Flipping This Quarter

Release Date: 8 December 1976
Date I Got: 2 August 2007
Best Track: Hotel California
Other Notable Tracks: Wasted Time, The Last Resort

What’s the best way to approach the Eagles?

Being an artist my parents liked, I grew up with the Eagles, but they don’t carry the same nostalgic level as, say, Billy Joel. They’re not an artist I identify childhood with.

And the critical consensus, it seems, regulates the Eagles to secondary status in music history — if even that high. Chuck Klostermann once wrote an essay where he argued that Billy Joel is "cool" precisely because he is so "uncool." I don’t see anyone making the same argument about the Eagles.

So here it is: coming at the Eagles from a familiarity, but not of fondness; from critical indifference, but not hostility: from thirty years after the fact, on the bad side of the 80’s which always messes everything up.

I say this about most artists that have achieved a place in the public consciousness, but it’s nonetheless true: the Eagles are better than you thought and not as good as you think.

What I mean is, like all the other artists of their stature, the Eagles are revered at a level beyond what they deserve. And through whatever machinations the indie kids use to critique they have decided there’s nothing of value to be found here. They are wrong.

The reason I point all this out is simply to say that it’s difficult to come at the Eagles without some sort of baggage, be it positive or negative. It’s partly for this reasons that I find the best tracks on this album are the non-hits.

Sure, everyone knows "Life in the Fast Lane" and "New Kid in Town" and "Victim of Love" and they’re okay, you can sing along with them while cruising down the interstate. But for whatever reason–I chalk it up to the baggage, but I’m probably wrong–they aren’t the best tracks. Maybe it’s because, being hits, they are indelibly tied to a time period, but they don’t sound as vibrant as they probably should. Age has got a hold of them, though I do kinda dig the semi- proto-metal of the verses for "Victim of Love."

What that leaves us with, then, are a few pretty great tracks: "Wasted Time" is the ballad the Eagles should be known for. One of the more delicate pieces, it’s almost on almost-on-the-edge; there are times where you can hear it almost break apart in some sort of emotional catharsis. It never quite reaches that point, but it’s the closest Glen Frey (I think it’s Glen Frey) ever got to convincing me he knows what he’s talking about.

"The Last Resort" is over-the-top in a hippie sort of way, but it’s cool (maybe because it’s so uncool?). I mean, the pity and anger mix we get by the "Jesus, people bought ‘em" line, is something to admire. Rock Stars have all the answers, but some things even they just can’t understand: "They called it paradise…I don’t know why."

But yet, the reason this album appears on top-100 lists is not for any of the above reasons or songs. It’s because of the title track, which is indisputably the Eagles best track, if not one of the best mainstream tracks from the 70’s. I’m not going to get too much into it because it’s been gotten into too much as it is. I’ll just say that I love the feeling the song gives off, portraying the lethargy of resignation towards things outside of your control. It’s a different sort of tension, one that doesn’t really provide much angst, just a sense of: yeah, that’s how it’s got to be.

Ask me tomorrow, though, and I’ll tell you something different. That’s why it’s great.

Get a second opinion!
[official] [allmusic] [myspace]

Release Date: 8 November 1994
Date I Got: 1 June 2005
Best Track: The Last Resort
Other Notable Tracks: Wasted Time, Hotel California

Growing up, I didn’t know to many adults that I would now consider music geeks. Those that came closest were my parents and a couple they were friends with. They all liked the Eagles, and I grew up listening to the two Greatest Hits sets.

I think I must have liked it well enough. But after I "got into" music I didn’t listen to much my parents did. I got a copy of this album because the opportunity arose and, being a Live album, might contain many of the songs I knew.

It does, but this isn’t really that great of a thing; this I’ll talk more about tomorrow. Quite succinctly, I can’t say I imagine a situation where I would want to listen to this album.

Even The Eagles’ indisputably best track Hotel California is empty here: the foreboding of the original instrumentation is replaced with a, I don’t know, something that sounds like The Beach Boy’s Kokomo. It may just be the congas. Still, the Latin-like groove here could work if it sounded like being held in a Mexican border jail where no one speaks English and the guards have big mustaches. But that stereotype isn’t the one in play here. Instead, this is more like your woman taking a second glance at another guy while lounging next to the hotel swimming pool. It’s still slightly unnerving, but mostly clean and harmless.

Those are the keywords for the entire album. Though I imagine some would claim that the Eagles’ are always like that (and they have somewhat of a point), it’s just bad here. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say this is just a cash grab, an artifact from a reunion tour commenced because the market would support three-digit tickets. But we know better, and they even say so at the beginning of Tequila Sunrise: "Just for the record, we never broke up, we just took a fourteen year vacation”

The exception here–because there always is one–is the version of The Last Resort, which is as good as the album version, if not a touch better. It’s the emotional highlight of the album: I’d like to think that the words become truer and sadder as one ages, and the two decades since its writing has made it more poignant. It’s the only point on the album that approaches any sort of pathos and any sort of earnestness.

Get a second opinion!
[official] [allmusic] [myspace]
[Video - Hotel California (Hell Freezes Over)]
[Video - Tequila Sunrise (Hell Freesez Over)]

Release Date: 11 November 1997
Date I Got: 30 December 2001
Best Track: Woke Up This Morning
Other Notable Tracks: Ain’t Gonna Goa, Mao Tse Tung Said

If Alabama 3, known as A3 in the US for copyright reasons, is known at all, it’s for Woke Up This Morning: the song over the Sopranos opening credits. The song is pure strut and works as a perfect introduction to the show.

It’s a bit out of place on this album. The other tracks are a mash of country, gospel, blues, and dance. It doesn’t always work, but it works enough to make the album compelling more than once.

I’ve had this album for nearly six years and have yet to determine if it should be taken seriously. There are obvious reasons to conclude the negative, like the tear-in-your-beer country of "U Don’t Dans 2 Tekno Anymore" and the copious references to Mr. I.V. Lenin. But there’s a lot to like as well.

The track that best exemplifies this is "Mao Tse Tung Said." What did Mao say? Change must come through the barrel of a gun. Referencing the good word of both Lenin and Mao is tricky at best if serious. The opening of the song is a sermon-like sample (I think) decrying the ability of love and trumpeting the power of hate. It’s an argument that can’t be dismissed out-of-hand, but, really…? It’s too early in this blog’s life to get into some bullshit philosophy of love and hate, so I won’t. Maybe later. I linked to a live version of this song that, well, check it out.

In some ways, Alabama 3 on this album is the music equivalent of Paul Verhoeven or professional wrestling: damned entertaining if not serious, dangerous if it is. This is one of only half dozen albums in my collection that I hope aren’t earnest.

Earnest or not, I do like it like I like wrestling and Verhoeven.
 

"The righteous truth is there is nothing worse than some fool lying on some Third World beach wearing spandex psychedelic trousers, smoking damn dope–pretending he’s gettin consciousness expansion. I want consciousness expansion I go to my local tabernacle and I sing!