A Good Day In Hell - The Official ILM Track-By-Track EAGLES Listening Thread

song a day should mean no bleedthrough imo

new song, new convo

yeah, Take It Easy is great. I dig the famous Xgau article but the political criticism of the Eagles is sort of... outdated? we have all grown to like yuppie music, right? the albums review is still important though, the "And not always all that brilliant, either" part. which is why this "one song each day" project is so necessary. bring it on!

"Witchy Woman"

http://ring.cdandlp.com/timburton007/photo_grande/113894224.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U6gNHLOkfc

the guitars kinda rule.

i mean i can see other bands at the time listening to this and going DAMN SICK GUITARS and then hating the Eagles even more.

This is pretty great too. Greatest Hits was inevitably one of the handful of tapes my dad had in the car when I was a kid, and this was the song I liked. I think the woo-oo-ooos make for a killer hook. Also they suit a loping bass, like in One Of These Nights.

Lyrically it's not ideal, but if I give Dazed & Confused a free pass I can hardly complain about this.

the intro is killer. and after the intro you get three cool sounding guitars and it just sounds really good to me.

true story: this song was playing on the department store speakers when my wife Maria went to go buy her first bra. (she just told me that.)

I bet the guys'd get a kick out of that.

I like the drumming here. There's too much empty repetition at the beginning - the four repeats after the intro should've been cut in half.

They've become 'the guys', see what you've done to me.

A mainstay of Halloween party mixtapes.

T/S "Witchy Woman" vs "Black Magic Woman"

the only single on the first album with don henley lead vocals. i just read that.

"While the inspiration for the title and lyrics was based on various women they had met and remembered as seductive enchantresses, Henley had Zelda Fitzgerald particularly in mind after reading her biography."

"She drove herself to madness with the silver spoon", is a reference to Zelda's time in a mental institution and the special slotted silver spoon used to dissolve sugar cubes with Absinthe, the popular 1920s alcoholic beverage distilled from the wormwood tree and called "the green fairy" for sometimes inducing hallucinations. The song was conceived while Don Henley was living in an old house near the Hollywood Bowl, with his flat mate, Henry Vine (aka 'Blitz')."

check out the guitar sound on this t.v. performance. nasty.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xcogzw_witchy-woman-eagles_music

The toms on the intro make me wonder if it started out as some kind of "Cherokee Nation" thing.

Was listening to Zevon last night. Obv. Zevon was part of that scene, pals with the Eagles, etc., but he's so much more vicious, acid, witty and mean, not just vacuous. Was he just in it for the drugs? There are all these talented writers, like Zevon, Browne and Newman, who seem to have no prob with the Eagles as a band or as people. And in some cases, like Zevon and Newman, you'd think the Eagles would be open targets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2O91T6ZeW0

Xgau: "But the only ones that score are the jokes: Ernie K-Doe's sly, shy "A Certain Girl," and "Gorilla, You're a Desperado," a satire of the Eagles, not to mention Warren Zevon. Don Henley sings harmony. Linda Ronstadt will not cover. "

That TV performance is the business. Reminds me of Peter Green, talking about Black Magic Woman, though Green is a lot more fluid. It's an amazing 1-2 all told, and aiui they only get better from here.

Holy fuck, was there anything Christgau was right about in the '70s (or, frankly, ever)?

Yes?

This old lady looks a little like Glenn Frey:

http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/future_tense/2013/08/16/martin_manley_suicide_website_a_sports_writer_s_troubling_template_for_social/Martin_Mug.jpg.CROP.article250-medium.jpg

oldladieswholooklikeglenfrey.blogspot.com

And in some cases, like Zevon and Newman, you'd think the Eagles would be open targets

this has crossed my mind more than once

Having a pop at Springsteen and ELO is funnier

Ugh, hate this. Dull, plodding, thudding, flumping, about as dynamic as a drool-stained pillow.

That 45 has terrible sleeve art. I guess that's how you know they weren't rich yet.

xxpost so was Newman clowning ELO?

i don't think that was the american sleeve. i think this was:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e7/Witchy_Woman.jpg

xxpost so was Newman clowning ELO?

He does on a song I can't remember the title of

Oh hold on, it's "The Story of a Rock and Roll Band"

i prefer this one:

http://img5.blogs.yahoo.co.jp/ybi/1/ae/85/xqjng092/folder/562795/img_562795_22555646_0?1329732085

but i just liked the idea of the eagles being locked up. so i went with that.

Did you have the urge then, or sometimes now, to just crank the amps up to 11 and play rock and roll?

