Do you know the song "Bitter Creek", off "Desperado"?

"Desperado" was a failure upon release.  The album didn’t break the Top Forty, and neither did the single, any of them.  Those standards, "Tequila Sunrise" and the title track, they had no impact, the record was a stiff.

Not that the label and the band didn’t give it a good shot.  There was a run-up of hype in "Rolling Stone", all about the outlaw theme and the cover photo, with Jackson and J.D.  But only fans cared.  And how many fans were there?  Of a band with a lightweight hit single?

Yes, they were named the Eagles, about as generic as "America", and they didn’t start with FM airplay and grow, they began on Top Forty.  Hipsters passed right by the debut album.

But what an album it was.

"Take It Easy" is a deserved classic.  But the trio that enraptured me was "Witchy Woman", "Earlybird" and "Tryin’".

"Witchy Woman" was our introduction to the brooding Don Henley.  It had the darkness of the sixties, but with a seventies sensibility.  It was slick where the dopesters of the sixties were rough.  It brought you right into the desert.

"Earlybird" might not have had the character of Poco’s debut, but it had even more appeal.  The picking and a grinnin’ lassoed the listener, and the harmonies were like Crosby, Stills & Nash on steroids.  They were sweet, but with balls.

Yet my favorite is the album closer, "Tryin’".

Randy Meisner has been exiled from the Eagles, his tracks don’t even grace the compilations.  He was in the band through "Hotel California", but it’s like he doesn’t exist.  But he was an integral part of the act.  The intensity of his vocals resonated with the desires of the aging baby boomers, entering their twenties, wanting to achieve their goals.  Glenn was the emcee of good times, Henley was the brooding genius, Randy was us.  Alternately frustrated and excited.

Records have moments that put them over the top, that make them transcend their trappings, that make them personal favorites.  When "Tryin’" breaks down a little over two minutes in, and Randy sings of keepin’ on tryin’, you’re energized.  I’m still tryin’, are you?

And then the song is over, in a flash, they never return to the verse.  There’s a guitar solo, and then the album ends.

It was these album tracks that got me to buy "Desperado".  I liked "Doolin’ Dalton", the set-up for the theme.  David Blue’s "Outlaw Man" was the most obvious track.  But the songs I loved, when I purchased the album back in ’73, long before it was a classic, were Randy Meisner’s "Certain Kind Of Fool" and Bernie Leadon’s "Bitter Creek".

He was a poor boy, raised in a small family
He kinda had a craving for somethin’ no one else could see

Christopher Moltisanti didn’t fall into the Mafia, he wanted IN!  The life looks so glamorous to one without options.  The money, the broads, the action.  But they come at a price.  Christopher paid with his life.

Maybe Christopher’s is a rock and roll story.  A rocket to the top, a brief reign laden with drugs and alcohol, and then a quick crash, a slide into oblivion.

They say that he was crazy
The kind that no lady should meet

You need a good woman at home, to keep you together.  No one makes it without a babe, to listen to their stories, to soothe them, to bandage their wounds and send them back into battle.  Christopher had Adriana.  An Italian dream.  But she got caught in a bind, and played with the Feds, she had to disappear.  Intellectually, Christopher knew it was the right thing to do, but emotionally…he could never get over it.  Oh, he suppressed his emotions for a while, but then, her absence, it gnawed at him.  And her replacement, Kelly, was just not enough, beautiful and devoted, but not dangerous.

He wants to dance, oh yeah
He wants to sing, oh yeah
He wants to see the lights a flashin’ and listen to the thundering

Adrianna ran shotgun.  She was just as wild as Christopher.  They were F. Scott and Zelda without the education, without the intellectual curiosity.  They were a certain kind of fool, who always gets caught in his own game.

Christopher couldn’t survive. His demons were eating him up.  Rage catches up with you.

But we thought Paulie would pull the trigger.  Or Tony would approve a hit.  We didn’t imagine that infused with coke Christopher would flip the Escalade while listening to Roger Waters’ lame remake of "Comfortably Numb" from the "Departed" soundtrack and end up so weak, blood flowing from his orifices, that Tony could suffocate him with one hand.

Tony Soprano is no fool.  He’s too paranoid to be tripped up.

Then again, we’ve been rooting for him.  But no longer.  In the denouement of the series, David Chase is illuminating Tony’s less lovable dimensions.  He’s got a conscience, but he’s not ruled by it.  Paulie lamented busting Christopher’s balls, Tony just saw his nephew as an obstacle, that needed to be pushed out of the way.  And with his work done, Tony went to that high class resort town known as Las Vegas.

Who knows the power of the Mafia in Vegas today.  They say the town is clean.  But we don’t believe it is.  Would the head of a New Jersey family get a private jet, first class treatment?  I’m thinking no.  Tony is a gambler, but not a legendary high roller, who is comped on his way to hopefully losing millions.

But it turns out Tony’s not agenda free in LV.  He needs to pay a call on one of Christopher’s old friends.  A stripper with class.  Not one of the Bada Bing regulars with a boob job and tattoos, but a classy girl next door, the woman of vacationers’ dreams.

This girl ends up in bed with Tony.  She doesn’t even bother to take off her clothes, she just lifts her skirt, like a schoolgirl.  And after Tony makes a joke about her working to pay her tuition, she starts reminiscing about her old flame.

No man wants to hear about another male as he’s in post-coital repose.  He feels triumphant, having done his manly duty.  To be juxtaposed with another is to undercut him.  And in one false move in the aftermath of sexual intercourse, Tony moves further in on Christopher’s action, he tells this girl he wants to follow in his nephew’s tracks, he wants to partake in peyote.

I like a pretty girl as much as anybody else.  But you’ve got to be afraid that that’s their chip, that that’s what they’re trading on.  Christopher’s old girlfriend radiates a certain amount of intelligence, but really all she seems to have is her looks, and her charm.  People like that are scary.  People like that take you for a ride.  This woman took Tony for a ride.  Oh, Tony thought he was in control, but men are beholden to women, no matter how self-impressed they are.

Tony and this girl end up in the desert.  In Eagles country.  As the sun sets off in the distance.  Tony with the witchy woman.

And as I viewed this scene, a song started going through my brain, "Bitter Creek", the second to last song on "Desperado".

Out where the desert meets the sky
Is where I go when I wanna hide

Oh, peyote

Bernie Leadon left the Eagles first.  His contribution to the band has been essentially forgotten.  But his and Meisner’s compositions added character, back when an album was something you played from start to finish, when seemingly secondary tracks revealed themselves and became your favorites.

My favorite "Sopranos" episode remains the one wherein Tony accompanies Meadow on a college trip to Maine, wherein he strangles an old colleague now in the witness protection program.

My favorite "Sopranos" scene is when Meadow agrees losing her gas credit card is adequate punishment for a serious transgression.

That episode in Maine was haunting, just like that northern state it took place in.  The family discipline scene had the truth of today’s parenting.

I will remember "The Sopranos", my favorite drama to ever grace the small screen, if not the best.  But when I walk through life, its scenes will not be replayed in my head.  That’s music’s role.

We didn’t just listen to those albums, they became part of our lives, they flash through our brains like family members, like old friends.

The protagonist in "Bitter Creek" speaks of one last score, and then no more runnin’.  I doubt Tony Soprano is going to escape unscathed, if he lives through this season at all.  "Desperado" might be an artifact from the seventies, but it’s still alive, it resonates.