Warren Zevon - Sentimental Hygiene
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Free Music Notes for Sentimental Hygiene
Free Music Review: Sentimental, for sure
Hit: 5 Stars
Working on a Warren Zevon session was not as crazy as one might think. I was doing overdubs on a project that would later become Warren Zevon's Sentimental Hygiene. Niko Bolas was the main engineer on the session and I was a big fan of his work. I did simple overdubs on the sessions and yet those days were magic for me. Reconsider Me, was the one song that has stayed with me and perhaps always as a profound musical piece of the soul. This record will be the only time (as brief as it was) I've gotten close enough to Warren to shake his hand and smile to the music he created that day in the studio. I am a Warren Zevon fan and will always be.Free Music Review: Warren Zevon is a Hindu Love God
Hit: 5 Stars
The late Warren Zevon was one of America's great songwriters. His acidic wit and poignant prose is fueled here by his recent detox visit to the Betty Ford Center and his newfound kinship with REM, who backed him on this release(and also recorded with him as the HINDU LOVE GODS). Getting clean and sober never rocked so good as it does here. Zevon's smokey baritone voice is in top form, the production is supreme and there are contributions from the usual suspects (Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Brian Setzer, George Clinton)Free Music Review: Sentimental for Zevon
Hit: 5 Stars
This is another great Zevon album. I had the LP and just bought the remastered version on CD. Maybe it's just me but the title track Sentimental Hygiene, well I just can't get it out of my head since the first time I heard it years ago. Check it out dog..5 stars! It's worth the price of the CD just to crank it up and rock out to it.
Free Music Review: Excellent Zevon Comeback
Hit: 4 Stars
I can't over-state how good this cd is. An impressive comeback from the depths of substance/alcohol abuse. The best songs here do rank up there with the older Zevon classics. The remastered version sounds excellent. Bonus tracks don't add much. Half dozen great songs on it. Nothing bad. More definitive bonus tracks would have been nice. A solid 4-1/2 stars. Here are my favorites: Boom Boom Mancini (Greatest boxing song ever).
Sentimental Hygiene (Neil Young guitar propels this tune).
Detox Mansion (Humor in a serious subject).
Even A dog Can Shake Hands (A suit and tie doesn't make an honerable person).
Leave My Monkey Alone (Sounds good).
Reconsider Me (Reflection on past relationship mistakes. Is the door still open?).
Free Music Review: "THERE'S A SADNESS IN THE HEART OF THINGS"
Hit: 3 Stars
Although I'm not a hardcore WARREN ZEVON fan, I owned several of his albums back in the era of Licorice Pizza (vinyl records). And I did catch him live once in the late '80s - a fairly mundane performance, and this in his adopted hometown of Los Angeles. When I sold off my LPs and made the transition to compact discs, his eponymous debut was the only recording I reacquired.
On vacation this past July, I heard SENTIMENTAL HYGIENE in a store and bought a copy; it having reminded me of my youth and those daze of "Liquid Sedation."
I've never listend to ZEVON for the music. He's not terrifically "musical" and his sandpaper-edged vocals lack range. It's Zevon for the lyrics; for his wry take on life. He was Rock's Grim Reaper on Laughing Gas! Zevon's writing didn't just put angst on the table, it presented it as the entree, but usually with rich jocularity sauce ladled over the top for seasoning. A 12 ounce glass of arsenic. . . .with a "twist" of humor (or perhaps that ought to be, "with a twisted humor.") He always gave us the WAR-IN-ZEVON : that interior knockdown, drag-out struggle of a slightly warped man in a totally insane world.
Overall, this is the warped boy's hardest rocking disc. After a much publicized stint in rehab for drug and alcohol abuse, this was a "comeback" album designed to show that he had indeed gotten up off the canvas swinging! For me, the standout tracks are :
BOOM BOOM MANCINI -- A thunderous anthem to the lion-hearted, Youngstown, Ohio pugilist. It is driven by an appropriately over-amped, bruising guitar hook and uppercut! I can still remember the car radio announcement that informed me of Mancini's 14 round loss to Alexis Arguello in 1981. I bawled for the brawler. But then I was "LIQUIDATED" at the time - some evil man at Dodger Stadium having sold me 2 beers an inning for 9 innings. (Don't hate me; I wasn't driving!)
