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

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

haha y'know I haven't seen any alt-country bands lately, will report back when I have

i assumed that by virtue of growing up within proximity of a radio, and also by virtue of growing up within proximity of an awful lot of '70s and '80s rock, i would have known this song. the title was familiar to me; i figured i heard it a t least a few times back in the day and had forgotten about it. but now i'm pretty sure i've never actually heard this song before.

four things about it:

1. it's totally not a bad song. it isn't great by any stretch either, but there's something appealing about the raggedness of the guitars, and the simple chorus hook works. and as a huge fan of rolling stones disco, i'll happily check out anything that sounds like sub-rolling stones disco.

2. the rolling stones IS the school of disco this is entirely inspired by and derived from, yes?

3. the random hard-left and hard-right panning of the hi-hat is giving me headaches.

4. this is about the 27th song that's come up on this thread that i thought could be made into a warren zevon song with just a little editing here or there. i don't think you'd have to edit this one at all though. just switch vocalists, add waddy wachtel's name to the credits (but don't actually change the part), and done.

the Stones have understood R&B since 1962.

the Eagles have understood R&B since never

well that's what i mean by the "sub" in "sub-rolling stones disco." but that said, there's been at least a few songs on this thread that suggest the eagles, while not exactly the stones, do know a thing or two about r&b.

Glenn Frey ordered sheet music for Philly Soul songs so he could learn them!

They like R&B. They don't get R&B.

Don: Well, yeah.

yeah what's mildly disappointing about this is that the eagles have been fairly engaged w/ r&b and even disco to this point (ahead of their peers even w/ 'one of these nights'), they weren't tom petty.

They gambled: they thought they could write songs that compensated for their shitty rhythm section.

http://youtu.be/o5UkuNWSvas

i think this thread proves beyond a doubt that we should just gather all the copies of the individual eagles albums and burn them, bonfire style

there's no reason for anything of the eagles to exist except their greatest hits

and even *that* is dangerous, because it lets people think there's undiscovered gems out there and we can tell the world categorically NO SIR, THERE ARE NOT

that's the thing right there. even with the non-hits that weren't terrible, i could name a dozen other bands that did it better. i mean there are plenty of non-hit zz top, allman bros, lynyrd skynyrd, poco, etc, etc, etc songs that are just so much better quality-wise. and funkier. and played better and just more fun to listen to. there are pure prairie league songs that are better than the marginally ok eagles non-hits!

and I think of my experience digging into the Rolling Stones catalog and finding all kinds of songs that could have formed their own non-hits compilation, like how the songs you hear on the radio are just the tip of the iceberg (at least for me personally)

and the eagles is like, how the fuck did they manage to have so many hits when they couldn't a) write a whole album that you could listen to start to finish and b) their non-hit material is SO bland/bad or downright offensive

it's like they are scientists who don't keep notes and just keep fucking up the same experiments over and over until poof it works and then they can't remember how they did it becuase they weren't paying attention so they start from scratch

every...single...time

i just think they got a lot of help! in the studio and from other musicians/songwriters. they would have moved back home in the early 70's if they hadn't hooked up with the dudes they hooked up with.