Besides being the bloodthirsty black sheep of the Los Angeles Mellow Mafia, the late
Warren Zevon was also a classically trained musician who tinkered with symphonies and wrote string quartet pieces to bridge several of the songs on his 1980 release
Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School. All of which suggests that a collection of his songs arranged for a classical string ensemble might be a good idea, but
The String Quartet Tribute to Warren Zevon: Daddy, Get Me Out of This sure isn't much of a testament to the man's music. The track listing leans toward
Zevon's better known tunes, not all of which stand up well to the treatment, while leaving out songs that would likely have benefited more from a string arrangement, such as "Frank and Jesse James," "The Indifference of Heaven," or "They Moved the Moon." The arrangements are not especially imaginative, with the lead violin following the vocal melody from
Zevon's recordings and the rest of the ensemble sawing away in a manner befitting the rhythm section on most of this album. And there's not even a real string quartet on these recordings;
David Davidson holds down first-chair violin, while Todd Mark Rubenstein overdubs everything else, and the credit for an audio sampling library in the liner notes lends some weight to suspicions that you're hearing a synthesizer rather than real strings on several tracks (most notably "Detox Mansion"). If you're looking for a set of
Zevon tunes you can play at dinner when your folks come to visit,
The String Quartet Tribute to Warren Zevon: Daddy, Get Me Out of This will fill the bill, but beyond that, this disc does little to honor the man's musical legacy. ~ Mark Deming