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

I imagine a constipated Yosemite Sam running through Roadrunner territory.

Mumford does not take it easy, which sort of makes them worse. The Eagles were hilariously smug and arrogant making lite music. Mumford delivers its music with that annoying faux gravitas, as if it was Important. I'm sure the Eagles though they were Important, too, but only after enough people told them they were, and that probably only came after they were hugely successful and everyone around them was too afraid to say otherwise. "Wow, guys, 'Hotel California' really is like holding up a mirror to America. Like you said, it's about the American dream, but also the American nightmare!"

Song does nothing for me, and never did. Really, the Doobies' "Listen To The Music" is my own personal substitute for "Take It Easy" (not only banjo, it's got steel drums too!) for that 1972 west coast highway-driving feel.

The phrase "There's a girl, my lord, in a flatbed Ford" does sing nice.

I won't participate unless Ned does.

I am avoiding this shit like the plague. Aside from this post, obv.

All right, everyone. Ned's in.

Being from California, these are the songs of your people, correct?

Only Eagle actually from California was Timothy Schmit.

Listen, this isn't the place to start on any of your anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Being from California, these are the songs of your people, correct?

I take great umbrage at this suggestion, good sir

Sorry to get all Soft Rock Civil Defense Corps on you.

All native Californians are from Iowa iirc

"Listen To The Music" is my own personal substitute for "Take It Easy"

i love "listen to the music" to death. its an amazing song when all is sad and done. and the production is arguably just as tightassed as eagles but somehow it opens up into a field of infinite possibilities by the time you get to the psych break where the lazy flowing river does something to the castles in the sky.

lighten up while you still can

apparently frey came up with the flatbed ford line.

http://memimage.cardomain.com/ride_images/1/2179/3261/5446630016_large.jpg

oh fuck, where is my statues thread.

http://maxmccoy.com/blog/uploaded_images/IMG_0174-769036.jpg

Take It Easy is unfuckwithable; tight structure, sweet harmonising, singalong up to your eyeballs. Was this their first song? What pros.

lol @ the reflection

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

I feel like the first two missing panels of this cartoon involved Mr. Magoo somehow.

http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/9619/hs56.jpg

What's going on in those upstairs windows?

Well, when two trompe l'oeil figures love each other very much . . .

"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

Of course Frey would write the line that makes him look like Paul Newman.

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?

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.

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.

"picks" = "pricks"

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

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.

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

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.

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.

I thought the implication was that the singer is being friendzoned by that one.

I always heard this as meaning that they were whilom lovers but they weren't ever going to be much else.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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!

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, 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"

http://brucebase.wikispaces.com/file/view/190774-ozark-poster-hs2.jpg/291732259/384x505/190774-ozark-poster-hs2.jpg

best pics of the ozark fest. nsfw:

http://masmasmaraksi.blogspot.com/2012/05/ozark-music-festival.html

and some more:

https://sites.google.com/site/rodsievers/ozarkmusicfestival

Gotta say, that's a lot more ass than what I was expecting from Sedalia, Mo.

It is the show me state.

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.

damn i set myself up for that

Yup.

Thanks!

Already Gone breadsticks

Heartburn Tonight Super Nachos

i watched the "hotel california" and the AI art on the sphere was.................lame.

i mean i'm sure if i was on ketamine and E and shrooms and corona with lime it would have been awesome.

https://rockcellarmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/the-eagles-sphere-hotel-california.jpg

can almost smell the colitas

Awaiting the Lefsetz review

But really, before the Sphere I cannot imagine a year where I’d feel FOMO missing U2, Dead, Phish, and now Eagles concerts, but I’ve heard nothing but great things from people who’ve gone to the first three of those.

Hell, I even liked the little 45 minute movie that's running there.

‘can almost smell the colitas’

lock borad

So...at Publix this morning in the canned food aisle I heard a familiar-in-that-mid-'70s-way midtempo jam with crinkly Big Star guitars. Then the chorus hit: it was "Try and Love Again"! Randy! His best composition for the Eagles, no? I hope he made a mint off it from its inclusion on HC.

About a minute too long, though.

pic.twitter.com/6vCiBTkj9T

— Slouching Towards McDonaldland (@FugaziTruther) June 11, 2025

Recently uploaded & monstered: Eagles w/Linda & Jackson on Don Kirshner in 1974

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xhgLacxSmE

She is unimpeachable, her only crime being the creation of the Eagles

pitch: what if Hotel California had a bassoon solo

and yknow? sold!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL3V8gWLWMc

Did I tell y’all I read Felder’s memoir

how was it

He was deferential to don and Glenn. Mentioned more than once that they were great songwriters and:or performers. Distracting

i guess he’s too nice to hold a grudge. more’s the pity.

Well, yeah.

Unf there was nothing about the white Gibson double neck

:(

you’d think a chapter at least or what are we even doing here

Still haven't gotten over what Glenn said about "Get Over It":

GLENN: We were so sick of tabloid television — and this was eight years ago! I was so tired of professional victims everywhere you looked, all over the media. Don said, “I have a title: ‘Get Over It.’” I said, “That’s a song — let’s write it!”

“I have a title: LMAO CUCK SNOWFLAKES”
“That’s a song let’s write it!”