / I need a little sentimental hygiene"). Roses blooming in the desert. So suddenly, so simply. End of aside].
Therefore, putting aside regrets and remorse for a moment and closing my eyes, every now and then I HAVE to play this live album of his from 1981, a compilation of five shows across five days held in his beloved/hated Los Angeles. Calling it sheer bliss is an understatement, with the poet disguising himself as a stage animal to surprise us one more time. Even his big voice and piano ballads on which much of his monument is built, those with heart in hand and dusty Texan boots, gain an emotional surplus that's hard to believe. In essence, all of his best songs, masterpieces from those first three albums (actually four, because there would also be the false start of the 1970 debut "Wanted: Dead or Alive", but soon consigned by everyone, author included, to oblivion) plus a couple that had never been edited before now cease to be beautiful girls with intellectual glasses that make your head spin in the library; instead, they dress up for the evening, heavy makeup and high heels, marvelous and swaying night prostitutes that don't have to try too hard to lure you. What they lose in intimacy they regain with dividends in muscularity, accelerated by a metronomic, pounding drum, a boogie piano of a steamroller, all enhanced by the amalgam of a sumptuous band on which the swooning guitar solos of David Landau stand out. Little or nothing here of Dylan, Waits, or the buddy Jackson Browne (understood, the best one). Instead, a bit of Reed, a lot of Springsteen (understood, the best one, the one who at the time would stay on stage for five hours straight) and a great deal of Jim Carroll. And if there must be a cover, then let it be the fundamental rawness of a Bo Diddley. Distillate of rock. Essence of rock. The kind that the older it gets, the better it is because it does NOT age. The kind that is at once a car chase at 200 miles per hour like Kowalski or a descent into the underworld with Marlon Brando, Jack Daniel's, and Lucky Strikes. And above all, it is sex with (at least) two with whoever you want. Let it be all about this one here, only and always 5 million stars to her and Zevon, because even today at the millionth listen, it manages to make me feel like an excitable boy.
Everything else is masturbation.
Maybe your manager didn't tell you, Warren, but tomorrow night he arranged a concert. At my house.
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