Take It Easy is unfuckwithable; tight structure, sweet harmonising, singalong up to your eyeballs. Was this their first song? What pros.
― Ismael Klata, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 17:38 (ten years ago) link
lol @ the reflection
― Ismael Klata, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 17:39 (ten years ago) link
take it easy is ok
but it is sort of impressive, as far as "first song on first album totally defining the aesthetic of the band"
right up there with "black sabbath"/black sabbath/black sabbath
― usic for 18 magicians (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 20 August 2013 17:41 (ten years ago) link
I feel like the first two missing panels of this cartoon involved Mr. Magoo somehow.
http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/9619/hs56.jpg
― pplains, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 17:42 (ten years ago) link
What's going on in those upstairs windows?
― Ismael Klata, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 17:44 (ten years ago) link
Well, when two trompe l'oeil figures love each other very much . . .
― Domo Arigato, Demi Lovato (Phil D.), Tuesday, 20 August 2013 17:48 (ten years ago) link
"it's a girl my lord, in a flatbed Ford, slowin' down to take a look at me" is the only contribution Frey made to the song. Save for that one line, the song is written by Jackson Browne whose own version of the song I prefer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMA3lIeqV8M
― Lee626, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 18:48 (ten years ago) link
Of course Frey would write the line that makes him look like Paul Newman.
― first I think it's time I kick a little verse! (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 20 August 2013 18:52 (ten years ago) link
I'm curious about the exact nature of the relationships with those seven women, particularly the one who says she's a friend. Why is that was enough distinction to call her out specifically? Did most of the women he knew not want to be mistaken for being friends with him?
― Lee626, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 19:13 (ten years ago) link
those ringing opening electric guitar chords that open the song -- and, I guess, their career -- make it sound like something epic is about to happen. but it turns out the laid-back acoustic strum underneath them is what you were supposed to have been listening to.
― fact checking cuz, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 19:15 (ten years ago) link
The Eagles - and especially "Take It Easy" and "Hotel California" - have been so ubiquitous for so long that I'm wondering where and when most of us actually formulated any kind of a critical stance on the group. I was born in late 1982 and they were always kinda just there; I imagine the experience would be much the same for anyone born in America after 1970 or so. IME it's harder to be objective about music you grew up with. So if you hate the Eagles, did you hate "Take It Easy" when you were 5? Or did you grow to hate them later on? I think I always liked that song because it was big and clean and catchy and had good harmonies. I could say much the same for their other hits. By the time I got old enough to think about the smug misogyny of the lyrics and the greedy picks behind them, the Eagles were too much a part of my aural landscape to hate. And even so, I never once felt compelled to buy an album. The radio was enough.
For a contrast, I hated James Taylor for as long as I can remember. I think I could sense the waves of smarm and unctuousness dripping from his voice when I was in grade school.
One interesting thing about "Take It Easy" is that it never even made the top 10 of the charts - it only reached #12. Yet over time it's probably gotten more radio play than 95% of all the #1 hits in history - including a couple of the group's own chart toppers. It's so immaculately produced and finely-crafted - slicker and fuller than probably anything else of its era - that it's always an up, and I never change the station when it's on, yet it's also bland and shallow enough that I never seek it out otherwise. That kind of sums up their appeal and their shortcomings - easy to like, hard to really care about.
― thewufs, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 19:15 (ten years ago) link
"picks" = "pricks"
― thewufs, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 19:16 (ten years ago) link
I thought the implication was that the singer is being friendzoned by that one.
Ismael OTM and I don't really back down from my earlier comment about how this song illuminates much of what came later in lighter modern rock and new country.
3xpost
― EveningStar (Sund4r), Tuesday, 20 August 2013 19:18 (ten years ago) link
I thought it meant he wasn't interested in sleeping with that particular one of the seven. The Eagles have always been there. I don't have a critical stance on them beyond always hating them.
― no fomo (La Lechera), Tuesday, 20 August 2013 19:24 (ten years ago) link
Opening chimey guitar chords remind me that Rickenbacker made a Glenn Frey signature model, because his tone and approach were obviously so unique and distinctive that they could only be replicated by ugh ugh ugh seriously fuck Glenn Frey:http://www.rickenbacker.com/news_item.asp?news_id=34&news=old
― Shart Week (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Tuesday, 20 August 2013 19:27 (ten years ago) link
To clarify - I didn't hate their music (which is generally light and innocuous) so much as them personally. They have always seemed like a bunch of entitled jerks.
― no fomo (La Lechera), Tuesday, 20 August 2013 19:29 (ten years ago) link
I think Eagles hate has to be learned. It's part of that adolescent thing where you decide that some things are too pretty, too perfect, too good, that you'd rather listen to something that sounds fucked-up and noisy/distorted because it's more real, man. Also that if your mom likes it, it's to be shoved away with all your strength. My mom liked the Eagles a lot, I think. But somehow I never learned to hate them.
