I'm listening to Warren Zevon's The Wind, the great man's last album, and it's beyond heartbreaking. It's beautiful, stirring, emotionally riveting, and I'm tempted to say the best Zevon has delivered in awhile, but maybe I'm just getting carried away. Zevon always delivered strong albums -- sadly, no one much noticed except me and a few other people here and there. Earlier this morning I was listening to Mutineer, which has great stuff, including two of his best songs: "Seminole Bingo" and "The Vast Indifference of Heaven." The latter, of course, is especially striking in light of what happened -- I wonder if he took that thought with him to the grave. Somehow, I doubt it. Or maybe that's just me, hoping; I naturally yearn for people to make amends with God before the end -- preferably long before but definitely before the lights go out for good.

I am strongly considering -- and have been for some time -- writing a very long piece about Warren Zevon and all that his music has meant to me. He was some kind of a genius: Raymond Chandler meets rock and roll, you might say, which I'm sure someone has said before. I need to get all my thoughts together about Zevon; his death affected me as few celebrity passings do. I would have loved to have written about him for the Free-Times; unfortunately they had other plans. You can imagine my grief when the chosen reviewer began by saying something like "I don't know much about Warren Zevon..."

More later.