Any Time of Year, You Can Find It Here

Last night, after I'd finally put the kids to bed, I stepped back into the kitchen to clean up the detritus of dinnertime. To serenade my dish-doing, I flicked on the radio, tuned to New York's resolutely geriatric 'classic rock' station, Q104.3. As if on cue, the melodramatic opening strains of "Hotel California" by the Eagles came chiming tinnily out of the speaker. By the time hirsute guitarists Don Felder and Joe Walsh were about to lapse into their mutually-masturbatory, epic-length duet, I'd cleared the sink, loaded the dishwasher and filled the coffee-maker for the following morning. I flicked off the radio and left the kitchen. This morning -- almost twelve hours later to the very minute -- when I staggered back into the kitchen to turn on the coffee-maker and fix the kids' breakfast, I turned the radio back on, astonishingly catching Felder and Walsh still mercilessly strangling their respective fret-boards. It was as if Don Henley's laboriously symbolic meisterwerk's portentous admonition had come true. I could check out any time I liked ... but evidently I could never leave!!!

As you can probably surmise, I've never liked the Eagles. For some reason, however, I've always been surrounded by fans of theirs. Growing up, our household played host to an alarmingly voluminous collection of albums by the cloyingly sanctimonious country-rock ensemble, all po-faced with their handle-bar mustaches and whiteboy `fros. I vividly remember my childhood friend Billy renouncing our once-shared allegiance to Kiss in favor of a newfound appreciation for "Take It Easy," the Eagles' self-serving ode to louche irresponsibility (not that Kiss were really strangers to that sensibility either, mind you, but at least Kiss rocked -- something the Eagles never managed to do). I think a major factor in the origin of my overarching disdain for my fellow man largely stems from the sad fact that the Eagles compilation, Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975 is the best selling album in U.S. history, having sold 29,000,000 copies as of January of this year. In worldwide sales, at least, it ranks third (behind Michael Jackson's Thriller -- which is also indefensible crap -- and AC/DC's Back in Black -- which is fucking brilliant). But still, the fact that whole nations of people are inexplicably continuing to buy this dreadful slab of sonic offal -- which includes cuts like "Witchy Woman" and the screwdriver-into-eye-socket ditty, "Peaceful Easy Feelin'" -- thirty-three whole years after its unfortunate release is ample evidence that we're doomed as a species. But I digress.

Why Q104 would see fit to play "Hotel California" -- arguably the Eagles' greatest achievement -- twice in the span of twelve hours is truly anyone's guess. How limited could their library be? Moreover, it's not like the Eagles --may God forgive them -- don't have other songs to choose from. Is the demand for those strenuously heavy-handed six-minutes-&-thirty-seconds of preachy, wafer-thin allegory really that high? Do people really need to be repeatedly warned about the perils of hedonism by a band who routinely consumed their collective weight in cocaine? Seriously, the Eagles did enough blow to make Duran Duran look like Mormons. I don't get it.

To be fair, the track in question does at least boast one element of silly intrigue. I've always been amused by the conspiracy theories regarding its purported ties to Anton LaVey's lovably ridiculous Church of Satan. As a hoarily holier-than-thou indictment of vacuous left coast excess, it's been suggested that the lyrics to "Hotel California" refer specifically to LaVey's cartoony organization. Taking that a step further, many claim that LaVey -- if not Satan himself -- appear in the gatefold photograph on the album, leering menacingly from a balcony window. Personally speaking, as a avid fan of many bands who are unapologetic in their devotion to Satan, I have to believe that the horned one and his faithful acolytes would have better taste than to endorse the mushy piffle of Messrs. Henley & Glenn "Smuggler's Blues" Frey. Seriously, I can't imagine that Lucifer would willfully listen to claptrap like "Heartache Tonight" or "New Kid in Town," unless he was doing so in order to test-drive some new form of infernal torment on a damned soul.

The fleeting whiff of brimstone tenuously associated with the track did convince me to give it a teensy bit more consideration at the time (although it took me years to decipher Henley's juvenile pot allusion, "the warm smell of colitas"), but the whole thing is just so bloated and pretentious (and this from someone who genuinely likes a lot of bloated and pretentious music), that I just can't stomach it. In fact, apart from the oft-repeated suggestion that Don Henley is ferociously uptight about the way his toilet-paper rolls are hung (legend has it that he once hand-scribbled a several-sided screed to a hapless hotel attendant after he discovered that the paper with which he was to wipe his royal backside was not set up to his liking), I find the tirelessly humorless Eagles to be completely devoid of all semblance of merit.

But, y'know, that's me. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the Eagles truly are minions of Satan after all and perhaps my torment has already begun. Dare I turn on that radio again to find out?