Music Video Of the Week - February 21, 2025

"Trampled Under Foot" by Led Zeppelin  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - October 11, 2024

"Dream Police" by Cheap Trick  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - September 15, 2023

"Volcano" by Jimmy Buffett (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - May 12, 2023

"The Wreck Of the Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

 

Music Video Of the Week - March 11, 2022

"Flirtin' With Disaster" by Molly Hatchet  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

The Eagles - The Long Run (1979)

When you look at what was at the top of the Billboard singles chart in the first week of January 1970 and the last week of December 1979, you can summarize the lightweight pop that dominated AM hit radio in the 1970s, as the first and last number-one singles of the decade were, respectively, "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head" by B.J. Thomas and "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" by Rupert Holmes.  This is an inaccurate summary of the seventies, of course, as it was a decade defined by music so much better than that, but looking at what topped the Billboard album chart at the beginning and the end of the 1970s was actually not only more accurate but rather sobering; the first number-one album of the seventies was the Beatles' Abbey Road and the last one was The Long Run by the Eagles (which sat atop the Billboard album chart for nine weeks).

When you mark the seventies this way, the conclusion is all too obvious; after ten incredible years of producing numerous classic records, rock and roll was exhausted and in need of new blood.  Because despite its commercial success, The Long Run was not a great record from the Eagles.  Indeed, it may have been the primary cause of their following hiatus.  Hotel California may have been the Sgt. Pepper of the seventies, but The Long Run is certainly no Abbey Road.

The Eagles labored for over a year on The Long Run, consciously trying to match the artistic success of Hotel California without working up enough energy to come up with enough material worthy of  a follow-up to such a monumental album.  As a result, it's underthought and overproduced.  The band sounds tired throughout the record, and a good deal of the music sounds forced.  Drummer Don Henley has delivered better vocals on previous Eagles LPs, and guitarist Glenn Frey seems to sing lyrics without giving them much thought - which makes sense, seeing as some of these songs weren't given much thought when they were written.  Power-pop rockers like "Heartache Tonight" and "Teenage Jail" try too hard to sound tough, while nods to contemporary sounds such as the ineffectual "The Disco Strangler" and the embarrassingly stiff "King of Hollywood" (an attempted satire of predatory producers looking for, ahem, personal favors from budding starlets) have little spark to them.  You've heard all of these ideas before, done better.  And by folks other than the Eagles.  But in 1979, the Southern California blend of country music and straight rock that the Eagles had pioneered wasn't as relevant as it had once been, so the band focused on a more urban sound while trying not to give into the trendiness of disco and  disco-flavored rock.  One can respect the Eagles for trying to go in a different direction, but on The Long Run the band sounds more reactive than proactive, throwing in any old trick they think will work.  Why else would "In the City," a sharp rocker originally recorded solo by lead guitarist Joe Walsh for the movie The Warriors, end up being covered by the full band for this album? 

Not everything on the Long Run was unsuccessful, though.  "Those Shoes," a biting satire on the singles-bar scene, sounds like it could have been on Hotel California, and the wistful ballad "I Can't Tell You Why" - marking new bassist Timothy B. Schmit's vocal debut on an Eagles record - continued the Eagles' knack for delivering emotional love songs.  And "The Greeks Don't Want No Freaks," inspired by National Lampoon's Animal House - the Citizen Kane of frat-boy movies - is funnier than the movie itself.  But the band's overall lack of originality and inspiration is quite obvious, especially in the opening and closing songs.  Despite the wry irony of the title song espousing the Eagles' longevity on the verge of the Eagles' breakup - and that wonderful line "All the debutantes in Houston, baby, couldn't hold a candle to you" - "The Long Run" borrows so much from the melody of Otis Clay's 1972 soul song "Trying To Live My Life Without You" that the song's message of the endurance of the Eagles' music does not ring true.  How can you defend yourself as an artist when you're ripping off another artist, and an obscure black artist at that?  "The Sad Café," which ends the LP, is a confession from the band that the musical culture from whence they came has passed, as if, in the long run, they weren't going to make it at all.  

The Eagles had already secured themselves longevity with their earlier work, but like most seventies bands, they found themselves worn out at the end of that decade without much to say.  In that respect, The Long Run was appropriate - a mainstream rock album issued in the aftermath of a severe downturn for a record industry too reliant on veteran performers and done in by its own excesses without much of clue as to how to carry on in the 1980s, a decade that would see the record business recover but would see rock, a once-great genre, begin a long, painful decline as style would become more important than substance.  Right before the start of what Glenn Frey would call the Eagles' "fourteen-year vacation," the Eagles had again defined the times - only now for all the wrong reasons. 

(Yes, I'm back with record reviews! For awhile, anyway.)

Christmas Music Video Of the Week - December 27, 2019

"Wonderful Christmastime" by Paul McCartney  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - November 22, 2019

"Cruel To Be Kind" by Nick Lowe  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - November 15, 2019

"Take The Long Way Home" by Supertramp  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - November 8, 2019

"Cheap Sunglasses" by ZZ Top  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - October 11, 2019

"Faster" by George Harrison  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - March 29, 2019

"Volcano" by Jimmy Buffett  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - May 25, 2018

"Cars" by Gary Numan  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - March 2, 2018

"Blow Away" by George Harrison  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Christmas Music Video Of the Week - December 22, 2017

"Wonderful Christmastime" by Paul McCartney  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - October 6, 2017

"Refugee" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - April 28, 2017

"Pieces of April" by Three Dog Night (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - March 10, 2017

"Long Live Rock" by the Who (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Eclipse

A total solar eclipse is one of those big natural events that a) can be forecast decades in advance and b) is something people look board to, because it's so cool.  Twenty seventeen will mark the first solar eclipse over the continental United States since 1979.  I remember the 1979 occurrence, but I didn't actually see the eclipse itself - it was visible the most in the Pacific Northwest, and whether or not I'd be able to see it from the Northeast wasn't going to matter, because I wasn't going to risk hurting my eyes. It was on February 26, 1979, a Monday; I was in eighth grade, so I was in a classroom when it happened, and it was a cold and rainy day in the part of the Northeast where I was living, anyway.  Ironically, that was about the time I got expelled from science class because I was flunking it and not getting along with the other kids.

I've never been very scientifically literate.  That's why I trust the climatologists who say global warming is real.

Anyway, I saw the images on TV instead, and the weatherman on the station I was watching said there'd be "a rerun in 38 years."  Now here we are, 38 years later, and the total eclipse coming our way on August 21 - another Monday - should be visible to everyone in America, not just some of us.   This time I hope to find a way to see it without hurting my eyes . . . unless it rains.

I can't help but note a little bad karma, though,  when I realize that the last solar eclipse over the continental United States was followed by a multitude of cosmic bummers in 1979 - the Three Mile Island disaster (I was living in Pennsylvania at the time), the second gas shortage, the gasoline riots, Jimmy Carter's "malaise" speech, the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Iran, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that ended the détente period of the Cold War.  Also, "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" hit number one.  With Donald Trump about to move into the White House and Britain about to move out of the European Union, I wonder if more bad karma - worse karma - is at hand for after August.

Well, I'm going to try to not to get superstitious about the eclipse, though I will have some trepidation in attempting to see it myself rather than on video.

Information on the 2017 eclipse is available here. 

Christmas Music Video Of the Week - December 16, 2016

"Wonderful Christmastime" by Paul McCartney  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)