I'll Sleep When I'm Dead

Just watched the Warren Zevon special on VH1 and I'm swimming w/ emotions -- happy at just how good he sounds on the record (it's not a fluke, and yes, I have them all) -- pissed that it took him dying of cancer to get the recognition that he has long deserved -- and truly amazed at his attitude through it all.

Having been through a similar situation w/ my friend and bandmate Clay Vause, the sessions w/ Warren in the studio were a painful reminder that I never finished the last sessions that IRB did together. After Clay died (about six months after the recording) it was entirely too much to even think about listening to his voice again. Even after six years, it's only been recently that I can even listen to the music again. I'm not even sure what happened to the tapes, let alone where to find a machine to play them (16 track / 1" I believe).

There are three unreleased IRB songs, provisionally titled "nowhere fast", "sandman" and "angels" -- I say provisionally because Clay always had the gift of taking what would have been the easy route of naming the song after the chorus, and turning it into something far more interesting -- for example on "Big-Bang Payoff" there's a song we had always called "Shine" during the demo recording, live shows, etc -- but when it came time to put it on the record, it magically became "Drive A Stake Through My Heart, Kitty!" The other classic was "Claustrophobia" which became "Which Oswald Acted Alone?" -- one that still makes my head hurt today.