THE WAR-IN-ZEVON : "Some have the speed and the right combinations; if you can't take the punches, it don't mean a thing."
RECONSIDER ME -- A plaintive and moving ballad sung straight on the rocks....no "twist."
THE WAR-IN-ZEVON : "If it's still the past that makes you doubt, darlin' that was then and this is now. Reconsider me."
BAD KARMA -- A very funny song about picking up the gauntlet thrown down by life and coming to grips with disillusionment.
THE WAR-IN-ZEVON : "Was it something I did in another life? I try and try but nothing comes out right for me. Bad karma, killing me by degrees."
EVEN A DOG CAN SHAKE HANDS -- Ya gotta love the enthusiastic energy of this one. It starts out with "YEAH!! WOO-OOO!! HEEEEEY!!" Good stuffs about the tie-wearing parasites in the music biz. Now, if you've lived in L.A., you know that the San Fernando Valley is where you take up residence just prior to limping out of town with yer head down and yer tail tucked between yer legs. So it's pretty funny when our singer is warned to play the game properly or he'll "end up dead, living in The Valley someday." As though the two are synonymous.
THE WAR-IN-ZEVON : Abandon all hope and don't rock the boat, and we'll all make a few hundred grand. Everybody's trying to be a friend of mine. Even a dog can shake hands."
THE HEARTACHE -- Another ballad on the rocks, no "twist." The subject is unrequited love, which in common parlance means, "unsuccessful open-heart surgery." The Heartache contains one of the greatest lines in song : "THERE'S A SADNESS IN THE HEART OF THINGS." This one line has haunted me ever since I first heard it in 1987. In all these years, not a month has passed that I didn't find myself silently reciting it in response to some unfortunate situation, or while merely contemplating the setting of the sun. If you don't get it, then consider yourself lucky and rejoice in your insensitivity.
THE WAR-IN-ZEVON : "There's a sadness in the heart of things," of course! Why, it's only the most poignant moment on the entire album!
I rarely award 5-Stars, but I could have given SENTIMENTAL HYGIENE 4-Stars if the songs that I don't care for, I felt merely neutral about. But I actively dislike DETOX MANSION, Zevon's noisy, irreverent attempt to make light of his drug and alcohol rehab. To plagiarize one of his earlier songs : "It ain't that funny at all." The attempt at humor sounds forced. I once wrote a poem called, 'The League Of Soul Crusaders' which included the lines, "THESE BOYS DON'T CRY WHEN THEY SHOULD / AND LAUGH / WHEN THEY SHOULDN'T." Detox Mansion is a prime example.
One of my pet peeves in music is when lifelong Rock Stars with Champagne and Brie on their breath sing about the tough life of 'the working man.' Boys, give it a rest! Don't let your conscience convince you that we need to hear your understanding. If you want to sing to us about how difficult it is to have 13 groupies a night, but only 2 hotel suites, or how the bad roadie forgot to remove the brown M&Ms from the backstage candy bowl, or how room service is too slow at the Hilton, fine. But don't be telling us about punching a time clock with the bossman looking over your shoulder! Don't gripe about the 8 to 5 'blue collar' life because you don't know it like we do! (Are you listening Paul Simon, Jackson Browne & Bruce Springsteen?) Zevon commits this cardinal Rock Music sin in the unconvincing and unmusical THE FACTORY. Aside from all that, the first four lines are poorly conceived : "I was born in '63 / Got a little job in the factory / I don't know much about Kennedy / I was too busy working in the factory." (Give that some real thought.)
Overall, SENTIMENTAL HYGIENE is a very solid effort. His self-titled, WARREN ZEVON, however, remains his essential release, which includes his real masterpiece, DESPERADOS UNDER THE EAVES, and CARMELITA with its reference to the infamous "Pioneer Chicken Stand." Which, incidentally, once stood on the Southeast corner at Alvarado and Montana Streets in L.A., a few blocks north of Echo Park. The spot is now just the upper corner of the Vons Supermarket parking lot. But if any of you Zevon diehards ever make the pilgrimage to this 'legendary' location, don't tell anyone that you heard from Stephen T.; I hear they're still hunting me.