MINE
It's not even a guilty pleasure. When I pushed this CD into the car player this morning and heard the opening notes of Hotel California, the only feeling that came over me was delight. I'm sorry if that marks me as an MOR fuddy-duddy, but this album was such a large part of my teenage years I just adore it.
I think about sitting in the back room at Karen's house where we were all allowed to smoke, arguing noisily about whatever was important to us that day. It takes me back to Durras, where we made up that really rude version of the title track. It takes me back to school and home and hanging out with that group of friends who I'm looking forward to seeing in November at our 30-year high school reunion (and doesn't that make me feel old?)
But hopefully it'll also take me forward. I want this album to be part of all the ages of my life. And I love how The Last Resort is still more than seven minutes long but it still holds my attention right to the end. I've never liked Pretty Maids.but I listened to Life In the Fast Lane twice. Up really, really loud. And I might just play it again on the way home.
VERDICT: TURN IT UP
YOURZ
I wish I had some kind of wonderful story to tell about The Eagles. But I don't. I used to play Peaceful Easy Feeling and Lying Eyes years ago, neither of which are on this album. As a teenager, I remember hearing them a lot, but would never have admitted liking them. If anything, it was the opposite. My friends and I used to put shit on them. The Eagles represented establishment Top 40 corporate rock, the very thing that would soon bring about one of most profound schisms in contemporary music, better known to you and me as Punk.
So, if anything, I really have to be grateful to The Eagles for helping bring this about because, seriously, it makes me sick to think where modern music might have ended up if Punk hadn't shaken the foundations. And honesty, apart from the Hotel California (the song), Life In The Fast Lane and Victim Of Love, this album makes me barf a little.
Joe Walsh, however, was nothing but a punk dressed up as a Mid-Western rocker.
VERDICT: TURN IT DOWN but only out of respect, okay...
For more information: http://www.eaglesband.com/
