Warren Zevon passed away a few years ago now, and the music world still misses him. Listen, I’m not going to pontificate on the greatness of Zevon, considering that I only own a couple of records. What I will say is that my only contact with Zevon live was a Bob Dylan concert back in 2002, when Zevon was still alive but his health rapidly fading away due to terminal lung cancer.  Dylan, in tribute, played two Warren tracks that night, “Accidentally Like a Martyr,” and “Mutineer.” They were odd moments, sure, but the message stood. Warren Zevon was a great songwriter that got famous from one song, “Wearwolves of London,” but wrote some of the most twisted and endearing songs in rock n’ roll history, yet never achieved the type of fame that those songs deserved.

Excitable Boy is like a case study in bi-polar disorder, LA style. At parts touching and endearing, and at other times scathing, sneering, and very funny. It’s a little bit of Randy Newman, a little bit of Jackson Browne, and a little bit of the Beach Boys, but it copies none and stands on its own.

Zevon was in a lot of ways a bizzarro Springsteen. Where as Springsteen had cultivated the image of a clean, working class boy making good by writing songs about the characters of every day America, Zevon cultivated more of a wild man image. He penned tunes about the lives of Americans, yes, but they were hardly your average American. No, Zevon’s characters were blood thirsty rebels, psychopathic prom dates, wearwolves eating Chinese food, and paranoid heirs getting into trouble abroad.

Take for instance the character in “Excitable Boy.”

He took little Suzie to the junior prom. Excitable Boy, they all said. Then he raped her and killed her and he took her home. Excitable boy, they all said. Well he’s just an excitable boy.”

This is sung with bubbly background vocals by Linda Ronstadt and a ripping sax solo. The music is so happy, hook laden, it makes you snap your fingers and clap your hands. But then, it’s about a boy who raped and killed someone, and then ten years later, dug up her grave and made a cage with her bones.

That’s Warren Zevon, though. He is the embodiment of all of those paranoid, dark, voices that drove Brian Wilson crazy all those years ago. And Excitable Boy is where everyone in America discovered him.