― 誤訳侮辱, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 19:30 (ten years ago) link
I always heard this as meaning that they were whilom lovers but they weren't ever going to be much else.
― Fais ce que voudra, occiderai de même (Michael White), Tuesday, 20 August 2013 19:32 (ten years ago) link
I thought it meant he wasn't interested in sleeping with that particular one of the seven.
But SHE'S the one who says she's a friend of his! Plus, it's totally funnier my way.
xpost
― EveningStar (Sund4r), Tuesday, 20 August 2013 19:33 (ten years ago) link
Like, he sets you up with the "seven women on [his] mind" thing but they're all either pissed off at him or blowing him off.
― EveningStar (Sund4r), Tuesday, 20 August 2013 19:34 (ten years ago) link
Well, or they want something serious.
my parents were not Eagles fans, I don't remember hearing them at all as a kid really. at some point in high school/college there were conversations about what "Hotel California" *really* was about (see also Don McLean's "American Pie", Zep's "Stairway to Heaven" etc) and def by the time I was in college I was aware of the ubiquity of their Greatest Hits but by then there was really nothing in their music to appeal to me. and over time as I've learned more about them and listened to my wife's copies of their albums they just get under my skin.
Disco Strangler cracks me up tho. one of the times where they get close to so-bad-its-good camp. everything about that song is wrong.
― what's up ugly girls? (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 20 August 2013 19:35 (ten years ago) link
I always think of the Eagles as the kind of music that you are forced to listen to while driving through some infernally hot and dusty place and that your mother made the error of loving after having loved all that cool shit in the 60's. I can't really hate them 'cause they're so easy to ignore but God have mercy on your soul if you're at a summer bbq and someone puts them on.
― Fais ce que voudra, occiderai de même (Michael White), Tuesday, 20 August 2013 19:35 (ten years ago) link
Growing up, all I saw of the Eagles was constant radio airplay, endless stream of solo records, bazillion dollar tours, and they never seemed very down to earth/human at all. My parents didn't like them either. I was also really righteous about my dislike of money grubbing rich people.
― no fomo (La Lechera), Tuesday, 20 August 2013 19:38 (ten years ago) link
Since there seemed to be a sexual past between him and the own me/stone me women but not the "friend of mine," my barely-formed guess has always been that they were drug buddies. "We're not balling or anything, I'm just along because he/she knows where to score."
― cops on horse (WilliamC), Tuesday, 20 August 2013 19:40 (ten years ago) link
One interesting thing about "Take It Easy" is that it never even made the top 10 of the charts - it only reached #12
"Listen To The Music" was #11. In your FACE, Browne!
― Sir Lord Baltimora (Myonga Vön Bontee), Tuesday, 20 August 2013 19:43 (ten years ago) link
― 誤訳侮辱, Tuesday, August 20, 2013 2:30 PM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
ha this is almost as much a cliche now as hating the eagles for being too "smooth" or "corporate"
― usic for 18 magicians (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 20 August 2013 20:01 (ten years ago) link
http://brucebase.wikispaces.com/file/view/190774-ozark-poster-hs2.jpg/291732259/384x505/190774-ozark-poster-hs2.jpg
― scott seward, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 20:01 (ten years ago) link
best pics of the ozark fest. nsfw:
http://masmasmaraksi.blogspot.com/2012/05/ozark-music-festival.html
― scott seward, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 20:06 (ten years ago) link
and some more:
https://sites.google.com/site/rodsievers/ozarkmusicfestival
― scott seward, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 20:10 (ten years ago) link
Gotta say, that's a lot more ass than what I was expecting from Sedalia, Mo.
― pplains, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 20:12 (ten years ago) link
It is the show me state.
― EZ Snappin, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 20:16 (ten years ago) link
i can remember wanting to go see eagles and linda ronstadt at the yale bowl when i was kid. my dad wouldn't take me. little river band opening, i think.
― scott seward, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 20:18 (ten years ago) link
damn i set myself up for that
― pplains, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 20:18 (ten years ago) link
Yup.
Thanks!
― EZ Snappin, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 20:22 (ten years ago) link
― no fomo (La Lechera), Tuesday, August 20, 2013 3:24 PM (55 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
My take is that it was the other way around. But, yeah, none of those seven women seem to have him on their mind, at least not in any good way.
― Lee626, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 20:31 (ten years ago) link
As far as childhood memories, I completely intertwine Eagles and Steve Miller Band because this concert came to town the week of my eighth birthday, when I was listening to top-40 radio all the time. Not only are those two bands intertwined, but the third on the bill, Pablo Cruise, is there as well. Must've heard the show advertised on the radio enough times for it to be branded into my head.
