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

hello california
is it me you're looking for

he's been listening to the eagles every day too iirc?!
also over the edge is better for teens wilding out to 70s rock music imo

DON: We've heard about this website that's gone through the trouble of listenin' to every one of our tunes.

GLENN: On one level, we're proud people are talking about our work. On the other hand, how many of these people have smoked the finest cheeba, flown in a Lear, and have gotten the pussy we have?

DON: Well, yeah.

done, done, and done

down here we all chug

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CFbgRSAxoY0/UAoG3bzsugI/AAAAAAAAAz8/y_EM1KFBWdc/s1600/pennywise_the_clown.jpg

"Were ... people listening?"

sorta. its just too hard to explain to people. luckily we were surrounded by people who are quite fond of the both of us and would have probably looked the other way just this once. it was nice to see him though. it always is.

over the edge is my favorite movie when all is said and done. but the warriors is definitely up there too.

in the wild: i saw tarfumes the escape goat today and he kept reminding me in public that i listen to the eagles every day. also, he has never seen the warriors. he's really gotta get on that.

― scott seward, Sunday, October 13, 2013 5:48 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wtf tarfumes

― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Sunday, October 13, 2013 5:55 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I KNOW, I KNOW, I'M ON IT.

Kinda like this song, maybe because I can only think of it as a Joe Walsh joint, and I don't actively hate anything Joe Walsh has done. I don't love anything he's done either (give or take a James Gang track or two; and the fact that he gave Pete Townshend the Gretsch/Fender Bandmaster rig Pete used on everything from Who's Next on). But I always dug the groove on this, and I'm wondering if it's actually Joe Vitale, and not Don behind the kit.

I'll bet Vitale is playing on the soundtrack version - whoever's playing sounds more like a studio groove dude than Henley's dull thudding on the Eagles version.

"The Disco Strangler"

http://www.eaglesonlinecentral.com/images/eaglesVB10.jpg

http://youtu.be/wuGdtVELyq4

"strangled" is how Henley's vocal sounds. I understand he's trying something new but – ugh ugh ugh

What is it that he's trying? This one is so bad, I can't believe they thought it worth putting any of it together. Even the riff is rubbish.

wtf is this? Wasn't "Long Run" allegedly the product of two perfectionist years ensconced in the studio? And yet track four sounds like a shitty studio demo with a wonky guide vocal.

as with their barely-remade "In the City" it's a sign the band had nothing in the tank, even by their standards.

I recall that a friend & I cracked up around 1983 (a year 'disco' was the height of uncool, at least in Virginia) when we were looking through record sleeves and saw this one. "Oooh-- the Disco Strangler!" Image of a killer wearing the Travolta white polyester suit.

that their vaunted quality control is discarded so that they try something completely misbegotten and gacked-up-to-the-goddamn-gills, with this song and two on the side 2, is why I like this record more than the preceding. It's nasty, brutish and short. they look at disco like they look at women and other challenges to their imperial primacy, so they make this mutant version. Never really tried to parse what Don's talking about here, but that they were so coked up that they thought this should make it on the record is endearing.

It's a tragedy that SCTV couldn't get the clearance for this in the Cruisin' Gourmet sketch.

What balls for Henley to sing this one all the while paying no mind to the actual beat and rhythm of the song. It's like he's strangling disco.

But say what you will, at least this one's over and out. Meisner would've never wrote something like this, but if he had, it would've gone on at least to the 5:49 mark.

Does a band that recorded "One Of These Nights" have a right to strangle disco in the first place?

Pretty sure Glenn Frey's choked himself on more than one occasion.

Sounds like one of Henley's more creative beats. Or, more accurately, this is Henley's one creative beat.

But yeah, total throwaway b-side material. Took them three years to come up with 42 minutes of music, and they still had to hijack a Joe joint and put this afterthought on.

That picture makes me feel like I might have Stockholm syndrome.

It would explain Joe's expression.

This is the day I have been waiting for since this thread started. I have thoughts about this song.

would have been so much cooler if they had blasted disco by making an awesome disco track. but that just wouldn't have been the way of the Eagle.

To show their hatred of disco, they record a terrible song. Progress!

Frey and Henley going clean-shaven as a harbinger of the '80s; must've been shocking for fans.

Disco Strangler is bizarre, poorly formed and lol. I enjoy it.

Also I will always hear it now as the accompaniment to Dave Thomas fisting a pullet.

what an odd song

if i was prone to DaveQ/xhuxk flights of rock crit fancy I might speculate it's the Eagles trying to be Gang of Four but who are we kidding they had no idea who that was and it's just their own inherent clunkiness trying to be funky

but yeah Henley's vocal seems to have barged into the room from another song altogether...their misogyny now not even hidden behind faux mellow trips and just ugly

Wow, this song. I was looking forward to it, hoping we'd get more JOURNEY OF THE SORCERER style wtf-ery. Instead it's a whole new kind of wtf-ery without any of the endearing weirdness of JotS. Bleh. I bet Don's throat hurt after he was done choking out this song. I haven't even looked at the lyrics yet.

Shakey, I am v. interested in your thoughts.

