Mr Bad Example

Aged 53 and looking it despite the blue jeans and unkempt hair, Warren Zevon returned to Ireland after a seven-year absence. He seemed for all the world like a stray dog in new surroundings: initially cautious, he eventually made himself right at home. Zevon's profile of late has been virtually horizontal, but his new album, Life'll Kill Ya, has proved to be a hit of sorts. In real terms, this meant a respectable show of hands from the fans, appreciative applause and futile shouts for Tenderness On The Block.

Armed with a small array of keyboards and a miked-up acoustic guitar that he battered the bejesus out of, Zevon played a few tracks from the latest album and peppered the rest of his all-too brief set with best known songs from the past 20-odd years.

I Was In The House When The House Burned Down was treated to a vocal arrangement that was more than likely under doctor's orders. Poor, Poor Pitiful Me was plaintive, nerve-wracking and beautiful. Detox Mansion was typically acerbic. Zevon's signature tunes, Excitable Boy and Werewolves Of London, were summarily dismissed as songs he might end up playing at a remote hotel in 20 years' time. For My Next Trick I'll Need A Volunteer was poignant and rough, while his "self-fulfilling prophecy" song, My Shit's Fucked Up was scrubbed clean with a skeletal blues treatment that stunned.

Throughout, Zevon barked out between-song one-liners like Groucho Marx with a nagging toothache. He finished with a cracking version of Lawyers, Guns And Money. An aural version of a Carl Hiaasen novel, here's hoping we see Mr Bad Example again before he reaches 60.