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

Thanks for the background Veronica. That jibes with my memories of the mag. My readership of it was abt 1985-88. Sometimes there was stuff like Curt Kirkwood talking abt his gtr technique, and unless my brain is playing tricks on me I first read abt the Fall in there circa late 85. Stuff like the Blue Nile too...

i remember the blue nile review, i think. i think that's what made me buy the first album. that would have been 1984 though.

I really loved his U2 book

― Ismael Klata,

I've said it in U2 threads but besides being a superb piece of reporting with worrisome ethics (he parties hard with the band) it's an unusually literate time and place narrative: Bosnia unraveling, Nirvan's impact on MTV, a little something called the information superhighway in its larval state, and Bono's Fly glasses.

...and all this prior to hell freezing over because the Eagles got back together to have higher seat prices than U2, Stones etc.

I was a heavy Musician reader in that 80s time frame too... Peter Buck had a regular column for a year or so. One great one was Buck going on about how critics should stop writing about R.E.M. because The Replacements were the greatest band in the universe. Musician was pretty sympathetic to the college rock scene. Considine's "Rock Short Takes" was the greatest. I would Kickstarter the hell out of it if he could write those again on Twitter.

How dumb is it that I want to spend the next 4 years reading all the issues of Option and Musician I read during those 4 years.

i would love to come across a stash of options. i never see them. i should ssk byron c. if i see him if he has a spare stash. i need to get some old FE mags from him when i see him. those are fun to read too. i didn't really read them much at the time. would read musician too.

hell, i'd read old copies of tower records magazines.

I loved Pulse! Got to do a couple of those back page comics in there when Marc Weidenbaum was editing.

Would hella wreck some old FEs too. Skot get all these together and start a xtian science reading room in back of your store with a couch.

i got a couch back there but i gotta get all the records out of there first.

I'm convinced Tower might still be in business if they hadn't stopped publishing (and giving away free) Pulse a few years before they closed. I didn't have a Tower store near me but always made a monthly trip there to pick up the new issue, and usually left with some albums, magazines, and DVDs i didn't intend to buy.

I'm trying to remember which record chain had a similar (if not as good) free magazine called Request. I still have alot of those too. Loved the challopy "Overrated"/"Underrated" column, even though I often didn't agree.

Musicland's Request magazine was pretty good

as penance for rock mag thread drift…

drifting off to sleep, was thinking about how, post-Beatles, many big bands were invested in the notion of all members writing and singing, i.e "the integrity of the band." and I thought of another huge 70s band and how their roles line up with the Eagles…in both, the two principals held the hand of the less accomplished songwriters for big hits, but nonetheless kept themselves at arm's length from 'em…

Gene/Don: the dark heart of assholeishness; thinker of big thoughts

Paul/Glenn: the master of ceremonies; keeps eye on the ball musically

Peter/Randy: skittish, sensitive singer of big hit ballads, been around the block longer than the other guys

Ace/Joe: requires no unpacking

Eric/ Timothy: dependable, happy to be there, doesn't make waves

Bob Kulick/ Bernie Leadon: the former is a longtime associate of Kiss, would have been in the band in place of Ace if he wasn't bald

Vinnie/Felder: drives the two principals nuts for refusing to obey, having made important creative contributions they dislike acknowledging,

This leaves Stuart Smith = Tommy thayer; danny Kortchmar = Bruce Kulick…but what about Eric Singer?

Irving = Bill Aucoin; Geffen = Neil Bogart

So who's the JD Souther of the Kissuverse? Jackson? the jack tempchin?

JD Southern = Desmond Child?

J.D. Souther = J.D. Souther

"Good Day In Hell"

http://www.eaglesonlinecentral.com/trade/covers/EaglesGoodDayInHellBack.jpg

http://youtu.be/x0VuxWbhgdQ

kinda hellish to listen to right now. but i didn't sleep well last night.

This is wretched. Guitars sound okay, but what's the point when they're playing this?

really digging your photo curation, Mr Seward!

yeah this song is lousy.

even their feet are ugly

I guess this is where Felder came in

my reaction to the first few seconds was, "This would be better with Walsh" ... then they started singing and it became a good day in hell

Was expecting much more with Felder coming in. "Good Day in Hell" would've been a fine song title for KISS, so there's that for you veronica.

i like the KISS analogy.

btw, a new trend in the youtube clips posted here has begun:

http://i.snag.gy/UMBoy.jpg

Listen youtube, I'm only watching these videos for science, ok?

hey, it's our thread's title track at last, and it's a bit of a shitshow. Felder's guitar doesn't really fit in the song: sounds like he's just nosing in wherever he can find space (and even if he can't), esp in the verses.

veronica had a great point that "post-Beatles, many big bands were invested in the notion of all members writing and singing, i.e "the integrity of the band". It's def. true (in Kiss' case, I think Simmons also saw the rock band as a superhero team like the Avengers)& it crystallizes what's weird about the Eagles in this era; there's this seeming need to cover all fan bases--bloozy rock, country, MOR "soul" (see next track)--& it's becoming a schizophrenic mess.

on the bootleg cover above, Leadon looks like he's contemplating jumping overboard

Foreshadowing!

pickers just want to pick all day. not listen to don drone on about whatever the hell don would drone on about back then.