From the lyrics to the arrangement to the performance this song is a masterpiece of mixed emotions and conflicted intentions. It is not hard to imagine how the Eagles would be both threatened and dismissive of disco's cultural ascendancy at this point, and with this song they attempt to both cynically cash in on what they surely regarded as a fad, as well as incriminate it as some sort of deadly musical STD (the "melody without a cure"). The song is contemptuous of its audience, painting them as slatternly whores who don't know what's good for them, and while there are no direct intimations of the Eagles/narrator as spurned lover or wronged party, the condescending paternalism is blatant and dismissive ("fine, go get yourself killed by some polyester-coated greaser!").

Structurally, the song is a half-formed abortion of musical ideas. There are nods to the standard 4/4 disco throb in the kick/hi-hat pattern, but the snare hits are placed as if to deliberately and maliciously undermine the development of any actual disco groove. As such Henley ends up playing it more as a two-step, as if to say "oh, sure I know what disco IS, but it's so stupid I'm not gonna play it like it should be, I'm gonna do it like THIS instead" - the problem being that Henley doesn't have the chops to actually develop some interesting and technically showy divergence from the disco rhythm, instead he just throws in some off-beat snares every other bar, which sort of begs the question as to whether or not Henley actually COULD play a disco rhythm if he tried. Similarly, the two-note guitar riff is undeveloped and not particularly worthy as a hook, the Eagles presumably assuming that catchy riffs or chord shadings or anything melodically interesting would be required of something as pointless as a disco song. Henley's vocal, while committed to the anguished, ass-clenchingly strained delivery which he has so assiduously developed by this point in his career, wafts arhythmically above the rest of the arrangement, completely oblivious to the backing track.

Each element of the song perfectly encapsulates the band's position - we hate disco, but we will play it because it's popular, except not very well, because it's just some fucking disco garbage. Making it one of my favorite entries in the S/D: Songs that are about disco/have disco in the title but bear little to no resemblance to actual disco category. It also perfectly encapsulates everything I hate about the Eagles and why they were such a shitty band - the empty "professionalism", the condescending sexism, the failed pretensions, the drug-addled commercialism, the contemptuous, almost hateful vibe - it's all here in this song.

It also perfectly encapsulates everything I hate about the Eagles and why they were such a shitty band - the empty "professionalism", the condescending sexism, the failed pretensions, the drug-addled commercialism, the contemptuous, almost hateful vibe - it's all here in this song.

otm
they suuuuuuuuuuuuck
but mostly it's don henley's fault
the music itself doesn't scream CONDESCENSION, he does

This song is horrid. I was playing this record this morning and a minute or so into this song I had to go and turn it off because it was making me nauseous.

the way Henley belches out that last "-angleHHHuhhuhhhr" may be the most hateful moment in the whole Eagles catalog, which is really an achievement.

sociopolitical statement btw: "Rome is burning, but that's alright"

shakey really did have some thoughts on this.

i feel like the length of the song gives away their ambivalence. they thought it was a cute idea and then halfway through they just got tired of it and stopped.

and still put it on the album...

Shakey OTM.

so man this is really gonna go down....Eagles never made a completely satisfying, solid album. crazy.

man I feel really bad in my younger days ever equating these guys with Fleetwood Mac. wow. so remotely not on the same planet.

Crazy that from this record, you've got songs like I Can't Tell You Why and In the City -- not to even mention the High Plains Drifter song that's coming up -- and THIS one, THIS one that tries to mete out a funky little beat has been sampled by exactly NO ONE.

yeah the weird takeaway i'm getting from this whole experience has been that even when i really hated the eagles it turns out i was still overrating them.

For me, there is nothing more comforting in life than having my hate for something completely justified.

i do think henley is 80% of what's wrong w/ this track though, if it had been a minute and a half curio and maybe been more new wave instead of disco it might have been a fun bit of filler.

oh one thing I forgot to mention in my previous post - often I have fantasized that there was some sort of "strangling dance" move meant to accompany this song, but the song sabotages its funk underpinnings so thoroughly that dancing to this song is not actually possible.

not to even mention the High Plains Drifter song that's coming up

Really curious as to what the Eags reaction was when they heard/heard about the Beasties sample.

Wait, I don't care, fuck the Eagles.

yeah the weird takeaway i'm getting from this whole experience has been that even when i really hated the eagles it turns out i was still overrating them.

― balls, Monday, October 14, 2013 2:09 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah i feel a version of this--like, for all the talk of professionalism there are so many garbage performances across these records that some material that had potential gets totally submarined.

For me, there is nothing more comforting in life than having my hate for something completely justified.

― pplains, Monday, October 14, 2013 6:12 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hahaha it is like you held up a mirror to my soul.

how many songs do we have to go after The Long Run though. that thought kinda chills me to the bone.

do you feel your hair growing into a mushroom of tight poodly curls?

hahaha it is like you held up a mirror to my soul.

Let me just say I really love the three obvious throwaways on this album. Say what you will, but at least they're not boring as what they've dished out previously, and these tracks are genuinely weird in that way that makes you wonder how the biggest band in the world landed on this stuff. And besides, where else can you hear Don Henley sing the following through a clinched sphincter: "Look at me, baby, look at me. I'm beautiful, I'm beautiful, I'm somebody."?

Btw Shakey, did you ever make good on this?

"Disco Strangler" is my new favorite cover request to yell at bands. Especially alt-country bands.
― Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, May 3, 2005 12:08 PM (8 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah but that's satire oh right