Preludes: Rare and Unreleased Recordings

Preludes: Rare and Unreleased Recordings
Compilation album by Warren Zevon
Released	May 1, 2007
Recorded	Pre-1976
Genre	Rock
Length	86:34
Label	New West
Producer	Peter Jesperson, Jordan Zevon, Cameron Strang, Danny Goldberg
Warren Zevon chronology
Reconsider Me: The Love Songs (2006) Preludes: Rare and Unreleased Recordings (2007)

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic	[1]
The Austin Chronicle	[2]
Gaffa	[3]
Now	[4]
Örnsköldsviks Allehanda [sv]	[5]
The Philadelphia Inquirer	A−[6]
PopMatters	7/10[7]
Record Collector	[8]

Preludes: Rare and Unreleased Recordings is a two-CD compilation of music and interviews, including unreleased outtakes and demos, by singer-songwriter Warren Zevon, who died in 2003.

A few months after Zevon's death, his son, Jordan, drove out to one of his father's storage spaces in the San Fernando Valley to begin the process of sorting through old recordings. He discovered over one hundred unreleased outtakes and demos in a piano-sized touring case.

Preludes features sixteen of the newly discovered recordings, including six tracks never before released on any Warren Zevon album: "Empty Hearted Town", "Going All the Way", "Steady Rain", "Stop Rainin' Lord", "Studebaker" and "The Rosarita Beach Café". All of the songs were recorded before 1976. The album also includes previously unreleased versions of "Werewolves of London" and "Accidentally Like a Martyr". The second disc includes a radio interview with Zevon, conducted by Jody Denberg in 2000.

The album was released by New West Records in 2007 in a deluxe two-CD package in a hardbound slipcase. It includes a 44-page booklet with previously unpublished family photos, integrated with excerpts from the memoir I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon by Crystal Zevon.