The following is a Designated Cheerleader piece by @blackcoat for the Best Album of 1991 tournament. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you follow the link to vote in the tournament. Thanks!

Warren Zevon is possibly the most influential rock act you’ve never heard of, having released 15 albums between the years of 1969 and 2003, of which only 1 cracked the top 20 in his lifetime. By the time he released 1991’s Mr. Bad Example, he was on his second or third commercial decline, was just coming off 1989s experimental and expensive bomb Transverse City an album recorded at Abbey Road, with guests including Jerry Garcia, David Gilmour, and Neil Young.  This album didn’t break the Billboard Top 200.

By contrast, and probably having to do with that failure, Mr. Bad Example is a return to his earlier underproduced style of Zevon playing many of the instruments, with only a handful of guests, but with a more open eyed and sober view on the world and his place in it, and his core audience (even those like me who at the time didn’t know we were those folks). 

For example, the opening track "Finishing Touches" is obviously directed at the commercial music industry cloaked in a breakup song. The very first lines that you hear him sing in his rough voice are: 

“I’m getting tired of you/you’re getting tired of me/and it’s the final act/in our little tragedy” 

If this isn’t someone who’s just sick and tired of dealing with the business side of the music business, I don’t know what is.

Other standouts include "Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead”, (as an aside, the 1995 movie was titled from the song, not the other way around. We’re back to that “influential” again!) a meandering tune, "Searching For A Heart": “They say love conquers all/You can’t start it like a car/You can’t stop it with a gun." (Which is coincidentally one of David Letterman’s favorite song lyrics). 

In closing, Mr. Bad Example is an undiscovered gem in a catalog full of them, and if the only Zevon you know is "Werewolves of London," and you liked the weird poetry and obvious musical talent behind that, you owe it to yourself to give this (and his other tracks) a listen.

– @blackcoat