So, the subject matter should be no surprise - death, thinking about death, making some peace, and saying goodbye on your own terms. But The Wind is not a sad or morbid album. "Dirty Life And Times" and "Numb As A Statue" are great guitar-driven rock songs. "Disorder In The House" explodes out of the speakers. The album is loaded with songs with otherwise near-clichés that become as relevant as life and death: "The Rest Of The Night" would just be a mindless party song, but "we never may get this chance again" became a literal truth.

There are three effective pleadings to lovers who have left or are thinking about it - "She's Too Good For Me," "El Amor De Mi Vida," and "Please Stay." "Please Stay" are "two words I thought I'd never learn to say" and has the sweet voice of Emmy Lou Harris (OK, one mention) and some smooth late-night jazzy sax action that hasn't shown up on of his discs before and makes for a truly ethereal moment.

Two songs are among the strongest he's ever written musically and lyrically and deal with death head on. "Prison Grove," about a convict with a death sentence and no hope of a call from the governor, contains "knick knack, paddy whack - they say you'll hear your own bones crack - when they bust you back to bible black - then you'll find your love" then a background chorus moans darkly in the background. The dirty blues crunch of "Rub Me Raw" summarizes the end, finding Warren "shaking all over - I'm a shattering mass - but I'm gonna sit up straight - I'm going to take it with class." And he does.

The most poignant moments on the disc are when Warren is singing "open up for me" during the closing of his perfect cover of "Knocking On Heaven's Door" and the opening of "Keep Me In Your Heart" - "Shadows are falling and I'm running out of breath...if I leave you it doesn't mean I love you any less" - and it's very appropriate that this was the last song he recorded. If you're not crying or at least fighting tears, you aren't human.

You can get mad that Warren only got this attention at the end because of the circumstances, and maybe I was briefly. But I'm glad that he got to finish the album; that he let VH1 film some studio time so we could see; that David Letterman was such a good friend to his music over the years; and that Warren got to see the album released and get such a good response. Warren deserves no less.

Goodbye, Warren. Thanks for "Desperadoes Under The Eaves," "Genius," "Accidentally Like A Martyr," and "Empty-Handed Heart." Thanks for that great show in Providence on the Sentimental Hygiene tour. You are missed. I'm enjoying the sandwiches.

[Post Grammy comment - well, two Grammy awards for Best Hard Rock Performance with Bruuuuce and for Best Contemporary Folk Album. Jordan Zevon gave a very classy acceptance speech. The way how the awards show tributed WZ was very nice and touching.]

Death Be Not Proud
Imagine you're a musician doing what you love best for what could be the last time. You are dying and you know it. This was Warren Zevon's situation when he recorded THE WIND. Death had to be on his mind every day and it would have been understandable if he had put together and album full of dark ruminations on life and death and lots of weepy, woe-is-me dirges. But this is Warren Zevon, a man with a wicked sense of humor and someone who loved life more than he ever feared death. THE WIND is at once remarkable and typical Warren.

THE WIND does have to be listened to in the context of Warren's death, however. It gives his cover of "Knockin on Heaven's Door" a depth and weight that Dylan himself could not. And it turns a line like "let's party for the rest of the night" from a corny throwaway into a defiant celebration of life. Joining Warren in this celebration are his many friends -- Ry Cooder, Don Henley, Billy Bob Thornton, and Dwight Yoakam on "Dirty Life and Times," Bruce Springsteen on the barroom romp "Disorder In The House," Jackson Browne, T-Bone Burnett, Thornton and Springsteen on the moody "Prison Grove," Tom Petty on the lively "Rest of the Night," Emmylou Harris on the plaintive and beautiful "Please Stay," and Joe Walsh on the blues epic "Rub Me Raw."

When the party's over and all the guests have gone and all the goodbyes have been exchanged, Warren sends us off with the best song on THE WIND, "Keep Me In Your Heart," which is worth the price of the disc alone. Warren sings softly "If I leave you it doesn't mean I love you any less," and "sometimes when you're doing simple things around the house, maybe you'll think of me and smile." That lump in your throat is proof of Warren's talent. He will be missed.

My Name Is Zevon: I Killed Myself; Now I Plot To Evoke Pity!
Let's-for the 1st and only time in this enormity of reviews-weigh the grossly poisonous reaction from rabidly hyperventilating, suspicious Zevon fans. 230 reviews with ratings all oppressively stressed to the maximum venom of perfect five stars?!?!?!?! This inarguably reveals the easily misled suggestibility of the excess of 230 varying reviewers, which is so shameful, it's sad. I despise to spoil the party of obliviousness that's occurring here with the untamed, postmortem and late fan "appreciation" of Zevon, but to ANY impartial observer, one who hasn't been seized control of by the feral hypocrisy of the media preying on a relatively MEDIOCRE "entertainer's" death, all these 230 reviews are a SHAM.