"Bernie, have you ever read the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson? There's some heavy stuff in there man"

(in Kiss' case, I think Simmons also saw the rock band as a superhero team like the Avengers)

That's true, and Paul Stanley was a Who fanatic, and saw Kiss as modeling themselves after the Who in terms of four distinct personalities.

Then he realized the members of Kiss didn't have personalities, so they all put on makeup.

then he realized the members of KISS couldn't play their instruments

then he realized the members of KISS couldn't actually write music

I mean... now that I think about it kiss is by far the least major classic rock band

There whole schtick is so perfect kinda cheap and lousy a band you'd win for knocking over 3 concrete milk bottles at a carnival

Can you be a classic rock band if only Americans like you (and maybe some Japanese)?

(I suppose so, I imagine some people over here think of Status Quo as a "classic rock band")

on classic rock radio, Kiss consists of only 3 songs: "Rock n Roll All Nite," "Hard Luck Woman" & maybe "Love Gun" or "Beth." even "I was Made for Loving You" is a bit too disco, as I've rarely heard it (this evidence is based on radio heard on drives to my folks in Connecticut)

I'd say Classic Rock plays

• Rock and Roll All Night
• Detroit Rock City
• I Love It Loud
• Beth
• Deuce

and either I Was Made for Lovin' You or Lick It Up, depending on how hairy the balls are on that particular station.

I've never heard Hard Luck Woman on a classic rock station. I had never heard it even until that Garth Brooks cover.

i think the Garth cover promoted it. never used to hear it back in the day but now have twice in past six months or so

& yes "Lick It Up" is a latter-day Kiss "standard"

when i worked overnights at the supermarket in connecticut in the early 90's the classic rock station I95 refused to play Nirvana or any other grunge and would just play Kiss's "Domino" over and over.

Haha.

I used to work with this guy who drove me nuts. Loved Classic Rock. Hated "grunge". "Why's it all gotta sound different? I don't care if it sounds the same, rock and roll was good 20 years ago and it's good today."

And, because he enjoyed music that "sounds the same", his favorite all-time classic rock and roll band was ......

.....

...

THE RAMONES.

Like I said, dude drove me nuts with his weird logic.

I was such a huge kiss fan when I was 7. I had the cards, the magazines, the marvel comic special (still remember the panel where Paul shoots "pure hate" at the bad guy from his eye.) It took almost a year for me to actually hear their music. God what a disappointment. This was supposed to be music made by demons and spacemen, this lame boogie shit?

I think it wasn't until Soul Discharge that I actually heard music that sounded like kiss should have..,

Lol "soul discharge" how gross!

Soul Discharge, swayin' to the music....

on the bootleg cover above, Leadon looks like he's contemplating jumping overboard

frey and the unseen head of henley look like they're debating whether or not to push him.

What KISS should've sounded like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R2zIsnuAlw

oh sorry no embeds dang my bad.

I've listened to way too much Classic Rock Radio in my time, and the only Kiss songs I've heard with any regularity down here are "Rock'n'Roll All Night" and "Beth" (with the former appearing in three versions: the original, the Alive take, and the 80s remix). When it's 'deep cut' time, they'll drag out "Love Gun", "Detroit Rock City" or "Lick It Up". It's kind of amazing to think that at the time they were on the same popularity level as Zep, the Eagles etc. and now you'll hear two or three ZZ Top or Bad Company songs for every Kiss number on the air.

"Good Day In Hell": I like this, even singled it out for praise over on the other thread. Admittedly it's not that far removed from the anonymous Frey-sparked barband boogies of the first two albums, but what sets this apart is it's slightly more refined. Felder's slide is better. There's no pointless coda. I even detect a bit of an Outlaw Country influence (a Waylon cover would have killed). It's filler, but better filler.

Only Kiss I've ever heard on "classic rock" radio was "Rock 'n' Roll All Night." And that's on three different stations in the northeast and two in the midwest. I remember hearing "Detroit Rock City" and "Beth" when they were new, and "Lick It Up" was all over MTV for some reason.