Japanese limited edition issue of the album classic in a deluxe, miniaturized LP sleeve replica of the original vinyl album artwork. Album Description
 |  | I'll Sleep When I'm Dead book review |  |
Very interesting. It gives some good details into the life of Warren zevon, showing the things that tortured, but created the artist. You learn alot about the man.
May 20, 2007 | | Reading the book? Buying the reissues? Don't overlook "Bad Luck Streak..." | |
Tracing Warren Zevon's career from his self-titled "first" album, to this one, you can certainly see some slippage. "Warren Zevon" represented the fruits of several years of writing songs in obscurity -- great songs, as it turned out. "Excitable Boy" didn't have as many good songs, but it had enough, and it was zesty and captured its moment, bringing the pugilistic spirit of Norman Mailer, Hunter S. Thompson or Ernest Hemingway into rock for the first time. "Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School" is actually a better album than "Excitable Boy," but at the time it came out it was treated like a disappointment. Musically, it is as sophisticated as "Warren Zevon." The string interludes are actually quite beautiful. The sad ballads "Empty Handed Heart" and "Bed of Coals" are quite affecting and artful. "Gorilla You're a Desperado" and "Play it All Night Long" are two of his funniest lyrics, and the title tune is efficient and cinematic in its depiction of a loser running out of luck in an unlikely place. "Bill Lee," about a maverick baseball player of the 1970s, is a brief song in three parts, a perfect little profile in music and words. The two weakest songs are "Jungle Work," which strikes me as a rehash of the great "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner," and "Jeannie Needs a Shooter," which is supposedly a collaboration with Bruce Springsteen (but I don't believe it.) But they are listenable -- you don't skip them. I love the final track, "Wild Age," a hard-rocking meditation on the fear parents have that their kids might go bad and never come back. Can't help but think he was worrying about himself as well as his kids, because as we know, he was trying and failing to deal with his alcoholism at this time.
Like "Excitable Boy" and a few of his other albums, this one is full of guest musicians, rock royalty of the late 70s. The best of them are Linda Ronstadt, a lovely duet partner on "Empty Handed Heart" and part of the background chorus on "Bed of Coal," and David Lindley, who fires up several songs here with his broad-gauge slide guitar.
This is a record that will grow on you. It doesn't fulfill the promise of that first album (the one with "Poor Pitiful Me" and "Desperados Under the Eaves," but it's his attempt to get back there, and when it works, it's fine.
May 7, 2007| | | Play them all night long! | |
This album did not spawn many hits as 1978's EXCITABLE BOY did. On the cover we see the late Warren Zevon,who died of lung cancer in 2003,standing inside of a dancing studio filled with beautiful female students. The only memorable song is PLAY IT ALL NIGHT LONG,which would appear on the compilation,THE BEST OF WARREN ZEVON-A QUIET NORMAL LIFE. The lyrics are pretty much silly("Grandpa pissed his pants again,he don't give a damn."). How about "Grandpa's doing sister Sally,Grandma's dying of cancer now."? Isn't that silly? PIALN is a ode to Lynyrd Skynyrd and their signature song SWEET HOME ALABAMA. Another lyric from the song is "play that dead band's song". Three LS members were killed in a plane crash in the seventies. The other songs are cool.
March 5, 2005| | | Warren Zevon's Third Great Album In A Row | |
BAD LUCK STREAK IN DANCING SCHOOL is Warren Zevon's third great album in a row. Zevon had gone clean and sober for the first time when this CD was recorded, and it didn't dull his sense of humor one bit. On the title track, he examined his bad habits in a sarcastic manner which anyone with ANY addiction (drugs, alcohol, tobacco, food, caffeine) can understand, while "Jungle Work" humorously describes mercenary violence in a way that inspired me to do what I need to in order to remind myself that "carb" stands for the names of four politicians who support such actions (Cheney, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Bush). The other songs are all great, too, and you should pick up this CD.
July 31, 2004A couple of years ago, some friends and I were talking about the top 3 albums we would want if we were stranded on a desert island (with power, of course). My #1 choice would be "Bad Luck..." Zevon's classical training shines here, colliding with his off-the-wall lyrics, resulting in perfection.
June 1, 2004More reviews at Amazon.com ...
(15 reviews)