When an "entertainer" dies, even an old-timer nobody like Zevon, the press has a soulless frenzy in exaggerating him to be repugnantly more than what his status really was!!!! To the unconscientious media, the death of even barely recognizable figures is the equivalent of the most exploitable Godsend bounty arriving!!!! This is all part of the press' calculated stratagem to trick naïve morons to part with their money, as the press embezzles incrementally more business from putting the gimmick of purportedly "famous" persons deaths in their headlines, which they hopefully plan will draw some contemptibly impressionable triflers concerned with only celebrity-oriented lightness. I've contradicted myself; it's an outrage that the media, in the first place, manhandled Zevon's decease to embellishment, for he was obscurely unknown in the least, a session musician at a salacious best!!!!

This segues into where I admonish you 230 reviewers. I chide you as the most disreputable pawns of media propaganda who submissively bought this, now irrelevant, obsolete "musician's" CD, at the solicitation of news outlets who fooled you into believing Zevon was noteworthy, which is a distant cry from what he really was!!!! I accuse that you 230-strong are insincere double-dealers who never heard of Suicide until he stigmatically leaked the publicity stunt of conceding his mortality was inevitable, which raises additional suspicions. How dare Zevon disseminate unwanted news of his impending death, when, because of his unremarkable rank, no one would've cared, much less noticed!!!! This implicates you 230-strong as the most surrendering, imaginarily trendy sheep who subserved the media's plot-for-their-own-personal-gain, to hype Zevon after he killed himself, to a misused, patsy exercise.

Inspecting Zevon's, for lack of better term, "body-of-work", more defamation's instantly slung at the 230-strong who laughably capitulated to irrational sensationalism regarding dead "musicians'" works escalating in value, that the media preyed on them with. Black-Lung Zevon was THE single biggest, obscure underachiever. This news-imposed, misleadingly liked "artist" sucked so foully that his 1st mismanagement at an album FAILED TO SELL Diddlysquat!!!! Another tarnish is how, after 34 years in the "biz", Zevon still couldn't crawl his way into mainstream. Consider the insinuation of Zevon finding it beyond himself to improve, despite it being an effortless side-effect of evolution after 33 years of limiting your personal scope to the same boring hamper. For the sake of your pop culture-dictated, dependent mentalities, Zevon was unpromisingly extorted to take a road-job as musical director, and sucked more so filthily that his 2nd album wasn't attempted until 7 years later!!!! His unreliable, intermittent working was due to another offense: his alcoholism!!!! This disease cost him 5 years from his 3rd album. Another agitating bane was Zevon being such a subserviently dependent parasite, relentlessly pleading for excesses of perversely diverse musicians to artificially escalate the value of his sup-par CDs. This is the ashamed hallmark of musicians suffering from LACK of name-recognition, since Suicide tempted everyone from overrated Lindsay Buckingham, warped Bob Dylan, and homosexual Michael Stipe to support him on all his undeservingly called major-label releases. Self-destroyer "returned" in 1987 with Sentimental Hygiene, whose songs from that session were dishonestly recycled for another below-average CD in 1990-denigrating Zevon ANOTHER few years of INERTNESS!!!! Add to these the crippling injury of Suicide squandering 5 more years until Mutineer, which was spurned, then wasting 5 MORE years for his cold-received CDs until 2000, and you've arraigned a demeaning man having an obliviously unrecognized "career"!!!!

Zevon must practice liberalism/socialism. Self-destroyer-presumably not functionally retarded-disowned the meanest of basic common sense regarding his LIFELONG SMOKING HABIT. He's the indiscriminately prototypical poster-boy for moronically scorned liberals/socialists who non-conformingly jeopardize themselves because of liberal/socialist thinking cancers, which dictate they'll never be responsible for their actions and/or can shift the blame. Zevon's ominously close to being lowered onto the stereotype of chronic smokers who kill themselves, then, in irrational vindictiveness, whose families sue tobacco companies immoderately. Zevon's kids should just huffily-in abnormal dissatisfaction-sue, confirming this hippie liberal's culpability!!!! You 230-strong are discomfortingly suffering from the LOWEST manifestation of hero worship-in your cases, sacrilegious idolatry of a frailly hampered, small-name studio musician, which progresses the outrage even more.

