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

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.

yeah definitely

well but that's it: the only outside help they got was J.D. Souther, one of their own. They didn't work with song doctors! They wrote and played their own shit. Their career makes a case for song doctors -- or, in Henley's case, Kooch and Mike Campbell.

SOMEONE PLEASE STOP THE EAGLES FROM WRITING THEIR OWN SONGS

well but that's it: the only outside help they got was J.D. Souther

and Jackson Browne and Jack Tempchin

"Disco Strangler" is my new favorite cover request to yell at bands. Especially alt-country bands.

I could probably play the drums on this, and I'm not even a drummer. I could also do the vocals - best way would be to insert earplugs so I couldn't hear what the rest of the band was playing

Yeah -- Jack Tempchin became Frey's Kootch and Campbell (oof).

exactly!

if you include outside songwriters and other members of the band other than frey and henley - for instance their hired gun guitarist coming up with a complete version of their most famous song - they got LOTS of help.

And this was still the best they could do.

plus seger yet to come

man henley being a drummer is still such a weird mystery to me. dude clearly wouldn't have been the drummer unless he wanted to be the drummer and yet there is nothing to indicate this is a guy who cared about drumming, so so many tracks that might be salvageable if the drumming was even just adequate.

he's not a keyboardist, guitarist, singer, human being.

...registered sex offender

well, yeah

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

Would OTM this except... EXCEPT for a certain cosmic concerto for banjo and string orchestra...

yeah, that's my lone great discovery from this 3000+ post thread

"Chug All Night" has been good for running jokes and screen names.

guys

Check out To the Limit: The Untold Story of the Eagles if you want a salacious read. It's on Google Books. Apparently Henley WAS a compulsive gambler in the eighties.

kick 'em when they're up!

are the Henley/Frey solo records the same formula the Eagles? A couple singles, then just half-assed dreck? I recall "Building the Perfect Beast" had a couple of legitimately okay non-single tracks on it, but the memory may cheat.

Well, they're right on top of the death of disco here ... "we're just trying to reflect our TIMES, maaaaan"

From day one, starting with the pre-release single of the title track, the Dallas FM stations played all of the album EXCEPT this track...

Henley's Internet poker handle, ca. 2005: "DiscoStranglrr2"

building the perfect beast made rolling stone's best albums of the 80s (just behind marshall crenshaw's debut, just ahead of, brace yrself, sign o the times), when i was a kid i chalked it up to lol rolling stone but knowing now that jann wenner apparently hated the eagles i have no idea, maybe it is decent

are the Henley/Frey solo records the same formula the Eagles? A couple singles, then just half-assed dreck?

It depends! I don't own I Can't Stand Still and dislike "Dirty Laundry." Building the Perfect Beast stays true to its title: every song offers an electrohook or line to die for. "All She Wants to Do is Dance" is the only guilty pleasure in my life: in typical Henley fashion he mocks the chick for being insensitive enough not to care about El Salvador and the Contras yet the groove is so damn unstoppable that I forgive him anyway.

I cannot stand The End of the Innocence, which really is bitch bitch bitch, including "The Last Worthless Evening," about a bitch.

i could imagine liking 'dirty laundry' if it was an instrumental, that initial murky few seconds before the high synth hook comes in reminds me of the beginning of 'juke box hero' in a weird way.

Wait I thought All She Wants... was about Vietnamese hookers?!

End of the Innocence is murderous. Robbie Robertson, if he heard it, would be like, "man, pompous much?" I like "Dirty Laundry" just for that keyboard hook---it drowns out the song's Henleyness.

Hey, y'all. Heard you had a bad day on the Eagles thread. Sorry 'bout that. Hope this makes up for it.

http://vimeo.com/76914676