Just when you think things can’t get any worse… isn’t that life in a nutshell? Sure as hell felt that way last week around here so it’s ironic that Bud’s week isnt’ going all that well either.
😉
We return to the Eagles’ “Hotel California” again today, this time tapping into the title track rather appropriately. Oh the horror! Is Bud going to be stuck in Hell? Is his soul going to end up on eBay so the Devil can pay the heating bill? So many questions and so little time until tomorrow when I try to answer those questions. No, it is not a dream or a really whacked out hallucination from wacky-backy. I’m not that easy… but I can be had…
🙂
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Discussion (31) ¬
I know it is a classic but I remember as a kid hating this song. I wasn’t into those epic songs.
It is a bit slow and longer for most “pop” tunes of the time, but I dig it for the guitar solos at the end. Now the acoustic version blows in my opinion as it just does not have the same punch. Same goes for “Layla” unplugged. What?! Eric may be a God but that version sucked.
Bricks being tossed in my direction in 3, 2, 1…. 🙂
Bricks, huh? How about an entire wall? A *very large* brick wall? 😛 😛 😛
~takes a deep breath preparatory to ranting~
About the only good thing that can be said for Crapton’s unplugged Layla is that at least it wasn’t Crapton’s *electric* Layla. That track. That ~shudders~ AWFUL, AWFUL TRACK. Dreck and the Doominoes managed in one ear-searing, white-noise-plastered track the equivalent of the Stones’ entire Cocaine Mix period. The over-frantic, sloppy-as-old-socks signature riff! The pointless key modulations and aimless wandering chord sequences! The incoherent bellowing-like-a-bullock-being-castrated vocals! The dreadful, toneless, thin-and-all-treble, drug-raddled lead playing, reminiscent only of a giant mosquito on methedrine! That entire track is one relentless splatter of unmusical self-(over)indulgence, its only – only!!! – saving grace being the beautiful Nicky Hopkins-led coda, which frankly has nothing to do with the rest of the track and is eternally tarnished by having to share the same song-space. The horror, the horror…that awful, awful track has never had any redeeming features, and the song itself has no redeeming *anything* about it…
…or it didn’t, until the day I got my sticky hands on it and reinvented it for the Herne Hill Half Moon’s legendary Sunday afternoon jams, turning it into a wonderland of medium-tempo Cimarons-influenced dark reggae, with funky horns and a call-and-response chorus to die for…
…hmm, maybe I should stop ranting now and thank Crapton for giving me such ultimately gorgeous source material 😀
LOL! That *was* a brick wall! 🙂
Man, if we were to ever get stuck on island together with only one stereo between us, we’d be fighting like two cats in a bag! Ah, but I still like you anyway! 😉
Suffice to say, I actually like “Layla” as it hit me as I was turning 13 and was turning my nose from AM radio to FM stations in Chicagoland. I was turning on to “Won’t Get Fooled Again” and “Layla” for the riffs and solos. So, that’s why I like the song.
I can see why you wouldn’t like it. But, no, I can’t stand the acoustic version at all. Not many groups can pull that off. Rod Stewart tried to perform “Stay With Me” on his MTV unplugged set, but they added a few electric instruments to pull it off. “Stay With Me” unplugged? Ugh..
🙂
ROFL! No, I suspect we have far too many music-likes (and loves) in common for it to ever come to blows 🙂
I totally get the ‘songs of a certain time of one’s life’ thing. One of those, for me, was Groovin by the Young (as they were called then) Rascals. Another, long before that, was Mickey and Sylvia Baker’s awesome version of Love is Strange – the sweet little blues lick on the turnaround, added to the Ray Charles records my Dad used to bring home, influenced my entire future musical direction. Much later (’70s), another wet Everlys hit reworked into magnificence: Nazareth’s take on Love Hurts. And so on.
Who’s Next, the entire album, was a bag of bricks to the brain *in the very best way*. I have fond memories of, on USA tours when that album first came out, driving across the Southwestern deserts in a huge Transit van with the doors wide open and Won’t Get Fooled Again – and Baba O’Reilly! – blasting out and frightening the local wildlife 😛
once again, teh effkan, that ^^^ there easily could have come from my own keyboard. 😀
i constantly thank the japanese profusely for labeling his cd’s correctly. 😉
*scooby doo wind-up sound effect*
*zing!*
–dee!
Yeah Bearman, HUGE overkill by commercial radio as always, but I still love hearing it just for the guitar interaction & riff/solo trade-offs between Joe Walsh & Don Felder. Killer stuff that to me still sounds great almost 35 years (egads, has it really been that long?!!…) later.
HOLY CRAP! 33 years is more like it, but still…. Ah, we’re just a couple of old rockers…
🙂
Disagree. Spent large portion of youth listening to epic-length music (which H.C. ain’t, not by a long chalk).
Does *everyone* under the age of 30 suffer from ADD? When did you all start buying into the old Decca maxim “three minutes per song”? Is it an iPod thing?
Azathoth on a bike.
Very nice transporter FX in panel 3 there, Byron.
H.C. theme was revisited by Genesis in an even more epic two-parter Home By the Sea. You can find it on the album “Genesis” (the one that made them popular in the US and from which a string of less-good singles was drawn). I believe it is available on CD and, if you really must squash the shit out of it, download. Of course, you don’t get the album art then, but to be honest the album art has been iffy on Genesis albums since Hacket left the lineup.
:o)
In case I don’t get to stick my eyeballs in here again before it’s all over, I wish everyone here at 1977 (even the ones with ADD) a Happy New Year. Don’t drink and drive (you’ll only get booze all over the naugahide).
2010 is the year we all get rich and famous, right?
First, yes, 2010 is the year we all get rich… or at least able to pay some bills!
