Excitable Boy [ORIGINAL RECORDING REMASTERED]

Warren Zevon

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 27, 2007)
• Original Release Date: March 27, 2007
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered
• Label: Rhino / Wea
• ASIN: B000MGV9WA
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,999 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
It's really too bad that Warren Zevon had to die before hearing how spectacular his albums sounded in these latter-day remasters. Excitable Boy remains his best-known document, awash with blood and guts (especially on the horror-laden title track) and a famous, phenomenal touch of lycanthropy. The trick is in Zevon's ironic distance, his dispatch of killer narratives that touch on mercenary internationalism and undeserved indulgence in due course. Zevon's writing is musically simple--pianos and guitars and mid-tempo pacing--and those touches here only underscore how crisp the remastering sounds. To wit: The raucous undertow of "Lawyers, Guns, and Money" is delirious and ironically rhapsodic. As for "Werewolves of London," it's here twice (once in the expanded rack of four additional tunes) in all its tilted glory. As for the other extra content, "I Need a Truck" is the short gem, a 50-second a cappella litany of Zevon's raffish ways: "I need a truck to haul my percodan and gin" and one to "haul the womens from my bed," he sings... followed by this apt note, "I need a truck to haul my body when I'm dead." He had a mordant side. --Andrew Bartlett

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Warren Zevon hits his early peak!, March 31, 2007

By	Tim Brough "author and music buff" (Springfield, PA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

More than anyone else in the whole El Lay songwriter movement of the late seventies, Warren Zevon had absolutely no problem with getting a good laugh at the expense of the insularity of it all. And on his second proper album, he took the whole scene and turned it properly on its backside. "Excitable Boy" threw in a mix of werewolves, mercenaries, drug abusers and paranoid spoiled brats, yet while frequently offering exceptional tenderness and insight. It was easy to see why Jackson Browne was his mentor and Linda Ronstadt his patron angel.

A song as reckless as the album's title track could come from nothing less than genius. The chirpy sweet background vocals and sugary melody buoy the dark tale of a murderous high school student who kills on the night of his junior prom. "Hotel California" this most certainly wasn't. At the same time, "Accidentally Like a Martyr," with its stately piano line, encompasses the horror of a sunken love affair in barely three and a half minutes. These juxtapositions carry all the way through "Excitable Boy," with only one misstep in the CD's nine songs (the forced funk of "Nighttime In The Switching Yard").

Warren Zevon made several other great albums, but "Excitable Boy" was the moment that his youthful exuberance and a mind uncluttered by too many foreign substances produced a stunner. As a document of the California Sound that Elektra/Asylum records was known for in the seventies, this is indispensable.

The remaster is stunning. The piano to "Accidentally Like A Martyr" just leaps out of the mix (where before it seemed kind of flat). The same can be said for "Nighttime In The Switching Yard." What originally sounded compressed now sounds so much livelier. The bonus tracks are only so-so, with the alternate take of "Werewolves" being somewhat interesting and "I Need A Truck' humorous but unnecessary. What you really want here is the original album, and "Excitable Boy" is worth the remastered wait.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Learned this album through a wall, January 4, 2008

By	mashny "mashny" (New York) - See all my reviews

When I was a college freshman in 1984, my next-door neighbor was a sophomore who would blast this album almost every day, and scream the lyrics to every song along with Warren Zevon. Within a few weeks I was singing out loud along with both Warren and my neighbor (I knew the words by heart already). When Christmas vacation came, and I had time to do something other than study, this album was my first purchase. I loved it the first time I heard it (in chorus...), and I love it today. It's irony, humor, politics, lyrics, melodies... make it just as brilliant and worthwhile today as it was more than twenty years ago.

I love all the songs, but agree with the reviewer who said that "Night Time in the Switching Yard" is the only weak song on the CD. In "Excitable Boy," I always laugh at the juxtaposition of the line "and he raped her and killed her, then he took her home" and the "sing songy" way in which the line is sung.

I would recommend this CD to anyone, especially those who appreciate great lyrics and the macabre.

Thanks, Jim, wherever you are, for introducing me to this album.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Remastered and Expanded 'Excitable Boy', November 17, 2007

By	John Nobbs (Norwich, UK.) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

An excellent remaster of Warren Zevon's consistently good 1978 album. Sound quality is much improved, and it's worth having for the alternate version of 'Werewolves of London' alone. It sounds like the guys (Mick Fleetwood and John McVie included) are having a bloody good time, belting out the whacky gem, in what sounds like a studio run-through.

Recommended.