Warren Zevon

An excellent starting place for anyone new to Warren Zevon's craft. In addition to acidic radio hits such as the hilarious and catchy "Werewolves of London," A Quiet Normal Life offers some of the songwriter's best album cuts, revealing his often overlooked talent for killer melodies and penchant for rocking out.

Unlike so many songpoets, Zevon's a real writer, and as lyrics his ravers hold up better than his songpoems. So this is where Warren the Rocker kicks Warren the Poet's butt. Though the selection forgives more reveries than one might prefer, they function as a well-earned respite from dementia; only "Accidentally Like a Martyr" throws up the kind of tuneful fog Linda R. fell for on the tastefully omitted (again--maybe he knows something) "Hasten Down the Wind." Because he inhabits his tricksters, blackguards, and flat-out psychotics rather than reconstituting variations on a formula, he tops his boy Ross Macdonald any day. Thompson gunner, mercenary, NSC operative, werewolf, easy lay, he puts his head on the tracks for penance, and when the train doesn't come gets up and hurls himself against the wall of the Louvre museum. Really now, could Ross Macdonald imagine such a thing? (Grade - A-)