I agree that “Hotel California” isn’t epic in the true sense, but then I could never sit still for a THIRTY MINUTE live version of “Dazed and Confused” as done by Zeppelin either. As Monty Python would say… “Get on with it!” Epic songs by Genesis or ELP or Yes, etc., bored the living crap out me most times. Yes, I’m ADD.
Bricks coming my way in 3, 2, 1… 🙂
List of long songs at
http://www.amiright.com/names/super-long-pop-songs/a.shtml
Just looking at 7 minute plus songs My ADD self likes (in a quick perusal)
Pictures of You – The Cure
Scenes from an Italian Restaurant – Billy Joel
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida – Iron Butterfly
Freebird – Leonard Skynyrd
Blue Monday – New Order
Purple Rain- Prince
Won’t get fooled again – Who
Living for the City – Stevie Wonder
Captain Jack – Billy Joel
Money for Nothing – Dire Straights
November Rain – Guns N Roses
Paradise By The Dashboard Light,- Meat Loaf
Roundabout – Yes
Us and Them – Pink Floyd
Ones I don’t
Hotel California – eagles
American Pie – Don McLean
Nights in White Satin – Moody Blues
Stairway to Heaven – Zeppelin
Just like movies, they can be long but they have to grab me. The last four never did anything for me.
Yeah, I agree with Bearman a bit there. I got so burnt out on ‘Hotel California’ because of classic rock radio. And it’s not because it’s an epic tune, and I’m certainly not under 30, lol. Some classic rock songs, unfortunately, I’d be happy to never hear again, like Dream On, Zep’s Rock and Roll, Born to be Wild. Oh well… 🙂
I agree with you… everyday another song hits my “Holy shit! Not that song again!” list.
The “new” Classic Rock stations only play about 200 songs it seems. And NO ONE plays album tracks anymore. I’d give up one of my balls for a GOOD, SOLID rock station that knows it’s ass from a hole in the ground, but they’re all programmed by some damned executive who’s only job is to make money. Again, Broadcaster’s have the edge as they can play total crap, and we’ll end up listening to something. I hate Broadcasting as a whole.
Rant over… 🙂 Brick coming my way in 3, 2, 1…
I finally gave up on Classic Rock stations when I frantically switched between the three in this area and they were all playing Steve Miller. (Which songs? No idea, by this point they’re all so overplayed they sound exactly the same.) Nowadays it’s all student radio for me, and we have some great stations here in Raleigh/Durham.
Oddly enough I still love Hotel California, although most of the rest of the Eagles sounds very dated to me. Maybe it’s that the imagery still stands up, and it’s SO appropriate for a contract “negotiation” in Hell. Hmm, I wonder if Bud’s contract contains gender-specific wording that would let him get out of it?
I thought I hadn’t heard an acoustic Layla, but then I realized I’d forgotten it for good reason. It would be like an acoustic Kashmir, or Born To Be Wild. Springsteen can pull off his acoustic versions because they’re great songs — we didn’t worship Layla for the lyrics, without the electric guitars it’s lost its entire point.
OooO! A gender clause in his contract! You’re close… 🙂
You been reading ahead of the class? 🙂
Oh, hell!
LOL! Indeed! 😉
Liz Hurley, we hardly knew ya… 🙂
Superlative work as always, with a special Cookie of Merit for panel 3.
And a very happy new year to you!
Ah, a nice reference to the “Bedazzled” remake with ol’ Liz! The original isn’t all that great but has Raquel Welch in it and OMG I’ll watch anything with her it in. I’m not one to drool over women, but Raquel is my exception. She’s just hot… still is too!
Think I got my first woody looking at Raquel posters in the 60s. Nice…
Oh, did you mention the comic? I got distracted… 😉
~laughs~ You incurable top shelf man, you…
My work here is done 😛
Not quite, you didn’t light the cigarette….
BTW I did like the Pete ‘n’ Dud original of Bedazzled, but it hasn’t aged well; and though many, many oldskoolers howled in protest at the Liz Hurley remake, I think it’s actually pretty good. Pretty *damned* good, as it were 😉
p.s. Budette’s expression in the final panel is soooo very Sam Beckett. ‘Oh boy…’
LOL! I hadn’t thought of that, but it sure is! Love Sam and the gang from “Quantum Leap”!
“Oh, boy…” Look on YouTube, someone edited a bunch of Sam saying “oh, boy” to The Crickets’ “Oh, Boy!” Really fun video.
🙂
Hmm. I don’t often get off on that sort of thing (though the Muppets’ Rickroll – and the Muppets’ Bohemian Rhapsody!!! – are Teh Awsum), but that sounds like it could be major fun. Will have a shufti, and thx for the tip!
I have a long-standing soft spot for Quantum Leap. It got muddled with the heavy-handed metaphysics, but who cared when we had Scott Bakula being fantastic and Dean Stockwell being even fantastic-er?! (BTW I think Stockwell gets a Lifetime Awesome award, both for playing Al in QL and for the stunningly dyspeptic Brother Cavil in Galactica…the REAL Galactica, not that endearing bot come-on-let’s-be-honest lame-arse original…)
So, that shimmering light really was Hell. I wonder if Bud heard the mission bell.
Hey Byron, there’s a great classic rock web radio station – 3wk Classic Underground Radio. I really dig it – it sends me back to my late 60’s thru mid 70’s radio days when we had a free-form AOR station here in Albuquerque. 3wk concentrates on a roughly 10 year period between say ’66 to ’75, with occasional forays earlier or later. They also play most everything off of vinyl… the way it was meant to be heard. It’s rare that you’ll hear anything that was played on radio much at all, let alone on today’s commercial classic rock stations. Give it a listen!