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Hotel California

The Eagles - Hotel California Audio CD

A fair review of the The Eagles "Hotel California" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all The Eagles reviews here, or go back to the The Eagles tabs.

Band: The Eagles
Title: Hotel California
Rating:

Release Date: 2007-12-04
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Hotel California 2: New Kid in Town 3: Life in the Fast Lane 4: Wasted Time 5: Wasted Time (Reprise) 6: Victim of Love 7: Pretty Maids All in a Row 8: Try and Love Again 9: Last Resort

Great Sound Quality from 180g Vinyl!
I'm an audiophile and music lover and have always been a big fan of Hotel California, one of the great classic albums of our time. I've recently picked up a turntable and started collecting vinyl records. It is a collection of very well written songs and delicious sound quality as well. . . . on CD.

It was only natural I should pick it up on Vinyl. Originally I picked up a used copy at a record store but found it too be a bit too worn out and noisy for my taste. Luckily, brand new copies of this album are available here on Amazon which is pretty rare for ANY classic record, and it's 180g to boot!

After a fair amount of back to back listening against the CD I've found the difference to be rather close but still there. The vinyl is a bit more open sounding and fuller as well; dynamically they are about the same.

On a song like "Wasted Time", "Pretty Maids All In A Row" is where you will probably notice the difference the most.

Kind of asinine.................
66 + Shipping!

Some of these Amazon sellers should take a class in business ethics! Maybe then, they'll exercise some "common-sense", which, most of them don't have!

It's one thing to pay a astronomical price for something that's supposedly, "out-of-print" - most of the time, you'll find out it isn't so rare, after all!

I'll order my CD's directly from Japan and not pay ridiculous prices for items they will more than likely be available again 6 to 12 months down the road. to double the price of a CD you can get from Japan and then charge a "sourcing fee" on top of it! It's still available from Japan for only $18.

Great CD!
com! Love the music - brings back a lot of memories! :). It had been a long time since I listened to this "album" so it was great to see the CD available on amazon.

Classic from my early years, only gets better when listening to it on vinyl again.
When I was young, this was one of the only records my entire family would agree on when we were at our cabin where we spent hours listening to records. I've always loved this album, but forgot how good it sounds on vinyl. Only when I opened the lp cover did I truly remember what was so hypnotic about his album. Not only did the music reach into you, the photo of the hotel lobby with and without the people hypnotized me as a kid. I would stare at the people in the photo, wondering what their story is, wondering where they were going, why they were there. Truly a treat again, not just for my ears, but for my eyes. .

The end of innocence
On its release, however, many people failed to see - or simply did not want to see - the darker contexts lurking just beneath the warm, enticing surface. Oscar Wilde's phrase 'walls do not a prison make not iron bars a cage', might have been written about Hotel California. The philosophical message fell on deaf ears. Sure, the album sold in bucketloads, commercial success was offset by the scorn and hatred heaped upon it by punks, cultural purists and fellow musicians. The punks hated them because the slick musicianship stood in stark contrast to the learn-one-chord-and-start-your-own-band ethic was such a liberating force at the time (ask the Clash). Folk and Country & Western purists despised them for having taken American roots music and manufactured their own watered down brand for mass consumption. Other musicians loathed them for the limos-and-chicks success that they believed was rightfully theirs - a hatred that was fuelled by jealousy as much as anything else. For a while the Eagles were the anti-christs of modern music, and Hotel California the satanic bible.
That's all changed now. Today you can tell someone that you think Hotel California is an artistic endeavour of considerable merit without running the risk of getting your head kicked in.

The album is an allegory for the dashed ideals of the Summer of Love generation; a meditation on the corrupting influence of money, fame and the old Bolivian marching powder and on the inevitability of the fall. Don Henley's lead vocal is a masterclass in singing. The duelling guitar solos by Joe Walsh and Don Felder at the end are now the stuff of rock legend. Most of us know it off by heart, don't we?
New Kid in Town is about a schmaltzy as they come but still has a poignant statement to make and is one of the high-points of the album, showcasing for the Eagles' patented goosebump harmony singing and scaled down, tastefully restrained arrangements.
Life in the Fast Lane is a charging beast of a song. A hi-octane tale of burn-out and wanton self-destruction by through drugs and reckless living. Walsh and his co-axeman Don Felder are on fire, trading blistering chops and licks like their lives depend on it. Budding guitarists take note: here is a good example in playing what the song needs, no more, no less. No flashy self-indulgence for its own sake, but passionate playing.
By the end of Life in. . . I'm usually exhausted from leaping around the room with my 1959 Custom Fender tennis racket so as the opening strains of the Wasted Time wofts enticingly through the speakers, it's time to flop down on the sofa to some of the lyrics and admire the cover.
Pretty Maids all in a Row is one of my favourites. There's something immensely lovable about Joe Walsh, he's the Eagle you'd most like to have a beer with. His endearingly wonky vocal delivery balances out Henley's technical proficiency and adds a rootsy, down-to-earth dimension to the Eagles' music.
If HC has the perfect opening to an album as you'll find, it also has the perfect closing song, The Last Resort. A ballad of man's wanton destruction of nature and a kind of Faustian damnation of the whole human race.
Don't be deceived by the majesty of the welcoming sultriness of the cover - the album's message is bleak: we are self-destructive and our conceited sense of supremacy over nature combined with blind pursuit of pleasure will, rest assured, end in tears.
This is by far the best work Eagles ever did with a comfortable margin. It's the definitive statement of the genre known as country rock and unsurpassable achievement that rendered a whole musical genre obsolete overnight.
By the way, I'm not sure what 'Faustian' means but it sounds about right for the context.

You can see a complete list of all The Eagles discography, or go back to the The Eagles tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.