Warren Zevon ~ 1999 October 31 ~ Somerville Theatre ~ Somerville, MA
Warren Zevon, vocals, guitar, keyboard, harmonica; opening act, Stephen Smith, vocals, guitar, fiddle
Set List
(guitar) I Was In the House When the House Burned Down - Mr. Bad Example - Porcelain Monkey - Detox Mansion - Poor Poor Pitiful Me - Even a Dog Can Shake Hands - My Shit's Fucked Up - Jeannie Needs a Shooter - (keyboard) Seminole Bingo - Excitable Boy - {unknown piano blues boogie} - For My Next Trick I'll Need a Volunteer - Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner - Werewolves of London - (guitar) - The Barricades of Heaven {Jackson Browne} - Ourselves To Know - Play It All Night Long ... encore ... From a Distance {Bette Midler} - Lawyers Guns & Money
Concert Review
Warren Zevon was a musical favorite of mine in earlier years, when his hits "Werewolves of London" and "Excitable Boy" were all over the radio. I had only seen him in concert twice before, once back in the drinking years with a band at a club in Boston, and a much improved solo show at the Cape Cod Melody Tent in 1994, during the time when he was starting to record and release albums that weren't the commercial success of his earlier years, but featured, to my ear at least, more varied songwriting and cleaner production.
I bought three tickets in the tenth row and attended with two friends, one of whom abandoned us and found an unoccupied solo seat way down in the front row, and was briefly heckled by Warren when he requested a song that just simply wasn't on the set list. It was a fun day to go to a Zevon show -- what better concert to see on Hallowe'en? I suggested to my two concert going partners that we should wear constumes, and perhaps we should dress as "lawyers, guns, and money," but the idea didn't go past the being praised stage. One of the friends I went with was my longtime friend Leigh, with whom I attended many a show back in my pub crawling youth. The Somerville Theater is a sometimes movie theater, sometimes concert venue, and a fancier place to see a show than many of the other venues I've been frequenting in recent years.
The show was a combination of some of Warren's newer songs, plus some of the older crowd favorites. Warren seemed resigned, but not too happy, that he is basically required to play his older, more popular songs, and combined some of them into medleys so that he could both please the crowd and get through them quickly so that he could play more of his newer material.
He did two covers, "Barricades of Heaven" by his musical partner Jackson Browne, and "From a Distance" by Bette Midler. The latter got a mixed reception from the audience, some of whom were apparently amused by his choice of this soft ballad. To my thinking it shows Warren's range and his willingness to try something new.