Pop Weekend : Zevon: Mean and Black

He hurries home to watch Boom Boom Mancini fight Bobby Chacon. He picks up a girl who asks him if he’ll beat her. He sees a werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic’s. He knows which four bodily fluids country living is all about. He’s singer-songwriter Warren Zevon (and characters) putting it to a near-capacity Wiltern Theatre crowd for nearly two hours on Friday.

Flashing his slashing wit, his raucous guitar and rock-house piano and his deceptively straightforward compositional sense, Zevon and band (which included the old Little Feat rhythm section of Ken Gradney and Ritchie Hayward) spanned a 10-year catalogue and this year’s “Sentimental Hygiene” comeback LP. Although such strong new songs as “Leave My Monkey Alone,” “The Factory” and “Even a Dog Can Shake Hands” were inexplicably absent, at least two-thirds of the evening was as mean and black as the coffee ‘n’ cigarettes the now-sober Zevon kept slipping into the wings to nip at. Two problems: a sound whose polished grittiness wound up neither fish nor fowl, and a guitarist and a bassist who spent half the set striking obnoxious “rock star” poses that had nothing to do with Zevon’s Zeitgeist.