Saturday, February 15, 2014

The Curse of Success

Since when have The Eagles become this huge punchline (Penn Gillette being the latest comedian to put forth a salvo)? I mean, no, they weren't as cutting-edge as Uncle Tupelo, The Who, Sonic Youth, The Velvet Underground, The White Stripes, Lone Justice, or The Cowboy Junkies but they did put forth a fair number of not only decent songs but excellent ones ("Take it to the Limit" and "Heartache Tonight" being my two favorites)...............................................................................I don't know, folks, I think what we may be experiencing here is a little something called the backlash effect. It happens whenever people like something for a while but then, boom, the very minute that it becomes hugely popular with the masses (and, yes, a lot of artists in fact DO "sell out"), they drop it like a hot potato (Hootie and the Blowfish being yet another classic example). I mean, it's almost as if their elitist gene-pool collectively kicks in and the rest of us somehow feel the need to go along with them...............................................................................Me? I tend to think what I've always thought about The Eagles (along with The Doobie Brothers and a fair number of those other '70s bands); namely, that they were a good, solid rock band, period.

8 comments:

Rusty Shackelford said...



Sorry Will....never cared for the Southern California soft rock sound....vanilla ice cream.

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

I'm not saying that they're great, Russ, just that they aren't awful.

Rusty Shackelford said...



Their best work was when then backed up Linda.

dmarks said...

Just like vanilla ice cream. Not great, but not awful.

The Eagles as sort of a minimum acceptable level of Muzak.

Les Carpenter said...

Their time came and went.

Kind of like Frank Zappa (a great musician) and The Mother's of Invention

Rusty Shackelford said...



RN.....Zappa was legend.....who else would ever think up Shiek Yerbuti or a song called "My Dick is a Monster?"

dmarks said...

Rusty said: "Sorry Will....never cared for the Southern California soft rock sound....vanilla ice cream"

Ah. A Kihnspiracy theorist, I see.

dmarks said...

I've been waiting since 1983 to make that joke Russ. Thank you for providing the opportunity at long last.