If I thought I could do that, and weren’t so self-critical and thought I could play well enough, I’d love to do it. I’m just not the player Ry is, or (Jim) Keltner, or some of these guys. I mean, they put up with me all right because I play unconventionally and I can think of notes for everybody. But I’m a writer really. I’d love to be able to just ram around to ram around in a band, yeah, if I could feel comfortable that they wouldn’t look at me funny because I was out of time, you know? I just don’t have the rudiments of it. I have skills that are advanced in high areas of music, and yet, basic things are really hard for me sometimes, like keeping in time or playing piano. On the thing (producer) Jeff Lynne cut of mine, “Falling In Love,” we did it all in Mike Campbell’s garage, Tom Petty’s guitar player. Petty was there, and we were going to do background voices. I said, ‘I can’t really do that.’ I look at (Don) Henley or these guys doing it, and I can’t sing in tune like that. And Petty says to me, ‘No, you can do it. With Jeff, I didn’t think I could do it either, but when I did it with Jeff, we could do it.’ So I got in there, and there was Petty, and Campbell, and we were all going to make our ‘oohs.’ So I put my hand over my ears like I’d seen people do (laughs), and the thing came up, and I went, ‘Uungh,” and this went on for a while, and I saw Jeff Lynne shaking his head like he smelled something bad. And he looked over at me, and it was a look of, ‘Are you putting us on? Are you kidding?’ It had a little pity in it, but it was mainly like, ‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’ So we did it again, and I went ‘Aaah,’ and apparently he had never heard anyone that bad. So he just said, ‘Maybe you better sit this one out.’ So you can’t help but getting smacked no matter how far you go.

i guess i always assumed it was coming from a place of affection, kinda like 'unseen power of the pcket fence'

can I just

"It's Witch-AY Woman"

Yeah this song sucks. Too slow and dead. But did make a good Seinfeld joke (haha xp).

• Also they suit a loping bass, like in One Of These Nights.

If there's one thing this sudden blast of reconsideration has done is to make realize that Randy Meisner was the man on bass.

I've always thought that about him with "Hotel California" - a song from an era that he doesn't even seem to fit in. (Can you imagine the set list that has both Life in the Fast Lane and Take It to the Limit on it?)

• A mainstay of Halloween party mixtapes.

T/S "Witchy Woman" vs "Black Magic Woman"

Don't forget "Devil Woman".

• This was the song I was thinking about above when I made mention of my fear of Eagles background vocals. That bridge at 2:40 would be the perfect scene soundtrack to a character on PCP realizing too late that they've just murdered a loved one.

It's probably even happened in real life.

re: 'ludes discussion upthread...don't those just make you sleepy? How is that a fun recreational drug?

i love that part of the song. the bass sounds great on this song too. i really love the guitars. that's a solid heavy metal intro too. like slowed down judas priest.

tarfumes at least listen to the guitar sound on that t.v. clip i linked too. they sound so good. that's my kinda tone.

re: 'ludes discussion upthread...don't those just make you sleepy? How is that a fun recreational drug?

I have no personal experience, but an older friend who was an enthusiast in their heyday says that they were the loviest, huggiest drug ever. Way more than MDMA. "We would all just end up sitting in a heap on the floor, everybody with their arms around each other," that kind of thing.

I'm with Don and Glenn. Who needs love?

I have a crystal clear memory of little Carl Agatha, excited to have chosen her dime store plastic witch mask and smock for Halloween, donning her costume and performing an interpretive dance routine to Witchy Woman for her long-suffering parents. This song always intrigued me when I was a kid. It sounded so mysterious! She'll rock you in the night until your skin turns red! What could that mean??!?!? Now I know what the lyrics mean and I've just heard it too many times and find it kind of blah EXCEPT for the breakdwown in the middle with the toms and Don Henley going ham on the falsetto. I still like that part.

My stepfather is a huge, HUGE fan of the Eagles. We spent an evening on the deck rocking Eagles deep cuts and drinking beer on the deck (well, he was drinking beer) when I was visiting earlier this month. Most of my experience with the band is overexposure to the hits and listening to albums cuts refracted through the lens of my stepdad's boundless enthusiasm, so this should be interesting.

Also whoever said that the Eagles and Steve Miller Band occupy the same space in his thoughts is OTM. I just had to take a second to remember which band released Time Keeps on Slippin'.

• This was the song I was thinking about above when I made mention of my fear of Eagles background vocals. That bridge at 2:40 would be the perfect scene soundtrack to a character on PCP realizing too late that they've just murdered a loved one.

It's probably even happened in real life.

hahahahaha OTM

Holy fuck, was there anything Christgau was right about in the '70s (or, frankly, ever)?

― 誤訳侮辱, Wednesday, August 21, 2013 8:37 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

The only thing i can come up with is Skynyrd, other than that, the guy sucked about as bad as you can suck.

Haha xp that's great. Also, the little dropped in bent guitar note at 2:46 is killing me.

The toms on the intro make me wonder if it started out as some kind of "Cherokee Nation" thing.

This. The tom sound is such a Western movie cliche it feels kind of creepy, though the lyrics don't pick up that theme (perhaps the "til your skin turns red" line is left over from an earlier, more racist version?)

All that wooo-oooing is the best part.

As a child, I assumed that the witchy woman was staying up all night casting a spell that would cause you to get a skin ailment similar to a sunburn so that's probably what it is.

wiki says that bernie wrote the music when he was in burrito brothers so maybe he had a western-themed thing in mind. then henley wrote his haunted flapper lyrics.

tarfumes at least listen to the guitar sound on that t.v. clip i linked too. they sound so good. that's my kinda tone.

― scott seward, Wednesday, August 21, 2013 9:57 AM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Wow. Yeah, the guitars in that clip help the song exponentially.