Ry Cooder alternate take "Prison Grove": An alternate guitar solo. Warren, Billy, and Dwight "Dirty Life and Times" session: The three musicians joking around about the drugs Warren now takes legally, It came across as a lame joke, and I can see why it didn't make it into the finished product. Thompson: A short segment in which Warren tries to get VH-1 to pay for a trip to Aspen to see his friend Hunter S. It runs 5 ½ minutes, and includes him talking about fan's reaction to the news on the internet. A good interview.Ĭherokee Interview: An extended scene where Warren is talking outside of the recording studio one night. Warren talks about how he writes songs, the themes in his music, and his friends. Music Videos: There are videos to "Keep Me in Your Heart" and "Disorder in the House."Įxtended Interview 1: A 3 minute interview with Zevon where he talks about the success of Werewolves and how it effected him.Įxtended Interview 2: This was a nice set of clips totaling 25 minutes. They wouldn't have made the show better if they had been included, but it's nice to see them as extras. Most of them are extended and cut interviews and scenes that were filmed. There are a lot of good extras on this DVD. It wasn't so bad as to be unwatchable, but I was hoping for more. Aliasing was very evident, and there was a little macroblocking in the background. The lines were not clean and there were a lot of video artifacts. Being a documentary, I'm willing to cut them a little slack, but I was hoping for a cleaner image. The DVD is in widescreen, but not enhanced for 16:9 televisions. They sounded flat and thin instead of hard and pounding like the album. The music segments were really lacking punch. Occasionally someone would turn away from the microphone and it would be hard to hear what they were saying. Given the documentary nature of this DVD, there is a lot of dialog, and that most of it was easy to hear. ![]() Yes, it is sad in parts, and painful to watch Warren get weaker as the cancer takes its toll, but he is so focused on his work, and so happy to have each day, that his delight in being alive shines through.Ī great documentary, and one that is a testament to a great musician. The surprising thing about this documentary is that it is not depressing. While there are only excerpts from the program shown, it allows you to see how little he let his discomforts effect his performance. It shows you how difficult it was for Warren to make the cross country trip, and how hard doing the show was. The film covers Warren's last appearance on "Late Night with David Letterman." Letterman was a good friend of Zevon's and he was the only guest for the entire hour. The scenes of Bruce jamming in the sound booth were great. It was great to see these big names come to the aide of a friend in need. There are appearances by many of Zevon's friends who helped him with his last album, including Bruce Springsteen, Joe Walsh, Jackson Brown, Tom Petty, Don Henley, and Billy Bob Thorton, among others. Interspersed with entries from Warren's diary, this show is mainly interviews with Zevon himself, and 'fly on the wall' looks at the recording sessions. ![]() It is a sad thing to see, but Warren stays cheerful throughout, cracking jokes and always smiling. As time goes on, he gets weaker and weaker, and grows more frail. It is amazing to see how positive Warren is throughout the film. The 45 minute program, which originally aired on VH-1, follows Warren as he works in the studio with some of his friends and chronicles his last days. This DVD is a documentary recording his struggle to finish his last album, The Wind. His doctors gave him three months to live.Įschewing chemotherapy so he could concentrate on finishing one more album before he died, Warren got to work. He had an inoperable form of cancer, and there was not hope. Then I heard that Warren Zevon was going to die. I just didn't have the time to sit down an listen to an album the way I used to, or even have it on as background music. Somewhere along the line, as the years passed and CDs replaced LPs, my music buying slowed down, and eventually stopped. I would eagerly await each new album and play it over and over until I had memorized each line. ![]() I saw him two more times over the years, and even jumped up on stage after he left to snag his discarded guitar pick. The next day I started acquiring his albums as fast as my meager funds would allow. The amount of energy and enthusiasm he put into the show left me awestruck. I had heard a few of his songs, and a friend was excited about the show, so I decided to tag along. I first saw Warren Zevon in concert twenty years ago. "We love to buy books because we believe we are buying the time to read them."
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