Well, the Number One record on my Put-In-Out-On-CD-Before-Our-Civilization-Crumbles list came out Tuesday. Warren Zevon's "Stand In The Fire."
This thing shows just what a live record can be (something other than a Greatest Hits record with clapping between the songs), and it shows a side of Zevon that was hidden by the Seventies California-ness of his studio albums. Here, the songs get a treatment that really matches the subject matter, where the polished production of the studio stuff always seemed at odds with the material. That juxtaposition can certainly be cool (especially on something like "Excitable Boy"), but I prefer the edge you get here.
Rather than take his usual session musicians out on the road, a newly sober Zevon found a Colorado bar band that leaned heavily on Zevon covers, supplemented them with lead guitarist David Landau, and hit the road to promote "Bad Luck Streak In Dancing School." The resulting album--recorded at The Roxy--came out my senior year in high school, and I played it almost constantly. My vinyl copy has a pop toward the end of "Mohammed's Radio" that drives me nuts.
On the CD, Rhino's given us four bonus tracks, tacked onto the end of the original LP sequence. At first, that bugged me. Why not put them in the context of the show? But once I heard them, with Zevon clearly out of breath and hoarse on stuff like "Frank And Jesse James," I see that they made the right decision.
So, now that this one's out on CD, I'll start campaigning for Number Two on my CD want list: the soundtrack to "Hawaii Five-O."