This irreligious idolism of yours is venomously baneful. Be warned that your succumbing, media-incited hyping of a ghastly unknown studio musician is potentially lethal to other impressionably naïve clowns reading your amoral reviews. You're sensationalizing Suicide's vice so inordinately, your unlawful glorification of his incompetently unrestrained self-destruction is furious. Other gullible liberals/socialists who're trapped reading your reviews will be scammed that smoking unrepentantly and crushingly one's whole life is the way to enlightenment and nirvana!!!! Since you 230-strong sadistically specialize in needily depending on self-destructed musicians, AT LEAST have the grudgingly half-decent (because sinful idolism's censurable NO MATTER who you subject yourselves to) sense and taste to idolize someone whose music isn't as tragically vomitous as Self-destroyer's!!!! I command you to idolatrize Kurdt Kobain, AND NO ONE ELSE, because at least his music didn't suck, comparable to your lowness of Zevon hero worship, that is. The last and final insult which overstepped the line for me is Zevon's four-eyed face on the jacket of Breaking Wind. This cancer-afflicted suicide is blatantly plotting to capitalize on feloniously easy, subdued, weak sympathy from liberals!!!! Zevon accomplishes this by scornfully plastering his soon-to-be-deceased, cancerously tumorous prison mugshot on the sleeve.

Zevon's place in music
I must take issue with The Nemean Lion Of Herculean Bitterness' review, although he is certainly entitled to his opinion. Zevon certainly was on the fringes of the music world, but that does not make his body of work an less remarkable. Listen to LIFE WILL KILL YA, MY RIDE'S HERE, and EXCITABLE BOY and tell me that this man wasn't a lyrical and vocal genius. While some people may feel squeamish about Zevon's openly confronting his impending death, I admire the courage it took him to persevere and make this album. Songs such as "Please Stay," "Keep Me in Your Heart," and "Prison Grove" hold their own against many of his other classic performances. By the way, Mr. Zevon actually died of asbestoses rather than smoking, although admittedly the smoking probably didn't help.

Not good because he's passed, good because it'll last
Warren Zevon passed away, and while I admit that it might have helped in his record sales/popularity of the album, that should not take anything away from the high quality of the album itself. For the Bitter Lion witch and the wardrobe who gave it one star I truly wonder what kind of music you listen to because it can not be any type of folk/rock because you'd know the strength of these songs. While not complex in the songs themselves they are sung in a way that makes me think of Tom Waits. They are sung with soul, not from a man who was on his last legs, but from a man that still had years of singing left to do. Warren may not have been a household name for many, but the fact that so many great artists helped make this record should speak volumes to the respect he had in the music world. He was more then just a session player, and this record shows that. Songs like "please stay" and "she's too good for me" are sung with feeling and any record that someone puts there heart and soul into while like he did deserves respect.
The Wind is like an X-ray with a dark shadow that shouldn’t be there and can’t be ignored. Recorded after Zevon was diagnosed in 2002 with inoperable lung cancer, it sounds like the work of a guy who's still fighting, but also starting to wrap things up. Although Zevon is best known for his poison-dart wit, he’s always been a bit of a softie, too. It’s no surprise, then, that The Wind leans heavily on irony-free ballads such as "She’s Too Good for Me," "El Amor de mi Vida," and "Please Stay." But there’s also a dose of defiant blues ("Rub Me Raw") and plenty of dirty slide guitar, courtesy of Ry Cooder and David Lindley. (Other guests include Bruce Springsteen, Don Henley, Tom Petty, Jackson Browne, and Dwight Yoakam).

If the lyrics generally lack the literary precision of Zevon’s best work, the songs take on greater weight given the circumstance under which they were recorded. Heard in 1983, a party-hearty anthem like "The Rest of the Night" would’ve sounded like yet another dumb argument for hedonism, and "Numb as a Statue" might have come off as the self-lacerating joke of an alcoholic unable to deal with his emotions directly. However, on The Wind, these songs are genuinely touching, the work of a guy deadened by meds but unwilling to surrender to The Big Sleep just yet. A cover of Dylan’s "Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door" is the album’s most direct comment on Zevon’s fragile health, but the most touching song is the album-closing acoustic ballad "Keep Me in Your Heart," recorded by Zevon at home after the star-studded studio work was complete. Clearly, Zevon survived one hell of a farewell party last night, but now it's morning again and there’s no telling what the rest of the day might bring. --Keith Moerer