Eagles - Hotel California

Released in December of 1976, Hotel California would go on to become one of the best selling albums of all time. In the US it would go platinum twenty-six times, and here in Canada it would move over a million units. As impressive as those numbers are, Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975), released earlier that same year, has 45 million reported sales worldwide. If you're keeping score, there have been ten albums in the modern era that have reported sales of over 40 million, and the Eagles hold the number 5 and 6 spots. 1976 was a pretty good year for the band all in all.

I finally bought my copy well after the shine had worn off and the band had splintered into little pieces, with the members trying their hands at being solo artists. Some with more success than others. As a kid I'd heard the album quite a few times. Heck, I remember sitting in my friend's bedroom while the record played, and that was probably around 1980, and us kids were still listening to the album. Aside from the title track I loved "Life in the Fast Lane" and, to a lesser extent, "Victim of Love" and, to a much lesser extent, "New Kid in Town," although time has served to soften any vitriol I once had for the song.

Listening to this now, I'm struck by "Wasted Time" and how it feels like a companion piece to "Desperado," except there's a quiet resignation and acceptance that life is about the journey. As I'd had this on CD, I'd never really felt the impact of "Wasted Time (Reprise)" as it was merely a coda to the preceding song, but having it open side two allowed the song to serve as a connection to side one before launching into "Victim of Love," the second song written by Don Felder and fleshed out by Henley and Frey. Over the years the song took on added baggage through various documentaries and interviews as the song Don Felder wanted to sing and ended up being benched in favour of Don Henley's more gritty delivery. Now, I am all for team Felder, but seriously, Henley is a singing drummer, and Felder is a guitar player who wants to sing. End of the day it was still sung by Don.

The album itself still sounds amazing. It's one thing to get a great producer who can bring out the best in a band, but it's the engineer who quite literally sets the tone - to get both in Bill Szymczyk was a masterstroke. Putting all the pieces in place is one thing, having it catch on is another. There's something to be said for being in the right place at the right time. "Hotel California" is truly one of the greatest pop songs ever written, and sure, there are some great songs here, but is it really one of the greatest albums ever made?

Of course, the record I managed to pick up at auction was in really good condition aside from a little bit of rash on the first side. That's right, "Hotel California," the one song that absolutely needed to be pristine, had a couple of nice clicks and pops. Oh well, if anything it made it feel more vintage than it was actually distracting.

Nah, but it certainly is one of the goodest.

Except for the lone Randy Meisner song "Try and Love Again," I really liked all of the songs. It just seemed like he was trying to repeat the success of "Take It to the Limit," and it just felt off. Then again, it's just my opinion, which is worth exactly the same as yours if you happen to love it. For the record, I like cilantro and it doesn't taste like soap at all. For Randy, this ended up being his swan song, and he'd leave the band.

However, let's stay positive and I'll call out "The Last Resort" as my favourite album track. There's something about the song that just gets me in the feels. It may have the tempo of a ballad, but it's a lament.

It is a strange but awesome album. When I first played the record through and the familiar songs came on, it felt like a visit from the past, but it was the deeper tracks that felt fresh and new. I was also struck by the feeling that while it was good, was it really that good? I have albums that mean more to me, but they're not nearly as well known. For whatever reason, this album, and frankly the band in general, resonated with the masses. Millions and millions of people were joined together through the songs of the Eagles, and for what it's worth, that has to mean something.

You could say that we all sort of checked in and never left.

Styx - Paradise Theater

Styx was hands down one of my favourite bands as a kid. They were a strange band, even back then. They were a hard rock band, almost progressive at times, who had a penchant for sucky ballads. I know there's a tendency for people to zero in on "Babe" as the song that killed the band's credibility. The roots go way back to almost the beginning when Styx released "Lady" on their second album. It showed a side to the band that needed to be kept in check, and for the most part the band kept things on a pretty tight leash. The band had been setting a gruelling pace, releasing an album a year (two in 1972) and by the time they released Paradise Theater (if I end up writing theatre later it's because that's how we spell it here) in 1981 they'd dropped ten albums in less than a decade. I snapped this up as soon as I saw it, and it became a fixture on my turntable. Like the band had announced on "Borrowed Time" from 1979's Cornerstone , ...

David Baerwald - Bedtime Stories

The little sticker on the shrinkwrap says, "You may remember David Baerwald from David & David's Boomtown ..." You bet, I remembered David Baerwald. Back in 1986 Boomtown was an album with moments of sheer brilliance. The whole album may not have been as top shelf as the first few tracks, but that didn't matter - it is an excellent album. I waited for a follow-up ... and waited, and then in 1990 it was a solo David, David Baerwald, who dropped Bedtime Stories . I snapped it up. "All For You," the opening cut, is still my favourite song on the album. It was mesmerizing. I'm not sure if the song got any airplay, it may have, but that may have been wishful thinking on my part as it was on a lot of mix tapes at the time and I heard it a lot in the car. The CD had a great booklet with all of the musician credits and lyrics. Oddly, when I found a sealed copy of the record (a great score), it just had a plain paper insert - the picture of David walking wit...

Gary Numan - The Pleasure Principle

"Cars" was really the only song I knew by Gary Numan. I knew the name of the album the song came from. Over the years bits and pieces of trivia are accumulated, but in terms of his music it was still distilled down to one song ... It would be too easy to write Mr. Numan off as a one hit wonder, and I suppose in terms of actual chart hits this was his defining moment as a solo artist. Of course this really means nothing, as Gary Numan would drop an album a year pretty much through to the end of the '80s. He'd then slow down a little but continued to make music. While The Pleasure Principle was Gary Numan's debut solo release in '79, he actually cut his teeth on a couple of albums in a band called Tubeway Army, first with the band's self-titled release in 1978, and then on Replicas that came out in April of '79. By the end of Tubeway Army's run most of the band would follow Gary into his solo career. Paul Gardiner, who had been with Gary from the b...

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