Hotel California. A Classic or a Nightmare–What Do You Think?

Hey boomers–any idea of how many “classic rock” radio stations are in the USA? Wikipedia lists 496 stations using some variation of that moniker. Assuming all are 24-hour a day broadcasters, that is 496 X 24 X 60 = 714,240 minutes of air time per day that these stations have to fill. Let’s guess that 214,20 minutes of that is filled with commercials, news, and DJ jabber. That leaves about half a million minutes a day for music.

And how do most classic rock radio stations fill that time? They play the Eagles “Hotel California.” And then they play it again.

You can travel anywhere in the country (we just spend a lovely week in Phoenix) and the results will be the same. The ethereal images, the dueling guitars, the Steely Dan reference, the never-ending fade, all those will follow you coast to coast. And you won’t escape it at 30,000 feet as ‘Hotel California” is certainly on your airline’s in-flight song menu as well.

It is quite possible that if you stacked up a new 45 rpm disc for each radio play in the last 45 years, you would end up with a pile 4.3 light-years tall, high enough to reach the star Alpha Centauri. And when you got there, some intergalactic radio station would be probably be playing the intro to “Hotel California.”

This isn’t to say some radio stations don’t occasionally get creative. If you listen long enough you may hear the rare playing of some other song from the Hotel California album. “New Kid in Town” frequently makes the cut. There is also a dictum that one out of every ten plays of “Hotel California” must be the live acoustic version from the “Hell Freezes Over” CD.

So whether you are in the fast lane, takin’ it easy, or taking it to the limit, you can be sure that when you check in to Hotel California, you can never leave.

Like what you read here? Add your name to our subscription list below. No spam, I promise! ___

#mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; }
/* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.
We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */

Subscribe to our mailing list

* indicates required

Email Address *

First Name

Last Name

//s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.mailchimp.com/js/mc-validate.js(function($) {window.fnames = new Array(); window.ftypes = new Array();fnames[0]=’EMAIL’;ftypes[0]=’email’;fnames[1]=’FNAME’;ftypes[1]=’text’;fnames[2]=’LNAME’;ftypes[2]=’text’;}(jQuery));var $mcj = jQuery.noConflict(true); ———————————–

I Have A Beatles Dilemma. How About You?

The Beatles in the early days. Photo courtesy Chicago Tribune.

Ask me what I think about the Beatles and I will give the standard answer of my generation. They are the greatest band that ever lived, they revolutionized music, they mean the world to me. OK boomer, now ask me which of their songs I would put on my all-time, continuos loop, soundtrack of my life music stream.

And that’s where the dilemma lies. From the harmonies of I Want to Hold Your Hand, through the opening chord of A Hard Days Night to the final yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah of The Long and Winding Road, I like a lot of Beatle songs, but I don’t love any of them. Sort of like my relationship to Superdawg french fries. I like them but I don’t love them.

It’s not the same with the other artists that are constantly playing on my radio in the lab or the Pandora station in my headphones at the fitness center. If I’ve got favorite bands, I’ve got favorite songs to go with them.

U2? The bang-bang-bang opening of the Joshua Tree album–Where the Streets Have No Name, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, and With or Without You introduced me to the band more than 30 years ago and have been my favorites ever since.

With Steely Dan, my favorite songs come from the end of their career, or at least the end of their career’s first chapter (I ignored the second chapter.) Aja, the title track of their 6th album, is sublimely mellow and mind-expanding and the same album’s Deacon Blue makes a wistful cry out to mid-life crises.

When Fleetwood Mac changed their personnel and music style in the mid-70’s they probably lost a few thousand fans but gained a few million more. It was that flip that led to Go Your Own Way, the best power-pop song of all time. And I love the more pensive Over My Head just as much. Easy to add to my jukebox of greats.

What Eagles songs are on that Love Those Songs jukebox? Give me the original Hotel California and then follow it up with the Hell Freezes Over version of…Hotel California. Sometimes you feel like acoustic, sometimes you don’t.

The longings of youth. Has anyone made them seem more desperate than Bruce Springsteen in Thunder Road or made them sound more fun than in the Boss’s Rosalita?

While Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon is my top-ranked album, I prefer not to think about individual songs from it — everything blends so seamlessly together. On the other hand, Wish You Were Here, the title cut and final track from the Floyd’s 1975 album stands alone as the perfect paean to loss of love, loss of a bandmate, loss of sanity. And the guitar solos in Comfortably Numb make me feel…comfortable.

But back to the Beatles. I am ok with the silly love songs, I enjoy the goofiness of Yellow Submarine and Octopuses Garden, and I can play air guitar to The End. But where is the song I could listen to over and over and over again? Where is their Hotel California? If Rocky Racoon put a gun to my head and made me choose one song, today it would be While My Guitar Gently Weeps. Tomorrow it would probably be something else. Like but never love.

And that is my dilemma with the Beatles.

Like (or love) what you read here? Add your name to our subscription list below. No spam, I promise! ___

Subscribe to our mailing list

* indicates required

Email Address *

First Name

Last Name

Music Trivia Tuesday-What do Neil Young and Neil Diamond Have in Common?

Where did the title to your favorite album or CD comes from? It might be simple, just the name of the artist or band, such as the first album from Boston. Sometimes a Roman numeral gets appended and you have a Chicago II or a Led Zeppelin III. With concept albums, the artist may choose a song that sets out the theme and use that name as the album title. I like The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, and the Eagles’ Desperado and Hotel California albums as examples of that.

But a different type of title intrigues me more. Take a look at Neil Young’s classic 1979 album Rust Never Sleeps. That’s a great line, it sets a tone, but it is not the name of a song. Instead, it is a lyric from “My My Hey Hey,” the number that opens the album. Neil Diamond has done the same thing. His live albums Hot August Night and Hot August Night II grab the opening line of “Brother Loves Traveling Salvation Show” for their titles. Need another example? One of my favorite bands, Steely Dan, named their 4th album Katy Lied. The album contains the song “Dr Wu” with the lyric “Katy lies, you can see it in her eyes.” Not an exact match, but you get the idea. So how many more examples can you think of? And why do you think a lyric good enough to name an album didn’t even wind up as the name of the song? Leave a comment here, or better yet, drop me a line at les.raff@post.com. I am wondering if we can come up with fifteen or twenty examples.

While we are on album title trivia, can you name a band that recorded an album and a song on the album, and all three, the name of the band, the album and the song are the same? That one is pretty easy. But how about an album named for a song or lyric on a previous album by the same artist. You might need your thinking cap to come up with more than one of those.

Feel free to share and pass on this blog. I am curious as to how many albums we can all come up with.

Type your email address in the box and click the “create subscription” button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.