Search - Warren Zevon :: Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School

Reading the book? Buying the reissues? Don't overlook "Bad L

John Stodder | livin' just enough | 05/06/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Tracing Warren Zevon's career from his self-titled "first" album, to this one, you can certainly see some slippage. "Warren Zevon" represented the fruits of several years of writing songs in obscurity -- great songs, as it turned out. "Excitable Boy" didn't have as many good songs, but it had enough, and it was zesty and captured its moment, bringing the pugilistic spirit of Norman Mailer, Hunter S. Thompson or Ernest Hemingway into rock for the first time. "Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School" is actually a better album than "Excitable Boy," but at the time it came out it was treated like a disappointment. Musically, it is as sophisticated as "Warren Zevon." The string interludes are actually quite beautiful. The sad ballads "Empty Handed Heart" and "Bed of Coals" are quite affecting and artful. "Gorilla You're a Desperado" and "Play it All Night Long" are two of his funniest lyrics, and the title tune is efficient and cinematic in its depiction of a loser running out of luck in an unlikely place. "Bill Lee," about a maverick baseball player of the 1970s, is a brief song in three parts, a perfect little profile in music and words. The two weakest songs are "Jungle Work," which strikes me as a rehash of the great "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner," and "Jeannie Needs a Shooter," which is supposedly a collaboration with Bruce Springsteen (but I don't believe it.) But they are listenable -- you don't skip them. I love the final track, "Wild Age," a hard-rocking meditation on the fear parents have that their kids might go bad and never come back. Can't help but think he was worrying about himself as well as his kids, because as we know, he was trying and failing to deal with his alcoholism at this time.



Like "Excitable Boy" and a few of his other albums, this one is full of guest musicians, rock royalty of the late 70s. The best of them are Linda Ronstadt, a lovely duet partner on "Empty Handed Heart" and part of the background chorus on "Bed of Coal," and David Lindley, who fires up several songs here with his broad-gauge slide guitar.



This is a record that will grow on you. It doesn't fulfill the promise of that first album (the one with "Poor Pitiful Me" and "Desperados Under the Eaves," but it's his attempt to get back there, and when it works, it's fine."

Thanks Warren

John Stodder | 03/23/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I think that being a performing artist is a tough job. Aside from having to produce art, your personal changes are chronicled and discussed publicly. Warren made this record during his "tumultuous" period. Sometimes times of crisis give birth to incredible product that would have been impossible to create absent the madness. Look again at Rolling Stones' Black and Blue, a ridiculously great and underrated collection that was recorded during Keith's worst times. Personally I put Warren Zevon in a musical brilliance and accomplishment class with Keith Richards, Bob Dylan, and Louis Armstrong. Recognized or not, Warren laid it down. This record is from the early phase and is volatile and full of wonder. Empty-Handed Heart is perfect and might have merited inclusion on Genius and the Anthology. Warren of course evolved in his later, sober years into the musical giant who created Mutineer, Life'll Kill Ya, and My Ride's Here. But you don't get those until you've lived with this one, Excitable Boy, the Envoy, and Sentimental Hygiene. The ride's the point, and Warren is the American master."