― only dogg forgives (Eazy), Tuesday, 20 August 2013 20:40 (ten years ago) link
- she *says* she's a friend of his. So it could be like she's all made 'wtf you're sleeping with six other chicks I THOUGHT WE WERE FRIENDS' ...or she's just rolled up to his house trying to weasel her way in with some line like she's an old friend of his
- the banjo is insane. like in a kooky way. as though bernie leadon was pissed off and just said 'fuck you frey I'm playing the banjo the whole way through and there's nothing you can do to stop me'
- I always wonder what if Frey had just stolen Jackson Browne's songs outright while he was living upstairs from him
- take it easy man
― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Tuesday, 20 August 2013 20:43 (ten years ago) link
made = mad
the structure and tempo of this song are kind of cool. the chords keep zipping along, and the chorus never really repeats from one occurrence to the next. the first time through it's "lighten up while you still can," the next time through they say "come on baby" instead of "take it easy," and the third time through he has to know if your sweet love is gonna save him. minor chords popping up all over the place. keeps you on your toes.
― Thus Sang Freud, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 20:44 (ten years ago) link
Something I like about this song: In the last verse, there's a single substitution of an Am where a C has appeared in all the other verses. It's also supported in the vocal harmonies and is unexpectedly sweet-sounding.
― Here's the storify, of a lovely ladify (Phil D.), Tuesday, August 20, 2013 9:43 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
never noticed this, nice catch
― call all destroyer, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 20:47 (ten years ago) link
Michael Vick was just named the starting quarterback for the Eagles in the coming season. felt like i should note that here.
― scott seward, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 20:51 (ten years ago) link
Eagles [Asylum, 1972]These guys certainly boogie more than the bluegrass sellouts who populate the vaguely country-oriented mainstream of contemporary American rock, and they certainly write more memorable songs. But this culminates the reactionary individualism that country-rock has come to epitomize in the counterculture. What's worse, the country orientation bespeaks not roots but a lack of them, so that in the end the product is suave and synthetic--brilliant, but false. And not always all that brilliant, either. B
― scott seward, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 20:53 (ten years ago) link
The B-side is kinda the reverse of the A-side -- bummed-out dude getting no action.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cBuNuXFSz8
― something of an astrological coup (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, 20 August 2013 20:54 (ten years ago) link
the country orientation bespeaks not roots but a lack of them, so that in the end the product is suave and synthetic
This echoes a lot of the discussion in the Mumford/Lumineers threads -- except maybe the suave part.
― something of an astrological coup (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, 20 August 2013 20:55 (ten years ago) link
"The B-side is kinda the reverse of the A-side -- bummed-out dude getting no action."
dude, no spoilers! haha, just kidding, but for real we will get to it!
― scott seward, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 21:03 (ten years ago) link
that's the whole "track-by-track" part in the thread title.
right now i'm like a newborn baby, there is only one eagles song, it is my universe, my everything
― usic for 18 magicians (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 20 August 2013 21:10 (ten years ago) link
That's a typically painful and tone-deaf review from the "Dean" up there.
― One Way Ticket on the 1277 Express (Bill Magill), Tuesday, 20 August 2013 21:20 (ten years ago) link
Most of the rest of this year, we're going to be listening to The Eagles everyday.
― Ismael Klata, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 21:22 (ten years ago) link
Wow. Who could have expected such douchebaggery from Don Henley and Irving Azoff?
― birdistheword, Friday, 8 March 2024 04:14 (three months ago) link
Doucheperado
― calstars, Friday, 8 March 2024 16:51 (three months ago) link
xp I am shocked, shocked.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Friday, 8 March 2024 18:36 (three months ago) link
The Eagles will come up at my Pop Conference presentation in a few hours.
― poppers fueled buttsex crescendo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 8 March 2024 18:39 (three months ago) link
"Uh, Your Honor, new shit has come to light."
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Friday, 8 March 2024 18:41 (three months ago) link
time time tickintickin
― poppers fueled buttsex crescendo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 8 March 2024 18:41 (three months ago) link
i gave my friend ray records i didn't want for his monthly media/book sale at his shop down the street from me and he posted this picture on social media. :)
https://scontent-bos5-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/434048722_808398104658107_5037311667719064062_n.jpg?stp=cp6_dst-jpg&_nc_cat=111&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=5f2048&_nc_ohc=UXB7OhYyO70AX9uVSNi&_nc_ht=scontent-bos5-1.xx&oh=00_AfCrEoEplOoVR7xLsuWbB-XuUSmhomJHT6Va-qZLkTpr1A&oe=6604357D
― scott seward, Saturday, 23 March 2024 15:39 (two months ago) link
Howdy ma'am...
https://wornandhaggard.com/products/this-could-be-heaven-or-this-could-be-hell-walnut-hoodie?view=shop-womens
― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain), Tuesday, 9 April 2024 21:33 (two months ago) link
And she’s buying a highway to hell
― calstars, Tuesday, 9 April 2024 21:37 (two months ago) link